Thursday, May 07, 2026
Professors sue Atlanta’s Emory University over handling of Israel-Gaza protests
Professors sue Atlanta’s Emory University over handling of Israel-Gaza protests
“Students and faculty have also protested against surveillance cameras on campus and handling of racist posts by a studen
(As a graduate of Emory University Law School I find the university’s behavior to be part of a tradition of repression of progressive ideas. I was told but an Assitant Dean that I was blacklisted from being recommended to law firms recruiting at Emory because I openly refused to participate in a mock trial competition where I had been assigned to argue against affirmative action when the professor who was overseeing the competition was consulting with President Reagan’s Justice Department which was working to eliminate affirmative action. I discussed it with the School’s Dean Epstein, a very clueless man who had us graduate in a downpour because of his negligence in mot moving the ceremony to our designated indoor rain location. I told the Jewish Dean that it was like asking Jewish students to defend Nazi War Criminals he countered it was more like asking Catholics to defend abortion rights. He ignorantly thought, without a factual basis that most Catholics were against abortion rights. I had moved from NYC two years earlier. I knew better. This was and is Emory excepting a few open minded professors like Tim Terrell.) John H Armwood II
Atlanta’s Emory University is facing a lawsuit from three tenured professors over its handling of 2024 protests against Israel’s assault on Gaza, capping off a tumultuous end to the spring semester.
In recent months faculty and students have also demanded the removal of Flock surveillance cameras on campus, and Black law school students and others protested the school’s response to a student’s social media posts and emails that were filled with the N-word.
Emory is one of the richest private schools in the US, with the nation’s 12th-largest endowment. It is also the Atlanta metro area’s second-largest employer.
NoĆ«lle McAfee, chair of the philosophy department and one of three plaintiffs in the civil complaint, sees the recent events at the school as connected. They reflect what is happening “mostly at public universities, but is creeping into private ones … a very dark, authoritarian turn happening around the country”, McAfee said.
The lawsuit alleges the three professors sustained wrongful arrests and prosecution after the school’s administration called Atlanta police and state troopers onto campus two years ago, brutally shutting down a protest encampment less than an hour after it began. The suit also alleges the school violated its own open expression policy.
The Guardian’s reporting on a conservative group that later targeted those who were arrested that day is named in the lawsuit.
McAfee hopes to draw attention to the school’s behavior with the complaint and help ensure the school never calls police onto the campus to quash a protest again. She says some faculty and students have never recovered from the incident. “The trauma of that day, the violence of it, are so massive and so disruptive – and the administration has taken no ownership for what they did, and provided no apology.”
Meanwhile, Emory law school expelled a student named Milano Wayne on 23 April, after months of social media posts and emails to a faculty member containing racist, misogynistic and transphobic messages – including, in an email, his intention to “stomp on n****s”.
This decision followed seven months of escalating concerns, according to Kylie Doyle, past president of the Student Bar Association. Doyle compared the school’s swift response to the April 2024 protest seeking the school’s divestment from Israel with its months long reaction to Wayne’s communications, which earlier this year had students fearing he would commit violence against members of the groups he targeted.
“When the university had students and faculty protests on campus, they were immediately arrested and shot with rubber bullets and tear gas,” Doyle said. “But when a student talks about Black people this way, it takes months for the school to respond.”
As a member of Emory’s Black Law Students Association, Greear Webb was one of about 10 students who met on 13 April with law school dean Richard Freer and other members of the school’s administration.
In the meeting, Freer expressed concerns “about the current political climate, and that the university didn’t want to do anything to put Emory on the administration’s college hit list”, Webb told the Guardian.
Webb noted that Milano was allowed to stay enrolled and take classes remotely for months while the school investigated his behavior. “It seemed like they were giving privileges to someone with racist, violent ideologies,” he said.
After the 13 April meeting, he said, the students felt “disappointed and frustrated”.
They would like to see the student code of conduct be revised to name hate speech and related threats. Also, echoing McAfee, he said, “We’re asking for an apology, a specific acknowledgment that [Milano’s] behavior impacted Black, women and LGBTQ+ students.”
As for Atlanta-based surveillance tech company Flock Safety, a group of students says it has gathered more than a thousand student and faculty signatures opposing the company’s license plate reader cameras on campus. They cite concerns such as a lack of transparent communication from the school about their use and ways in which information from the cameras can wind up in the hands of federal agencies such as ICE.
