A new program is supporting the mental health needs of the families and children of New York’s Bravest.
Red Hook-based organization Friends of Firefighters, which advocates for the health and wellness of firefighters, is reaching a new demographic through its “Bravest Children” program, led by counselors Zach Grill and Kia Carbone.
The pair work with children from ages 4 to 17, helping them navigate through the stresses of their parents’ dangerous job and of every day life.
“Bravest Children” counselor Zach Grill. Photo by Lloyd Mitchell
‘It’s creating a community for the kids [of] these firefighters [scattered] all across the city,” Grill said. “The kids don’t necessarily meet up with other children of firefighters. So having a sense of community that they can see that the different lifestyle that they live by being a child of firefighter does have normalcy.”
So far, twelve families participate in the group, meeting regularly to learn about effective communication, coping skills, and resilience, all while having some fun.
Grill and Carbone said they want to help the children deal with their struggles, and talk freely about whatever is on their mind. They do that a little differently than they might with adults — Grill connects with the kids through tabletop games like UNO and role-playing games, and Carbone through painting and drawing. There’s also Sadie, aka Boox — a service dog in training, who will someday work with the kids.
Carbone connects with children through art. Photo by Lloyd Mitchell
“I want them to be able to understand why they are feeling stressed or these emotions.” Grill said.
Carbone said she takes pride in helping the younger generation, who often weren’t taught how to communicate their emotions and struggles.
“I mean, it was like, ‘Oh yeah, learn how to talk about it,’” she said. “But then, like, not told how to. And when you don’t know how to communicate, you bury things or you lash out, it’s one or the other, and it’s not conducive to anything.”
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, Carbone said, programs for children have filled up, and there are waitlists for after-school programs and programs like Bravest Children. But those kids need a place to learn and get support.
Sadie is training to become a service dog for the children. Photo by Lloyd Mitchell
Bravest Children helps children and families put things in perspective, she said. An eight-year-old in the group recently told Carbone they felt that “life feels like it is moving too fast.”
Being able to “figure out what’s going on, communicate that even if you’re communicating it to yourself, that’s something that a lot of us really struggle to do,” she said. “So I think that’s probably the most important thing.”
Every online activity or task brings at least some level of cybersecurity risk, but some have more risk than others. Kiteworks Sensitive Content Communications Report found that this is especially true when it comes to using communication tools.
When it comes to cybersecurity, communicating means more than just talking to another person; it includes any activity where you are transferring data from one point online to another. Companies use a wide range of different types of tools to communicate, including email, file sharing, managed transfer and secure file transfer. But there are many other communication tools, including SMS text, video conferencing and even web forms. Kiteworks’ research found that more is not necessarily better when it comes to security and communications tools.
The survey found that companies with more than seven different communication tools were at a significantly higher risk of data breach — 3.55x higher than the average. Only 9% of organizations overall reported more than 10 data breaches, but 32% of companies with more than seven communications tools experienced this high number of breaches. More communication tools also translate into higher data breach litigation costs, with organizations with more than seven tools reporting paying 3.25 times more in data breach litigation costs.
Impacts of a data breach
Companies with a high number of data breaches typically see numerous negative impacts on their organization, including lost customers, reputation damage and operational downtime. Many organizations also must hire additional staff after the breach, such as customer service help desks and credit monitoring services. Companies in regulated industries may also face fines related to the breach.
The 2024 Cost of a Data Breach Report found that the average cost of a data breach jumped to $4.88 million from $4.45 million in 2023, a 10% spike and the highest increase since the pandemic. While the study showed key improvements related to breaches, especially in terms of identifying and containing breaches more quickly, the increased cost of a breach is due to rising business costs.
Why an increase in communication tools increases risk
With communication and data transfer now central to all industries and most processes, both internal and external, reducing risk starts with understanding why each new tool increases the odds of a breach.
Here are key reasons for the correlation between the number of tools and the risk of a data breach:
Increased attack area
Each time a new tool is added to a process, the organization adds a new entry point for an attack every time a user accesses that tool. For example, the marketing department has begun using a different video conferencing tool than the rest of the company. Threat actors can now target users of the tool and recordings of the meetings stored in the cloud. Additionally, the information sent through the tool, such as chat comments and files shared, adds more opportunities for a data breach.
More opportunities for exchanging sensitive data
Kiteworks found that tracking sensitive data creates a big issue, with two-thirds of respondents sending sensitive data to more than 1,000 different third parties. Additionally, employees often let their guard down when using casual communication tools such as messenger and email, which creates instances of sharing sensitive data and increasing data breach risks.
More resources are required to govern and monitor
Because communication tools provide many opportunities for cybersecurity risks, the use of each tool must be carefully monitored with documented processes. This requires more resources, especially in terms of monitoring use for cybersecurity issues or improper use. With more tools to monitor, it’s easier to accidentally overlook a warning signal of a breach.
Increased risk of human error
Communication tools provide many different ways for employees to make mistakes that lead to a breach, such as falling for a social engineering scheme or using an insecure connection to send data. Employees are also more likely to make more compliance errors with more tools since the process may vary per tool, making it easier to overlook a step.
