I want to share with you an important op-ed piece written by six Northeastern University professors about the challenges facing higher education. One of those professors is my School of Journalism colleague Rahul Bhargava. Their essay appears in our independent student newspaper, The Huntington News. I urge you to read it in full, but here’s an excerpt:
Many university leaders nationwide believe that we can survive by complying to reduce the impact of cuts or by staying silent to avoid becoming a priority target. This blatantly ignores the immigrant and transgender students who are afraid for their safety, worrying their university will not protect them. This ignores the faculty whose research has already been made impossible merely because it mentions a now-banned phrase. It ignores the irreparable loss of reputation when our universities sacrifice fundamentally American values like freedom of speech. We must work together to ensure this doesn’t happen here at Northeastern.
Northeastern is among several colleges and universities where students and recent graduates have had their visas revoked. And on and on it goes.
I want to call your attention to this strong, eloquent editorial about free speech on campus that was published by The Huntington News, Northeastern’s independent student newspaper. It is, the piece says, the first time that the News’ editorial board has weighed in on an issue in six years. The editorial says in part:
While the Trump administration has yet to single out Northeastern University as it has Columbia University, Georgetown University or the University of Pennsylvania, we believe it is only a matter of time before our institution is targeted by the administration. The moment will come when the views expressed by one of our professors are denounced as “dangerous” or when the president brands the actions of a protesting student as “illicit,” making no legal effort to justify such an accusation.
In the words of Northeastern President Joseph E. Aoun, the university’s mission “does not change with the times.” Neither does a student’s fundamental right to freedom of speech and freedom of expression. Northeastern’s mission is only as strong as our commitment to defending it. If we waver, hesitate or stall in standing up for our values, then Northeastern’s mission was never as ironclad as our administration would have us believe.
Our university must not preemptively submit to an atmosphere of fear.
The editorial board — reconstituted only within the past few days, according to editor-in-chief Sonel Cutler — also calls on the university administration to do more in speaking out against the current atmosphere of repression and to be more transparent about efforts it is reportedly taking in collaboration with other colleges and universities in Greater Boston.
Overall, the editorial is even-handed, well-written and passionate in its defense of democracy and the First Amendment.
On the latest “What Works” podcast, I talk with Marta Hill, an extraordinary young journalist who I got to know during her time at Northeastern.
Marta is currently a graduate student in the Science, Health and Environmental Reporting program at New York University, where she’s also the editor-in-chief of Scienceline. In that role, she works with her peers at NYU to produce what she describes as “an accessible, down-to-earth science publication.” Marta is originally from Minneapolis, which makes it almost a tragedy that my co-host, Ellen Clegg, a fellow transplant from the Twin Cities, couldn’t be with us. (Ellen will be back for our next podcast).
At Northeastern, Marta served in various capacities at The Huntington News, an independent student newspaper, including a one-year stint as editor-in-chief. She was also in my media ethics and diversity class in the fall of 2023. Whenever I teach ethics, a week gets devoted to talking about the harassment that journalists face both online and in real life. It’s a problem that’s been getting worse in recent years, and it’s something that young reporters in particular really have to think about before deciding whether to go into journalism full-time.
Marta decided she wanted to explore the issue of harassment and student journalism more deeply in the form of an honors project, and I was her adviser. She wrote a wide-ranging reported article, and a shorter version of that article was recently published by Nieman Reports, part of the Nieman Foundation at Harvard. Her article, titled “J-schools Must Better Prepare Students for Handling Harassment,” lays out some concrete steps that journalism educators can take so that their students are not caught off guard when they encounter harassment at their student news outlet or on the job.
My Quick Take is on a nonprofit initiative to bring more and better news to Tulsa, Oklahoma, a thriving metro area with nearly 700,000 people in the city and surrounding county. The area is currently served by the Tulsa World, a daily paper that’s part of the Lee Enterprises chain, which, like most corporate newspaper owners, has a reputation for aggressive cost-cutting. The new nonprofit, the Tulsa News Initiative, is built around a venerable Black newspaper, but there’s more to it than that.
Centennial Common at Northeastern University. Photo (cc) 2008 by Piotrus.
The pro-Palestinian encampment at Northeastern University’s Centennial Common may have been broken up nearly as soon as it appeared, but the events of those 48 hours in late April still reverberate. Now The Huntington News, our outstanding independent student newspaper, has published a massive overview that focuses on the police response.
Reported by Annika Sunkara, Eli Curwin and Emily Spatz, the story examines how protesters were treated by law enforcement officials who were called to the scene to take down the encampment and arrest those who refused to leave. Those officials included Boston, Northeastern and state police. As portrayed in the article, the response comes off as somewhat chaotic, with needlessly rough treatment of the some of the protesters as well as confusion over how those with a Northeastern affiliation should be treated.
