Headline, May 12 2024/ ''' SAD TIMES SAG '''

''' SAD TIMES SAG '''

'' THE WORLD STUDENTS SOCIETY GRIEVES ''. In this age of doxxing, protesters, choose anonymity. Student activists in the U.S. face a new set of economic and reputational risks.

Over the last week, Fabiola, a sophomore at Columbia, joined an encampment on the New York university's quad, risked suspension and disrupted campus life, all in an effort to draw attention to the Palestinian cause.

She describes stopping Israel's deadly siege of Gaza as a moral duty - an urgent imperative around which she has reoriented her life.

But as she participated in one of the most visible protests on the planet last month, Fabiola decided to hold one very important thing back : her identity. Thinking of her international student visa, she stretched a black surgical mask over her face, and declined to share her full name.

It was no one-off. On campuses across the United States, students leading one of the largest protest movements in decades have increasingly strapped on face masks and checkered Palestinian keffiyehs in a polarising bid to protect their anonymity even as they demand universities and governments be held to account.

The choice represents a shark break by many, though not all, of those students from earlier generations of university activists, who gained their moral force in part by putting their words on record and their futures in jeopardy for a larger cause.

But as they actively invoke the legacy of the antiwar movement of the 1960s and its successors, today's young activists appear to be responding to a much more contemporary set of reputational and economic risks their predecessors simply did not face.

In interviews, a dozen student demonstrators across the country cited the risk of being doxxed by pro-Israel groups accusing them of antisemitism, featured by news media or captured in viral videos.

Several were intimately familiar with the torrent of online harassment, rescinded job offers and death threats that can follow. { A small number also profess concerns about viruses spreading in close quarters.}

Many students will accumulate large debt burdens that were virtually unheard - of half a century ago.

Campuses that were once mostly occupied by white men are now home to a broad range of ethnic minority groups and international students studying on visas.

'' If I give my name, I lose my future,'' one Northwestern University student explained bluntly, as he demonstrated in kaffiyeh and asked for anonymity.

And yet, on campuses already rife with tensions over the Israel-Hamas war, sympathy only goes so far among fellow students and university leaders trying to restore order.

The presence of large groups of masked demonstrators also appears to be contributing to a growing sense of unease at schools like Columbia and the University of California, Los Angeles, which have recently looked more like conflict zones than institutions in the middle of final exams.

Frustrated provosts and deans worry that the regular masking is making it easier for outsiders to infiltrate their campuses, a charge Columbia cited to justify mass arrests of demonstrators who had occupied Hamilton Hall on its Upper Manhattan campus.

And some on campus have come to question whether student demonstrators are also trying to evade consequences for flouting rules, commandeering academic buildings and repeatedly using protest chants that some of their Jewish peers have described as painful and threatening.

At least two schools have pleaded with protesters to unmask including the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where administrators said the practice ''runs counter to our campus norms.''

The Sadness of the Times and this Publishing continues. The World Students Society thanks author Nicholas Fandos.

With most critically honoured, respectful and good wishes dedicated to Students of America, and then Leaders, Students, Professors and Teachers of the world.

See You all prepare for Great Global Elections on The World Students Society - the eternal and exclusive ownership of every student in the world - and for every subject : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter X !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :

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