Under the name DeFlock Emory Coalition, the group published an editorial on 29 April in the Emory Wheel, a student newspaper, calling on the school to “prepare for a mass mobilization should Emory ignore our demands”.
“We demand that our university be the institution it claims to be: one that defends inquiry, dissent and the people who make this community possible,” the editorial concludes.
Laura Diamond, spokesperson for Emory, declined to answer questions from the Guardian about faculty and students seeking apologies and the school’s concerns about being targeted by the Trump administration – and instead sent previously-released statements.
One statement said the lawsuit is “without merit” and that “Emory acts appropriately and responsibly to keep our community safe from threats of harm”. Another said “[t]here is no place in our university for harassment, threats, and bullying. We condemn the vile and hateful language used by the individual in the emails and social media posts.” A third said the school is “taking additional steps to further review how data is shared” from Flock cameras.
Emil’ Keme, an Indigenous K’iche’ Maya scholar, is also a plaintiff on the complaint over the 2024 protest. As with the DeFlock students, he noted the school’s behavior differs from its promoted image.
The swift clampdown on protest and brutal arrests, he said, “went against the principles the school defends: search for knowledge, dialogue and so on”. Since then, he said, “students are afraid” to protest. “This ties into what’s happening nationally,” he said. “It’s a bleak climate.”
McAfee said students now “have to weigh whether it’s safe to demonstrate about something they believe in. There’s a loss of trust.” One student told her: “I don’t want to go to jail – I want to go to med school,” in a conversation about the subject.
Stefano Harvey, a professor at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, Germany, who has studied higher education in the US, said that universities under the Trump administration have been emboldened “to act more like corporations”.
“It’s capitalism trying to get universities in order … [they’re] selling study, learning and community – advertisements that suck you in,” he said. “But then, in each of these cases [at Emory], unfortunately people have to be disabused of these ideas. It’s a very sobering moment.”
Florida Creates a More Conservative Course to Rival A.P. History - The New York Times
Florida Creates a More Conservative U.S. History Course to Rival A.P.
(DeSantis is fostering a rewriting of American history full of deceptilon, distortion and most of all lies!)
"Here are ways Florida’s advanced high school history program, which students can use for college credit, differs from other curriculums.
Florida has created a new American history course that advances a more conservative interpretation of the nation’s story.
It focuses on the Protestant faith of the founders, argues that the U.S. Constitution is an antislavery document and recommends a textbook written explicitly to build patriotism.
The class, which will roll out as a pilot program this fall, is meant to serve as an alternative to Advanced Placement U.S. History, a behemoth that reached more than half a million high school students last year.
Many historians and educators say A.P. United States History is well balanced and avoids any single ideological interpretation of the American story.
But Gov. Ron DeSantis has waged a three-year battle against the College Board, the organization that runs the A.P. program. His administration has argued A.P. courses lean too far to the left in how they discuss race and gender, in particular.
Frederick Hess, director of education policy at the center-right American Enterprise Institute, said he found the new Florida framework rigorous, especially its emphasis on primary sources. In the ongoing debate about whether American history classes should lean more toward presenting the country as a “good, special place” or as a “fundamentally imperfect place,” he added, the framework clearly comes down on one side.
“This is a very explicit attempt to frame it as the former,” he said.
Here are some of the ways the Florida course does that.
It advances American exceptionalism.
The Florida class, whose framework was released on Monday, shares many similarities with other American history survey courses. It does not omit dark periods in the nation’s history, such as slavery, Japanese internment or the Trail of Tears. It does suggest a specific textbook — “Land of Hope” by Wilfred McClay — that, according to Jonathan Zimmerman, a historian at the University of Pennsylvania, tends to cover such events as “aberrations from an otherwise admirable story,” as opposed to part of a foundational history of racism.
Professor McClay teaches at Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian institution in Michigan. He has suggested he wrote “Land of Hope,” in part, to counteract the influence of “A People’s History of the United States” by Howard Zinn, a popular book that focuses on America’s role in abuses of human and civil rights.
Professor McClay declined an interview for this article, but wrote in an email that he supported competition, and that “the College Board should not enjoy a monopoly on the certification of advanced placement in this country.” He added that his work does not downplay “racial inequality and prejudice and brutality in American history,” but sees these moments as departures from “our professed ideals.”