The reporting speaks for itself, but I do want to highlight this:
Police ordered all individuals, including press, medics and legal observers, to leave Centennial.
Several Huntington News reporters were told to leave the barricaded area under threat of their “student status.”
Boston police ordered at least five legal observers, who had monitored the encampment since it was established, to move outside of the barricade.
How the press was treated when the encampment was broken up and arrests began on the morning of Saturday, April 27, has been a matter of controversy. Police officers have an obligation to move observers out of the way so that they’re not a hindrance and are not in danger of getting hurt. On the other hand, those observers should not be moved so far from the scene that they don’t have a clear view of how the police are doing their jobs. Journalism’s obligation is to bear witness at such moments.
Urszula Masny-Latos, executive director of the National Lawyers Guild of Massachusetts, told the News that the police moved observers “as far from the scene as possible so [the police] would not be easily visible.” She also said that Boston police overruled campus officers “and forced NLG legal observers off the grounds where the arrests happened.”
The Boston Police Department reportedly did not respond to the News about their actions.
The Huntington News, the independent student newspaper that covers all things Northeastern, is featured in a Nieman Lab roundup of how college papers have been covering pro-Palestinian encampments and protests on their campuses. Lab reporter Sophie Culpepper interviewed outgoing editor-in-chief Eli Curwin and his successor, Sonal Cutler, as well as student journalists at The Daily Texan at UT Austin, the Daily Trojan at the University of Southern California and The GW Hatchet at George Washington University.
The Northeastern encampment ended almost as quickly as it began — it popped up on Centennial Common on Thursday, April 25, and was cleared out by police that Saturday morning. But though the protest may have been shorter than on many other campuses, which in some cases are ongoing, it was no less fraught.
“It was very intense, and you kind of just were full of adrenaline until you had to step away,” Curwin told Culpepper. He added, though, that the chance to cover such an important story “was really cool, because it was like, this is what we’ve been learning about; this is what we’ve been practicing for.” The News had students at the site reporting around the clock right from the beginning. I should note, too, that Northeastern co-op students have been on the team covering the encampments for The Boston Globe, and Cutler has been covering protests for the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Culpepper also wrote about the difficulty of reporting on pro-Palestinian demonstrators who are protesting the actions of the Israeli government and how that has gotten caught up in the Jewish identity of many of the students — including journalists:
Curwin and Cutler are both Jewish, and Curwin has family in Israel. Well before October 7, “this issue has been … something I constantly think about,” Curwin told me. The divided campus, “people constantly criticizing or scrutinizing our coverage,” and his personal background all amounted to “a very stressful semester.”
Many of the critical Instagram comments the publication has received are along the lines of “you guys must hate Jewish people,” as Curwin said, or “you don’t care about Jewish voices,” as Cutler put it. They, like all five student journalists I spoke with across four publications, described a deep commitment to doing their best to represent everyone’s perspectives fairly and accurately.
Two other points I think are worth nothing. First, The Huntington News has been unable to get arrest records from the campus police because they are a private agency not bound by the state’s public records law. That ought to change, since they have some official police powers. Second, even with social media having falling into a morass over the past few years, the News still relies heavily on Twitter/X and Instagram. Cutler and Curwin said the News’ website is mainly accessed by parents and faculty, while the students themselves rely on social media.
Three media-related follow-ups to this morning’s post on the arrests of pro-Palestinian protesters at Northeastern University.
• As I noted earlier, university spokeswoman Renata Nyul issued a statement in which she cited “virulent antisemitic slurs, including ‘Kill the Jews’” as a precipitating factor in ordering that the encampment be dismantled and the police be brought in. Now there are reports that “Kill the Jews” might actually have been uttered by a pro-Israel counter-protester.
GBH News reporter Tori Bedford tweeted, “I did hear ‘kill the Jews,’ said by a counter-protester holding an Israeli flag, seemingly as a provocative joke in response to the group’s pro-Palestine chants. Not sure if that’s the specific incident @Northeastern leadership is referring to.” She also shared a video provided to her by Huskies for a Free Palestine.
Northeastern’s student newspaper, The Huntington News, acknowledged in an update at 12:15 p.m. today that the statement was indeed made by a counter-protester, and The Boston Globe has added this: “The student group behind the protests disputed that claim, saying that no one in the encampment shouted slurs, and that it was a counter-protestor who yelled ‘Kill the Jews.’”
