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Tag: Kent State University

  • Kent State Victim’s Sister Condemns Militarized Response To Pro-Palestinian College Protests

    Kent State Victim’s Sister Condemns Militarized Response To Pro-Palestinian College Protests

    Laurel Krause, the sister of an anti-war protester who was killed by law enforcement during the infamous 1970 Kent State University massacre, this week warned against the militarized police response to peaceful college campus demonstrations over Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.

    Inspired by Columbia University, whose students set up a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on campus while protesting the more than 200 days of war, a growing number of college students across the country are holding similar demonstrations at their schools. Participating students and organizers have said that the demonstrations are meant to center Israel’s ongoing violence against Palestinians, to call for a permanent cease-fire and to demand that colleges divest from Israel.

    But despite footage showing students of various races, ethnicities and religions — including Jewish students — participating peacefully in the protests, right-wing politicians and media figures have accused demonstrators of antisemitism and called for them to be met with a militarized police response.

    Last week, Columbia University President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik authorized New York police to sweep the college’s encampment, leading to the arrests of more than 100 people. Since then, witnesses at other campus demonstrations have reported seeing law enforcement — some in riot gear — interacting aggressively with protesters, tearing down encampments and arresting demonstrators.

    Police officers restrain a demonstrator during a pro-Palestinian protest against the war in Gaza at Emory University on April 25, 2024, in Atlanta, Georgia.

    Elijah Nouvelage/AFP via Getty Images

    “As the family member of a peaceful student protester killed by the state, I am aghast at the way that Columbia University President Minouche Shafik, along with administrators at other U.S. institutions of higher education, have endangered the lives and well-being of student protesters by inviting militarized police onto campuses to disperse protesters,” Krause said in a statement Wednesday.

    “I urge President Shafik, and other University administrators across the country to hear the demands of ALL student protesters, to encourage and facilitate zones of free expression, and to support the right of your students to protest an ongoing genocide on campus without the threat of state violence and militarized force.”

    House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Wednesday appeared before protesters at Columbia, where he called for the demonstrations on campus to be shut down and suggested that the National Guard may need to intervene. Earlier this week, GOP Sens. Tom Cotton (Ark.) and Josh Hawley (Mo.) similarly called for the National Guard to be deployed against student protesters.

    But inviting armed, militarized police on American campuses to disperse peaceful protesters and others has historically not ended well.

    From left: Kent State University students William Schroeder, Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller and Sandra Lee Scheuer were killed on campus by Ohio National Guard troops amid protests against the Vietnam War and invasion of Cambodia.
    From left: Kent State University students William Schroeder, Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller and Sandra Lee Scheuer were killed on campus by Ohio National Guard troops amid protests against the Vietnam War and invasion of Cambodia.

    Bettmann via Getty Images

    The pro-Palestinian protests come as the U.S. prepares to mark 54 years since the Kent State and Jackson State massacres, in which law enforcement killed six students and wounded nearly two dozen other people.

    On May 4, 1970, members of the Ohio National Guard fired into a crowd of unarmed demonstrators on Kent State’s campus as they protested the Vietnam War and the invasion of Cambodia. The shooting killed four students and injured nine, including one who became permanently paralyzed. Eleven days later, police fired into a crowd of Black students at what is now Jackson State University, killing two people and injuring a dozen.

    One of the students shot dead at Kent State was 19-year-old Allison Krause, the sibling of Laurel Krause.

    “In 1970 failures of Kent State University leadership enabled the massacre which left ‘Four Dead in Ohio,’” Laurel Krause wrote, referencing a protest song by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young that was penned in response to the shooting.

    “We must not repeat the horrors of Kent State 54 years later.”

    Pro-Palestinian protesters attempt to establish a "solidarity encampment" on the University of Southern California campus in Los Angeles, California, on April 24, 2024.
    Pro-Palestinian protesters attempt to establish a “solidarity encampment” on the University of Southern California campus in Los Angeles, California, on April 24, 2024.

    Shay Horse/NurPhoto via Getty Images

    As the college protests in the U.S. continue, emergency workers in Gaza have unearthed multiple mass graves containing hundreds of bodies near major hospitals that were under siege by Israel.

    Israel invaded Gaza after Hamas-led militants launched an attack on Oct. 7 that killed over 1,100 people and led to the abduction of roughly 250 hostages — half of whom were released during a temporary cease-fire, while about 30 of the remaining captives are presumed dead.

    Since October, Israeli forces — with U.S.-funded weaponry — have killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in Gaza, displaced most of the population, flattened entire towns, sparked a human-made famine and blocked access to medical care. The Israeli military is preparing for a ground invasion of the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where half of the territory’s population has sought refuge.

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  • Prehistoric Women’s Use of Atlatl Weapons Balanced Division of Labor in Hunting

    Prehistoric Women’s Use of Atlatl Weapons Balanced Division of Labor in Hunting

    Newswise — A new study led by Archaeologist Michelle Bebber, Ph.D., an assistant professor in Kent State University’s Department of Anthropology, has demonstrated that the atlatl (i.e. spear thrower) functions as an “equalizer”, a finding which supports women’s potential active role as prehistoric hunters.

    Bebber co-authored an article “Atlatl use equalizes female and male projectile weapon velocity” which was published in the journal Nature: Scientific Reports. Her co-authors include Metin I. Eren and Dexter Zirkle (a recent Ph.D. graduate) also in the Department of Anthropology at Kent State, Briggs Buchanan of University of Tulsa, and Robert Walker of the University of Missouri.

    The atlatl is a handheld, rod-shaped device that employs leverage to launch a dart, and represents a major human technological innovation used in hunting and warfare since the Stone Age. The first javelins are at least hundreds of thousands of years old; the first atlatls are likely at least tens of thousands of years old.

    “One hypothesis for forager atlatl adoption over its presumed predecessor, the thrown javelin, is that a diverse array of people could achieve equal performance results, thereby facilitating inclusive participation of more people in hunting activities,” Bebber said.

    Bebber’s study tested this hypothesis via a systematic assessment of 2,160 weapon launch events by 108 people, all novices, (many of which were Kent State students) who used both javelins and atlatls. The results are consistent with the “atlatl equalizer hypothesis”, showing that the atlatl not only increases the velocity of projectile weapons relative to thrown javelins, but that the atlatl equalizes the velocity of female- and male-launched projectiles.

    “This result indicates that a javelin to atlatl transition would have promoted a unification, rather than division, of labor,” Bebber said. “Our results suggest that female and male interments with atlatl weaponry should be interpreted similarly, and in some archaeological contexts females could have been the atlatl’s inventor.”

    “Many people tend to view women in the past as passive and that only males were hunters, but increasingly that does not seem to be the case,” Bebber said. “Indeed, and perhaps most importantly, there seems to be a growing consilience among different fields – archaeology, ethnography, and now modern experiments – that women were likely active and successful hunters of game, big and small.”

    Since 2019, every semester Bebber takes her class outside to use the atlatl. She noticed that females picked it up very easily and could launch darts as far as the males with little effort.

    “Often males became frustrated because they were trying too hard and attempting to use their strength to launch the darts,” Bebber said. “However, since the atlatl functions as a simple lever, it reduces the advantage of male’s generally greater muscle strength”.

    “Given that females appear to benefit the most from atlatl use, it is certainly within the realm of possibility that in some contexts females invented the atlatl,” Bebber said. “Likewise, in some primate species, females invent tool technologies for hunting as documented amongst the Fongoli chimpanzees.”

    To learn more about the Experimental Archaeology Lab at Kent State, visit: https://www.kent.edu/anthropology/experimental-archaeology-laboratory

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    Kent State University

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