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At Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, 11 students stand accused by the administration of assaulting college staff during Palestine solidarity protests in the last year. Yet there wasn’t any pushing, grabbing, nor any kind of harmful touching.
The alleged assaults occurred, according to internal disciplinary charges, because some of the students used a bullhorn to amplify chants and slogans calling for the school to divest from Israel’s military-industrial complex.
The students, in other words, could face expulsion on assault charges for making a noise and amplifying it using, perhaps second only to the placard, the most standard of protest equipment.
“I feel like this is kind of a…