• Earlier this morning, I read in the Globe that reporters had been asked by police to leave the scene. But when I went to write it up, that passage was gone. Sarah Scire of Nieman Lab, though, saved it and posted it on Twitter:
Northeastern started to clear the pro-Palestine encampment on campus early this morning. Police told news media to “go home,” too. pic.twitter.com/wmTnpDLIy5
I don’t know why the Globe deleted that section from its story. Maybe a judgment was made that the officer was directing their statements to bystanders in general rather than journalists in particular. It also sounds like advice rather than an order. As for whether the Globe should have acknowledged the edit, I’ll just observe that it’s pretty standard for news outlets to revise and delete in their online running coverage without indicating whether any changes have been made. Good practice? Maybe not. But hardly unusual.
• Student reporters were told to back off from the immediate scene after police officers surrounded the encampment. In an update posted today at 5:30 a.m., the News published this: “Several members of The News’ staff were asked to move outside the barricade.” That does not strike me as inappropriate as long as the reporters were allowed to remain close enough to observe what was going on. Still, it’s worth noting.
The pro-Palestinian encampment at Northeastern University has come to an end, as Boston Police arrested about 100 people early this morning. Our student journalists have been doing a great job of covering the protest, not only for The Huntington News (on Twitter/X and on their live blog) but also for The Boston Globe, where several co-op students have been on the scene. Their work has been exceptional, presented fairly and without an agenda.
I was on campus Friday afternoon and walked around the perimeter a few times. I did not attempt to engage with any of the protesters. What struck me was how small the encampment on Centennial Common was, although there were plenty of people packed inside the perimeter. The Huntington News placed the number at about 200.
One development that no doubt hastened the end of the encampment was a turn toward explicit antisemitism on the part of at least some of the protesters. At 6:25 a.m. today, the News quoted a statement from Renata Nyul, the university’s vice president for communications:
Earlier this morning the Northeastern University Police Department (NUPD) — in cooperation with local law enforcement partners — began clearing an unauthorized encampment on the university’s Boston campus. What began as a student demonstration two days ago, was infiltrated by professional organizers with no affiliation to Northeastern. Last night, the use of virulent antisemitic slurs, including ‘Kill the Jews,’ crossed the line. We cannot tolerate this kind of hate on our campus.
The Globe report included this detail about rising hostilities between the protesters and pro-Israel counter-protesters: “At one point, a person called out, ‘Kill the Jews,’ while others yelled, ‘No right to exist,’ at the two counterprotesters holding the Israeli flag. Campus police later escorted the men away from the encampment.”
[Note: The antisemitic threat appears to have been uttered by a pro-Israel counter-protester. See update.]
As part of clearing the site, approximately 100 individuals were detained by police. Students who produced a valid Northeastern ID were released. They will face disciplinary proceedings within the university, not legal action. Those who refused to disclose their affiliation were arrested.
What none of us have any way of knowing is whether this ends the protest or if it will escalate. Northeastern is on a different schedule from most colleges and universities; classes and finals are now over. But commencement season is now upon us, with multiple ceremonies scheduled for the various colleges and two large university-wide celebrations at Fenway Park next Sunday, May 5.
The Berkeley Beacon, the student newspaper at Emerson College, has a live blog covering the arrest of students who have been camping out to protest on behalf of Palestinian rights in reaction to the Israel-Hamas war. More than 100 protesters have been taken into custody, the Beacon reports, citing the Emerson chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.
Student journalists have received a lot of much-deserved praise for their coverage of these encampments. In particular, the Columbia Daily Spectator has established itself as the go-to source for reporting on protests at Columbia University.
Update: The Huntington News has tweeted that students are setting up an encampment on Centennial Common at Northeastern University. On the one hand, I’ve been wondering when this might happen. On the other, we’re a week or two ahead of most schools; classes are out, and finals are nearly over.
BREAKING: Dozens of Northeastern student protesters have begun setting up an encampment on Centennial Common. More to follow. pic.twitter.com/ar1C7QMU4b
I just want to give a quick shoutout to our great student journalists at Northeastern. The Boston Globe published a story Monday about problems with NU Bound, a program under which our students begin their education at campuses outside of Boston — especially Oakland, California, and London. Students talk about running into a housing squeeze as well as a sense that they’ve fallen behind academically and socially, according to Globe reporter Vivi Smilgius.
The Huntington News, our independent student newspaper, posted an article that covered similar ground on Oct. 2. Written by Jackson Laramee, the story is especially strong on the different academic culture in London, where students are given little in the way of graded assignments and professors, according one student, are disorganized and short on preparation.
And let’s not overlook The Daily Free Press at Boston University, where student journalists published a comprehensive report on problems at Ibram X. Kendi’s Antiracist Research Center that had other media scrambling to catch up.
Student journalists are doing a great job, and their work is essential to understanding what is taking place on college campuses.
The Huntington News, Northeastern University’s independent, nonprofit student newspaper, is facing a financial challenge: its hardware is falling apart and its software is outmoded. If you’re part of the Northeastern community, or if you’d just like to help, click here for more information.
