Bill of Rights

By Ofer Raban | – A British court on Wednesday sentenced Julian Assange to almost a year in prison for jumping bail. That’s not the end of Assange’s legal problems: On May 2, Assange, the co-founder of WikiLeaks, will appear at a London court in relation to his requested extradition to the U.S. The American […]

Bill of Rights

Landmark 1st Amendment Ruling striking down Texas Law Banning Israel Boycott won by CAIR

contributors

By Arsalan Bukhari | – WASHINGTON, D.C. (CAIR News Release) – The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization today welcomed this afternoon’s landmark victory in CAIR’s First Amendment lawsuit on behalf of Bahia Amawi, the Texas speech language pathologist who lost her job because she refused to […]

Bill of Rights

When it Comes to Actively Defending Religious Minorities, Trump is no George Washington; but he Should Be

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – If Trump were actually acting as a president, he could and would tamp down the terrifying spread of hatred against Muslims that has resulted in several mass murders at mosques in the English-speaking world in recent years. All he would have to do is come out and say that ordinary […]

Bill of Rights

A Protest Against ‘Climate of Fear’ at U of Michigan over standing for Palestinian Rights

Alan M. Wald

(Informed Comment) – In response to the furor that arose this fall over the disciplining of Professor John Cheney-Lippold for declining to write a letter of recommendation for a student to do summer study at Tel Aviv University, the administration of the university has appointed a faculty commission (which is light on humanists) to consider […]

Bill of Rights

#NottheEnemy: Ben Franklin warned that attack on Free Press Turns Liberty to Tyranny

Juan Cole

Informed Comment is pleased to respond to the call of the Boston Globe for the press to fight back, on August 16, 2018, against Trump’s savage attacks on journalists and the free press. This column is dedicated to James Wright Foley, whom I met in Egypt in 2012, and who was fearless and level-headed in […]

Bill of Rights

US university demands Palestinian academic not criticise Israel in speech

contributors

Middle East Monitor Palestinian academic Hatem Bazian says Arizona State University asked him to sign a contract in which he pledges not to criticise Israel at a university event. Arizona State University is reported to have asked Palestinian academic Hatem Bazian to sign a contract in which he pledges not to criticise Israel at an […]

African-Americans

Thousands of US Citizens Jailed Over Debts as Small as US$28

Juan Cole

TeleSur | – – One in three Americans has been reported to a private collection agency with the majority of cases affecting Latin American and African-American communities. The United States, where the streets are paved with gold and US$28 can send a young single mother or an 80-year-old grandmother to jail for a week or […]

Bill of Rights

A Crisis of Democracy: Trump’s block of Dem Response to Nunes

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Trump’s refusal to release the response of the Democratic minority on the House Intelligence Committee to the declassified Nunes memo cherry-picking intelligence reports has been decried as a politicization of intelligence. It has been pointed out by legal scholar Laurence Tribe that Congress could in any […]

Bill of Rights

Trump’s attack on UCLA Athletes’ right to Dissent an Attack on America

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – So Trump intervened with Chinese authorities to release three UCLA basketball players guilty of shoplifting from a mall in Hangzhou while playing in China. They thanked him, he told them to change their ways. Then Levar Ball, the father of LiAngelo Ball–one of the three freed […]