The McClay book is not required for the Florida class, but it is the only suggested textbook. In comparison, the A.P. program provides a list of 21 suggested U.S. history textbooks, which does not include Professor McClay’s book.
Both programs offer teachers significant autonomy in how to present individual lessons.
It focuses on Western civilization.
Florida’s course goes deep on the English constitutional roots of American democracy and contains a big dose of European history. It focuses especially on the ways in which the Protestant Reformation gave rise to certain democratic ideas.
“We must teach our young people to become informed, self-aware and dedicated citizens of the United States of America — of this particular nation,” the framework states. “That requires knowledge of the history of American civilization, as well as its deep roots in English and, more broadly, Western civilization.”
Manisha Sinha, a historian at the University of Connecticut, noted that, in emphasizing Europe, the course framework offered little on American Indigenous history before European contact. She argued that this was a dated approach to U.S. history, “especially in a place like Florida, with a long history of Native presence and major encounters and wars.”
It emphasizes the nation’s Protestant religious heritage.
Ideas about liberty and equality from the Bible, and in the writings of Martin Luther and John Calvin, were crucial precursors to the American founding, according to the new Florida framework. It suggests that students read religious texts, a practice that has fallen out of favor in most public schools.
Professor Zimmerman acknowledged that many of today’s students, including his own, were unfamiliar with basic religious thought, which could make it difficult to understand the nation’s origins.
“These people were reading the Bible,” he said of Puritan colonists, “and if you don’t understand what the Bible says, you can’t understand them.”
The framework stops short of explicitly calling the United States “a Christian nation,” which is a popular term on the right, Professor Zimmerman noted. The course does mention that the early United States was “a Protestant nation with many denominations,” in which rights were gradually extended to Catholics and Jews.
It argues the founders opposed slavery.
The Florida framework devotes an entire unit to a topic that has long fascinated Americans, but which is often skated over in history classes: the contradiction between the founders’ stated antislavery beliefs and the fact that many of them owned other human beings.
But Annette Gordon-Reed, a Harvard historian and leading scholar of Thomas Jefferson, said that, in portraying the founders as fundamentally opposed to slavery, the framework simplified their views. She noted that Jefferson believed that if enslaved people were freed, they should be expatriated, and that George Washington waited until his death to free the enslaved people he owned.
“Each of these people had political power that could have been deployed against slavery,” she wrote in an email. “This presentation seems directed at explaining away their inaction.”
The framework also argues that the Constitution is an antislavery document. Mainstream historians tend to see the Constitution as a compromise between slaveholding and free states, and one that protected the institution of slavery for many decades.
The clause prohibiting Congress from banning the importation of enslaved people until 1808 halted abolitionist momentum at the time, said Professor Sinha, and “was very disappointing to most abolitionists.”
It may be a map for other conservative states.
Florida created the class as part of a new suite of accelerated courses known as FACT — Florida Advanced Courses and Tests. Florida has often set the pace for Republican education policy during the Trump era, so the curriculum could serve as a model that other states follow.
It is also possible that states outside Florida could eventually choose to administer FACT courses and exams, establishing a sort of red-state competitor to the College Board.
The College Board declined to comment on how its course differs from the new Florida offering, but pointed out that the A.P. program remains popular in the state.
This year, over 500 Florida schools offered the A.P. American history course, according to College Board data. Students who do well on A.P. tests can earn college credit or access to more advanced classes at thousands of institutions nationwide, while the new FACT tests will carry credit only at Florida public colleges, at least for now.
It is unclear how many high schools in Florida will adopt the course. The Florida Department of Education declined an interview request. In an email, Cassie Edwards, a spokeswoman for the agency, called the class “a thorough and comprehensive exploration of American history.”
Judge Says F.B.I. Can Keep 2020 Election Records Seized From Georgia
Judge Says F.B.I. Can Keep 2020 Election Records Seized From Georgia
(More right wind judicial corruption. There is no legal justification of this constitutional violation of Georgia’s sovereignty.)
“A federal judge ruled that the FBI can keep 2020 election records seized from Fulton County, Georgia, rejecting the county’s lawsuit claiming the search violated constitutional rights. The ruling comes amid ongoing investigations into the 2020 election, driven by former President Trump’s claims of widespread fraud, which have been repeatedly debunked. Fulton County officials expressed strong disagreement with the decision and are considering appealing.