Reducing risk from communication tools
Reducing breaches often feels like an overwhelming task. By starting with communication tools, organizations can take proactive steps toward reducing their risk.
Take stock of tools in use
Many companies have no idea exactly how many tools they are using. By working with all employees and departments, organizations should create a catalog of all tools currently in use.
Eliminate multiple tools used for the same purpose
If your business finds that four different project management tools are used throughout the organization, you need to determine which tool is the best fit for the organization. By helping teams transition to the approved tools, you can reduce your risk of a breach.
Provide employees with the tools that they need
Many employees begin using approved tools because the tools that the company issues do not work for their tasks. For example, many companies instruct employees to use file-sharing tools that have file size limits. If an employee must transfer a file that is too big for that tool, then the only way that they can do their job is by using another approved tool. Many organizations find that their high number of tools used is due to employees improvising to get things done. By ensuring that your employees have tools that accomplish their required tasks, you can often quickly reduce the number of tools used in your organization.
Use tools that perform multiple tasks
The number of communication tools often quickly grows when an organization has a separate tool for each different type of communication task. By using platforms that perform multiple functions, such as file sharing, video conferencing and messaging, organizations can significantly decrease the number of communication tools.
It’s very easy to look up and realize that your company is using many different tools. By making a concerted effort to understand the tools needed and provide the right tools, your organization can reduce your risk of a breach.
SEATTLE — Northern California and the Pacific Northwest are bracing for what is expected to be a powerful storm, with heavy rain and winds set to pummel the region and potentially cause power outages and flash floods.
The Weather Prediction Center issued excessive rainfall risks beginning Tuesday and lasting through Friday as the strongest atmospheric river — long plumes of moisture stretching far over the Pacific Ocean — that California and the Pacific Northwest has seen this season bears down on the region. The storm system has intensified so quickly that it is considered a “ bomb cyclone,” explained Richard Bann, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center.
The areas that could see particularly severe rainfall as the large plume of moisture heads toward land will likely stretch from the south of Portland, Oregon, to the north of the San Francisco area, he explained.
“Be aware of the risk of flash flooding at lower elevations and winter storms at higher elevations. This is going to be an impactful event,” he said.
In northern California, flood and high wind watches go into effect Tuesday, with up to 8 inches (20 centimeters) of rain predicted for parts of the San Francisco Bay Area, North Coast and Sacramento Valley.
A winter storm watch was issued for the northern Sierra Nevada above 3,500 feet (1,066 meters), where 15 inches (28 centimeters) of snow was possible over two days. Wind gusts could top 75 mph (120 kph) in mountain areas, forecasters said.
“Numerous flash floods, hazardous travel, power outages and tree damage can be expected as the storm reaches max intensity” on Wednesday, the Weather Prediction Center warned.
Meanwhile, Southern California this week will see dry conditions amid gusty Santa Ana winds that could raise the risk of wildfires in areas where crews are still mopping up a major blaze that destroyed 240 structures. The Mountain Fire, which erupted Nov. 6 in Ventura County northwest of Los Angeles, was about 98% contained on Monday.
Winds will calm by the end of the week, when rain is possible for the greater Los Angeles area.
In southwestern Oregon near the coast, 4 to 7 inches (10 to 18 centimeters) of rain is predicted — with as much as 10 inches (25 centimeters) possible in some areas — through late Thursday night and early Friday morning, Bann said,
A high wind warning has been issued for the north and central Oregon coast beginning at 4 p.m. Tuesday with south winds from 25 mph (40 kph) to 40 mph (64 kph), with gusts to 60 mph (97 kph) expected, according to the weather service in Portland. Gusts up to 70 mph (113 kph) are possible on beaches and headlands. Widespread power outages are expected with winds capable of bringing down trees and power lines, the weather service said. Travel is also expected to be difficult.
Washington could also see strong rainfall, but likely not as bad as Oregon and California. From Monday evening through Tuesday, some of its coastal ranges could get as much as 1.5 inches (3.8 centimeters) of rain, Bann said.
The weather service warned of high winds from Tuesday afternoon until early Wednesday for coastal parts of Pacific County, in southwest Washington. With gusts potentially topping 35 mph (46 kph) — and likely faster near beaches and headlands — trees and power lines are at risk of being knocked down, the Pacific County Emergency Management Agency warned.
Washington State Patrol Trooper John Dattilo, a patrol spokesperson based in Tacoma, posted on social media Monday afternoon that people should be prepared for “some bad weather” on Tuesday night. “Stay off the roads if you can!”
A blizzard warning was issued for the majority of the Cascades in Washington, including Mount Rainier National Park, starting Tuesday afternoon, with up to a foot of snow and wind gusts up to 60 mph (97 kph), according to the weather service in Seattle. Travel across passes could be difficult if not impossible.
Outside of this region, the central and eastern Gulf Coast, including the Florida Panhandle, is at risk for flooding on Tuesday, with 2 to 3 inches (5 to 7.6 centimeters) of rainfall are in the forecast, according to the weather service. Low-lying and urban regions could see flash floods.
