Yale Graduates Stage Pro-Palestinian Walkout of Commencement 

Graduates protest the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas, during the commencement at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, US, May 20, 2024. (Reuters)
Graduates protest the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas, during the commencement at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, US, May 20, 2024. (Reuters)
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Yale Graduates Stage Pro-Palestinian Walkout of Commencement 

Graduates protest the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas, during the commencement at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, US, May 20, 2024. (Reuters)
Graduates protest the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas, during the commencement at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, US, May 20, 2024. (Reuters)

Scores of graduating students staged a walkout from Yale University's commencement exercises on Monday, protesting the Israeli war in Gaza, Yale's financial ties to weapons makers and its response to pro-Palestinian demonstrations on the Ivy League campus.

The walkout began as Yale President Peter Salovey started to announce the traditional college-by-college presentation of candidates for degrees on the grounds of Yale's Old Campus, filled with thousands of graduates in their caps and gowns.

At least 150 students seated near the front of the audience stood up together, turned their backs to the stage and paraded out of the ceremony through Phelps Gate, retracing their steps during the processional into the yard.

Many of the protesters carried small banners with such slogans as "Books not bombs" and "Divest from war." Some wore red-colored latex gloves symbolizing bloodied hands.

Other signs read: "Drop the charges" and "Protect free speech" in reference to 45 people arrested in a police crackdown last month on demonstrations in and around the New Haven, Connecticut, campus.

The walkout drew a chorus of cheers from fellow students in the crowd, but the protest was otherwise peaceful, without disruption. No mention of it was made from the stage.

Yale is one of dozens of US campuses roiled by protests over the mounting Palestinian humanitarian crisis stemming from Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip following the bloody Oct. 7 cross-border attack on Israeli settlements by Hamas gunmen.

The University of Southern California canceled its main graduation ceremony altogether, and dozens of students walked out of Duke University's commencement last week to protest its guest speaker, comedian Jerry Seinfeld, who has supported Israel throughout the war in Gaza.

ACADEMIC WORKERS STRIKE UC SANTA CRUZ

Fallout from a violent attack weeks ago on pro-Palestinian activists encamped at the University of California, Los Angeles, reverberated on the UC Santa Cruz campus on Monday as academic workers there staged a protest strike organized by their union.

Also on Monday, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Dartmouth College, an Ivy League university in New Hampshire, narrowly voted to censure president Sian Beilock, according to a college spokesperson, for her decision to call in police to dismantle a pro-Palestinian encampment on May 1. The censure vote does not directly endanger Beilock's job.

The police action resulted in the arrest of 89 people and some injuries.

Much of the student activism has been aimed at academic institutions' financial ties with Israel and US military programs benefiting the Jewish state.

Protests in sympathy with Palestinians have in turn been branded by pro-Israel supporters as antisemitic, testing the boundaries between freedom of expression and hate speech. Many schools have called in police to quell the demonstrations.

At UC Santa Cruz on Monday, hundreds of unionized academic researchers, graduate teaching assistants and post-doctoral scholars went on strike to protest what they said were the university's unfair labor practices in its handling of pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

The strikers are members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 4811, which represents some 2,000 grad students and other academic workers at UC Santa Cruz, and about 48,000 total across all 10 University of California campuses and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Last week, the UAW 4811 rank-and-file voted to authorize union leaders to organize a series of "standup" strikes through the end of June on individual or groups of UC campuses rather than across the entire university.

The Santa Cruz strike marked the first union-backed protest in solidarity with the recent wave of pro-Palestinian student activists, whose numbers, according to the UAW, include graduate students arrested at several University of California campuses.

Union leaders said a major impetus for the strike was the arrest of 210 people at the scene of a pro-Palestinian protest camp torn down by police at UCLA on May 2.

The night before, a group of pro-Israel supporters physically attacked the encampment and its occupiers in a melee that went on for at least three hours before police moved in to quell the disturbance. The university has since opened an investigation of the incident.

The strikers also are demanding amnesty for grad students who were arrested or face discipline for their involvement in the protests.

UC Santa Cruz issued a statement saying campus entrances were briefly blocked in the morning by demonstrators, prompting the school to switch to remote instruction for the day.

The University of California has filed its own unfair labor practice complaint with the state Public Employee Relations Board asking the state to order a halt to the strike.