The ruling is the latest in a saga driven by President Trump’s desire for redemption in the state, which he lost in 2020. The county is likely to appeal.
A federal judge in Georgia ruled Wednesday that the federal government did not have to return 2020 election records seized by the F.B.I., rejecting a request from Fulton County that the materials be returned.
After F.B.I. agents carried out an extraordinary seizure of about 660 boxes of records from Fulton County’s elections hub, county officials responded in early February by filing a lawsuit demanding the return of the documents and describing the search as unconstitutional.
But Judge J.P. Boulee of the Federal District Court in Atlanta wrote in his order that while he found elements of the case “troubling,” the county had not met the bar required for him to compel the government to return the records.
“This Court acknowledges that the events leading up to this case are, in a variety of ways, unprecedented,” Judge Boulee, who was appointed to the federal bench during President Trump’s first term, wrote in his 68-page order. But he said that the county had not shown that the federal government had displayed “callous disregard” for the constitutional rights of the county.
In the lawsuit, lawyers for Fulton County argued that the federal government’s action violated Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.
Judge Boulee’s decision was the latest episode in a saga animated by Mr. Trump’s push for redemption after his 2020 election loss in Georgia, where he lost to Joseph R. Biden Jr. by fewer than 12,000 votes. Georgia was one of a handful of swing states that Mr. Biden narrowly won on his way to the White House.
Mr. Trump has never accepted the outcome of the election, and he has filled the Justice Department and other federal agencies with officials sympatheticto his baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
On Jan. 28, a team of F.B.I. agents, armed with a search warrant, descended on Fulton County to take ballots, voter rolls and scanner images from the county’s elections hub, a warehouse outside Atlanta.
At the time, Democrats and election security experts argued that the search was intended to intimidate the president’s opponents and undermine confidence in the U.S. election system.
Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state in Georgia and a candidate for governor, has described the investigation as a waste of time and government resources.
Unveiling the lawsuit in February, Robb Pitts, the chairman of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners, suggested that the federal government was attempting to take over elections, declaring that “our Constitution itself is at stake.”
On Wednesday, Mr. Pitts said in a statement that he “strongly” disagreed with Judge Boulee’s decision and suggested that the county might appeal the decision.
“Our fight has exposed the flawed affidavit and suspicious timeline of federal actions,” Mr. Pitts said in the statement. “We will continue, as always, to stand by our election workers and the voters of Fulton County. We intend to vigorously pursue all available legal options.”
The county said in the lawsuit that the search was apparently based on claims about the 2020 election that had been repeatedly debunked. At least 11 lawsuits challenging the 2020 election results in Georgia were filed, according to Fulton County court records. None produced evidence of widespread fraud or malfeasance.
“Claims that the 2020 election results were fraudulent or otherwise invalid have been exhaustively reviewed and, without exception, refuted,” the county’s complaint noted, adding that the effort was a “gross intrusion” on the state’s role in conducting elections.
Some Trump supporters cheered the ruling on Wednesday. Mark Davis, a contributing writer for The Federalist, a conservative publication, wrote in a social media post that the decision was a “major victory for election integrity.”
Wendy Weiser, vice president for democracy at the Brennan Center for Justice at N.Y.U. Law School, noted in an interview on Wednesday night that the search warrant process was kicked off by a well-known election denier. And the affidavit in support of the warrant relied on claims about ballots that have been widely debunked.
Ms. Weiser acknowledged that it was rare for judges to intervene and undo federal search warrants. “But if there’s ever an extraordinary time that this should happen, I think this was that,” she said.
The litigation has played out as the midterm election season has started in states across America, and as Republicans have raised concerns about election integrity and pushed for stricter rules at the ballot box.
Early voting for Georgia’s primary has already begun, with Election Day set for May 19. It was not immediately clear when or if the F.B.I. might return the 2020 election records.
A spokeswoman for Fulton County, Jessica Corbitt, said that as of Wednesday, none of the documents seized in January had been returned.
The F.B.I. declined to comment on Judge Boulee’s decision. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Justice Department has also demanded the identities of every worker who staffed the 2020 election in Fulton County, according to court records. It is unclear what the Justice Department intends to do with the names.
