On Monday, Brown University President Christina Paxson gave remarks for a "vigil of peace and healing" to honor Hisham Awartani, a Palestinian student wh o was wounded in a recent shooting in Vermont. It was meant in part to address "an increase in hate against Palestinians, Muslims, Israelis and Jews." Her remarks prepared for delivery were posted to the university website on Tuesday. As social media posts and video clips show, though, what remarks she actually gave only addressed Muslim and Palestinian students.
"At a faculty meeting last month, I said that 'Every student, faculty and staff member should be able to proudly wear a Star of David or don a keffiyeh on the Brown campus, or to cover their head with a hijab or yarmulke,'" is what she was supposed to say.
That changed when she was heckled by the crowd towards the end of her speech. "Let me tell you how I gonna end this," Paxson offered. "I was gonna say at a faculty meeting last month, I said that 'Every student, faculty and staff member should be able to proudly don a keffiyeh on the Brown campus, or to cover their head with a hijab.'"
Something is seriously wrong when a university president can't even say benign words about Jewish students being able to wear a Star of David or Yarmulke on campus. WATCH @BrownUniversity President Christina Paxson grovel to the anti-Israel mob. https://t.co/U18RTP0Jrg pic.twitter.com/VdrHI6rdXp
— Canary Mission (@canarymission) November 30, 2023
Paxson also made the decision to engage with the hecklers. Ultimately, however, Paxson said "I'm sorry" and left the podium as the agitators continued to call her out even more loudly.
"Sadly, we can’t control what happens around the world and across the country. But there is so much we are doing and will continue to do," was the line from Paxson that did it for the hecklers. Reporting from The Nation included comment from Sherena Razek, president of Brown’s Graduate Labor Organization (GLO) and a member of GLO’s Palestine Solidarity Caucus who said that although "a silent disruption was planned," what happened in the clip above was "spontaneous." Razek specifically spoke to how people took issue with "these comments of powerlessness."
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While the pro-Palestinian students clearly took issue with Paxson's remarks, what she said could also be taken as a way to seemingly absolve colleges and universities from addressing hate on campus. They've already had such lackluster responses in calling out antisemitism and also when it comes to punishing wrongdoers. Brown is one of many examples of where there has been a problem of antisemitism.
Not long after the terrorist attack that Hamas perpetrated against Israel on October 7, pro-Hamas students on college campuses, including with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) released statements and took part in rallies blaming Israel for the attack. The Brown SJP group signed onto such a statement and also one student soon after in October declared on campus that "Palestinians will die for justice and will die to return to our land." She also used a genocidal phrase, saying "glory to our martyrs from the river to the sea" and claimed "Palestine is the hope of the world."
"But there is so much we are doing and will continue to do, to make sure that this community—the Brown community—is a place where everyone is safe and supported to be their full and best selves," was what Paxson's prepared remarks indicated she was going to say, just before the mention of the faculty meeting.
Fox News reporting of the rally shows pictures of masked attendees holding signs that say "BROWN FUNDS THE HATE THAT MADE THIS POSSIBLE."
A CNN report, however, from earlier this week spoke to there not yet being a motive in the shooting of Awartani and two other Palestinian men:
“We still do not know as much as we want to know,” Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad told reporters at a news conference two days after the shooting. “But I would urge the public and you in the media to avoid making conclusions based on statements from people who know even less than we currently do. We are working hard to find out this information.”
Jason J. Eaton, 48, was arrested Sunday and on Monday pleaded not guilty at his arraignment to three counts of attempted second-degree murder. He is being held without bail.
“Although we do not yet have evidence to support a hate crime enhancement, I do want to be clear that there is no question, this was a hateful act,” Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George said Monday.
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But Murad said they still haven’t found the evidence to meet the legal standard and distinction between a hateful act and a hate crime.
Some of the victims have been interviewed by detectives, he said at the news conference.
“They stated that the (suspect) had not made any comments to them and had merely approached them while they were walking down the street, essentially minding their own business. And they were speaking in a mixture of English and Arabic,” Murad said.
“They had no knowledge of this individual, had not encountered him before. He stepped off a porch” and shot at them, he added.
An attorney for the victims’ families, Abed Ayoub, said he believes the students were targeted in part because two of them were wearing keffiyehs – traditional Palestinian scarves.
“The suspect walked up to them and shot them. They weren’t robbed, they weren’t mugged,” Ayoub told CNN on Sunday, before the arrest was announced. “It was a targeted shooting and a targeted crime.”
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After Monday’s hearing, Eaton’s attorney, Margaret Jansch, said it was “premature to speculate” about a possible hate crime motivation.
Hecklers did express outrage towards Paxson in other ways beyond their signs. "Shame on you," hecklers could be heard yelling, and "Divest from genocide!" At their loudest points, the activists could be heard shouting "Brown Divest!"
Townhall reached out to Brown University for comment as to why Paxson edited her remarks in real time, but did not hear back in time for publication. The university did respond to National Review, however. "The remarks on the website are those prepared for delivery, as noted on that page. At the point students began to disrupt the remarks, President Paxson began to abbreviate them with the hope of being able to finish. It’s not unusual for there to be some deviation between remarks as prepared and remarks as delivered, and certainly that was the case here given the disruption," offered a university spokesman.
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