'Serious Problem': Afghan Capital Losing Race against Water Shortages

Kabul faces a looming water crisis, driven by unruly and rapid urbanization, mismanagement over years of conflict, and climate change. Wakil KOHSAR / AFP
Kabul faces a looming water crisis, driven by unruly and rapid urbanization, mismanagement over years of conflict, and climate change. Wakil KOHSAR / AFP
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'Serious Problem': Afghan Capital Losing Race against Water Shortages

Kabul faces a looming water crisis, driven by unruly and rapid urbanization, mismanagement over years of conflict, and climate change. Wakil KOHSAR / AFP
Kabul faces a looming water crisis, driven by unruly and rapid urbanization, mismanagement over years of conflict, and climate change. Wakil KOHSAR / AFP

Every week, Bibi Jan scrapes together some of her husband's meagre daily wage to buy precious water from rickshaw-drawn tankers that supply residents of Afghanistan's increasingly parched capital.

Kabul faces a looming water crisis, driven by unruly and rapid urbanization, mismanagement over years of conflict, and climate change, meaning people like Bibi Jan are sometimes forced to choose between food and water.

"When my children have only tea for a few days, they say, 'You bought water and nothing for us'," the 45-year-old housewife told AFP, describing reusing her supplies for bathing, dishes and laundry.

Experts have long sounded the alarm over Kabul's water problems, which are worsening even as many international players have backed off big infrastructure projects and slashed funding to Afghanistan since the Taliban government took power in 2021.

"There could be no ground water in Kabul by 2030" without urgent action, the UN children's agency UNICEF warned last year.

Other experts are more cautious, citing limited consistent and reliable data, but say the situation is clearly deteriorating.

A 2030 cliff is a "worst-case scenario", said water resources management expert Assem Mayar.

But even if slated development projects are completed in a few years, it "doesn't mean the situation would become better than now", Mayar said.

"As time goes on, the problems are only increasing," he added, as population growth outstrips urban planning and climate change drives below-average precipitation.

'Decreasing day by day'

The Taliban authorities have launched projects ranging from recycling water to building hundreds of small dams across the country, but larger interventions remain hampered by financing and technical capacity.

They remain unrecognized by any country since they ousted the Western-backed government and imposed their own severe interpretation of Islamic law, with restrictions on women a major sticking point.

They have repeatedly called for non-governmental groups to reboot stalled projects on water and climate change, as Afghanistan faces "some of the harshest effects" in the region, according to the United Nations.

The water and energy ministry wants to divert water from the Panjshir river to the capital, but needs $300 million to $400 million. A dam project near Kabul would ease pressures but was delayed after the Taliban takeover.

For now, Kabul's primary drinking water source is groundwater, as much as 80 percent of which is contaminated, according to a May report by Mercy Corps.

It is tapped by more than 100,000 unregulated wells across the city that are regularly deepened or run dry, the NGO said.

Groundwater can be recharged, but more is drawn each year than is replenished in Kabul, with an estimated annual 76-million-cubic-meter (20-billion-gallon) deficit, experts say.

"It's a very serious problem... Water is decreasing day by day in the city," said Shafiullah Zahidi, who heads central Kabul operations for the state-owned water company UWASS.

Water systems designed decades ago serve just 20 percent of the city's population, which has exploded to around six million over the past 20 years, said Zahidi.

'Use less water'

At one of Kabul's 15 pumping stations, maintenance manager Mohammad Ehsan said the seven-year-old well is already producing less water. Two others nearby sit dry.

"The places with shallower water levels are dried out now," said 53-year-old Ehsan, who has worked in water management for two decades, as he stood over an old well.

It once produced water from a depth of 70 meters (230 feet), but a newer well had to be bored more than twice as deep to reach groundwater.

At one of the two large stations in the city, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) recently procured four new pumps where only one had been functioning.

"If that pump collapsed for any reason, that means stopping the service for 25,000 beneficiary households," which now have uninterrupted water, said Baraa Afeh, ICRC's deputy water and habitat coordinator.

Everyone in Kabul "should have 24-hour service", said Zahidi, from the state water company.

But in reality, Bibi Jan and many other Kabulis are forced to lug water in heavy jugs from wells or buy it from tankers.

These suppliers charge at least twice as much as the state-owned utility, with potable water even more pricy in a country where 85 percent of the population lives on less than a dollar a day.

Bibi Jan said she has to police her family's water use carefully.

"I tell them, 'I'm not a miser but use less water.' Because if the water runs out then what would we do?"