Richard Fausset, a Times reporter based in Atlanta, writes about the American South, focusing on politics, culture, race, poverty and criminal justice.“
Wednesday, May 06, 2026
Purported Epstein Suicide Note Is Released
Purported Epstein Suicide Note Is Released
“A federal judge released a purported suicide note by Jeffrey Epstein, found by his cellmate Nicholas Tartaglione in a graphic novel. The note, which has not been authenticated, expresses Epstein’s frustration with the investigation against him. The release follows a petition by The New York Times and a legal dispute involving Tartaglione’s lawyers.
A federal judge released the note on Wednesday, which Jeffrey Epstein’s former cellmate said he found in a graphic novel. The New York Times has not authenticated that Mr. Epstein wrote it.
A federal judge has released a suicide note purportedly written by Jeffrey Epstein that was sealed for years as part of the criminal case of his cellmate.
“They investigated me for months — FOUND NOTHING!!!” the note begins, adding that the result was charges going back many years.
“It is a treat to be able to choose one’s time to say goodbye,” the note continued.
“Watcha want me to do — Bust out cryin!!” the note reads.
“NO FUN," it concludes, with those words underlined. “NOT WORTH IT!!”
Mr. Epstein’s cellmate, Nicholas Tartaglione, said he discovered the note in July 2019 after Mr. Epstein was found unresponsive with a strip of cloth wrapped around his neck. Mr. Epstein survived that incident, but he was found dead weeks later at age 66 in the now shuttered Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan.
The note was made public on Wednesday by Judge Kenneth M. Karas of Federal District Court in White Plains, N.Y., who oversaw the cellmate’s case. The judge acted after The New York Times petitioned the court last Thursday to unseal the document and published an article in which Mr. Tartaglione described the note and how it came into his possession.
The Times has not authenticated whether Mr. Epstein wrote the note, which was placed on the court docket Wednesday evening.
The document remained hidden from public view even as the Justice Department released millions of pages of documents related to Mr. Epstein in a move of unprecedented transparency. The Times searched those records and did not find a copy of the note. (A spokeswoman from the Justice Department said the agency had never seen it.)
The search did turn up a cryptic two-page chronology that described how the note became caught up in Mr. Tartaglione’s complicated legal case. The chronology said that Mr. Tartaglione’s lawyers authenticated the note, though it did not explain how.
Mr. Tartaglione, a former police officer in Briarcliff Manor, N.Y., shared a cell with Mr. Epstein while awaiting trial in a quadruple murder case. He told The Times in recent phone interviews from a California prison that he found the note in a graphic novel after Mr. Epstein was taken out of their cell after the apparent suicide attempt.
“I opened the book to read and there it was,” Mr. Tartaglione said. It was written on a piece of yellow paper ripped from a legal pad, he said.
The New York City medical examiner ruled Mr. Epstein’s death a suicide. In the years since, revelations of security lapses inside the jail have spawned endless theories about how Mr. Epstein died and whether he was murdered.
When jail officials asked Mr. Epstein about red marks on his neck after the incident in July, he first said that Mr. Tartaglione had attacked him and that he was not suicidal. Mr. Tartaglione has long denied assaulting Mr. Epstein, who later told jail officials he “never had any issues” with his cellmate.
Mr. Tartaglione said he gave the note to his lawyers because he believed it could have been helpful if Mr. Epstein continued to claim that he had tried to hurt him. Mr. Tartaglione was convicted in 2023 and is now serving four life sentences. He has maintained his innocence and has appealed his conviction.
The note apparently became part of a drawn-out legal dispute among Mr. Tartaglione’s lawyers. Documents related to the conflict were placed under a court seal to protect attorney-client privilege, the filings say.
Before unsealing the note, Judge Karas asked the parties in the case to provide their views on The Times’s request that the materials be made public. The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, which prosecuted Mr. Tartaglione, did not contest the note’s release. In a letter to the judge, the prosecutors wrote that “there appears to be a strong public interest in the circumstances surrounding Epstein’s death.”
Nate Schweber contributed reporting.
If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.
Benjamin Weiser is a Times reporter covering the federal courts and U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, and the justice system more broadly.
Jan Ransom is an investigative reporter for The Times focusing on the criminal justice system, law enforcement and incarceration in New York.
Steve Eder has been an investigative reporter for The Times for more than a decade“
Tuesday, May 05, 2026
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