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Associated Press reporter Lisa Baumann contributed to this report.
The potential impact of technology on mass atrocity scenarios has long raised questions for experts and policymakers in the field of atrocity prevention. In the two decades since the adoption of the Responsibility to Protect norm and the emergence of atrocity prevention as a discipline, developments in the “digital revolution” and the advent of the “information age” have influenced atrocity scenarios in countless ways, both positively and negatively.
Yet, despite its clear and growing importance, the subject remains underexplored and poorly understood. While the field better understands how different technologies relate to atrocities, a lack of systematic engagement with the topic and its many nuances still leaves major knowledge gaps, making it difficult to fully and constructively harness technology for prevention or to mitigate its harmful effects.
This is especially evident in atrocity early warning, which largely lacks a tech perspective. Many – though not all – of the frameworks that experts regularly rely on for early warning (such as the 2014 U.N. Framework of Analysis on Atrocity Crimes) were developed before the advent and widespread adoption of technologies now commonly present in atrocities scenarios. As technology becomes ever-more pervasive, understanding its impact on atrocity dynamics is urgent.
Crucially, technology cuts both ways in atrocity scenarios. While it can play an important role in supporting prevention and response – particularly in monitoring and accountability efforts – technology can also increase risks, including by enhancing perpetrators’ capacity to commit atrocity crimes, creating the enabling circumstances for atrocities, and amplifying possible trigger factors. Given these dynamics, accounting for the impact of technology in early warning frameworks is crucial for a nuanced understanding of atrocity risks.
Technology’s Potential for Prevention and Response
Various forms of widely available technology have become essential to prevention and response efforts, particularly by civil society groups. This includes geospatial intelligence, remote sensing, online open-source intelligence (OSINT), and documentation technologies ranging from simple photo cameras to specialized documentation software. In particular, these technologies are often used today to assist with monitoring, documentation, and accountability efforts, along with other investigative methods such as human testimony, forensics, social network analysis, and big data analytics.
Clearly, then, the adoption of new technologies presents major opportunities to help prevent atrocity crimes and hold perpetrators accountable. Yet, the more widespread such tools become, the greater the need for practical guidance on how to use them ethically and lawfully. Efforts such as the Berkeley Protocol (among other guidelines and materials) are crucial contributions. But the conversation is just starting, and significant gaps remain – chief among them, governance issues.
Ultimately, technology is but a tool. It is what users make of it that will determine whether its effects are positive or nefarious. That is why technology-driven considerations must be analytically integrated into risk assessments and forecasting if they are to provide a meaningful, nuanced understanding of atrocity dynamics.
Possible Risks of Technology in Atrocity Scenarios
While the presence or use of any technology is unlikely to change the core motivations behind atrocity crimes, such as ideology or past grievances, technology can have a significant impact on how such motivations are framed, how they spread, and how they are exacerbated.
Political and economic cleavages, along with the politicization of past grievances, are risk factors common to all atrocity crimes. As technology becomes increasingly integral to societies worldwide, unequal access to critical technologies like the internet, coupled with differentiated use patterns (often called the “digital divide”), could reinforce pre-existing patterns of marginalization and discrimination. For instance, individuals with limited access to critical technologies may have restricted educational and employment opportunities. Research has already shown how the digital divide exacerbates other divides, leading to unequal levels of participation in society and resource distribution.
Moreover, algorithmic biases can worsen identity-based marginalization. As access to services, resources, and opportunities increasingly depends on artificial intelligence-powered technologies like facial recognition or other biometrics-collection software, a failure to proactively address these biases risks entrenching existing inequalities, or at worst, create new ones.
In addition to shaping motivations, technology has the potential to negatively impact the dynamics underlying atrocity scenarios. Specifically, it can affect at least three known features of escalatory dynamics: the capacity of perpetrators to commit atrocities, the enabling circumstances for such crimes, and potential trigger factors.
Regarding perpetrators’ capacity, various technologies are already being unlawfully used for surveillance purposes. These include maintaining domestic social control, targeting, tracking, and harassing dissidents, journalists, and activists – including through the use of spyware – and systematically targeting vulnerable groups by surveilling individuals on a mass scale based on race or ethnicity. All of this enhances perpetrators’ ability to commit atrocities, with devastating effects. The experiences of the Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in Xinjiang, as well as the Rohingyas and other Muslim minorities in Myanmar, are just a couple of examples.
In terms of enabling circumstances, digital technologies – particularly social media – have proven to be formidable tools for organizing and mobilizing sectors of society. This includes actors seeking to disrupt public order or to grab and consolidate power, often to the detriment of marginalized groups. Equally, social media and the “dark-web” have enhanced the ability of violent extremists to “hide” in plain sight, attract new recruits, and radicalize individuals online through disinformation and propaganda.
Finally, “deep fakes” and generative AI can exacerbate the rapid spread of disinformation across social media platforms, creating triggering risk factors with harmful real-world outcomes. For example, fabricated depictions of public figures or military attacks can influence elections results or cause societal upheaval and other forms of instability that can lead to mass violence. After the fact, actors may also leverage these technologies to contest accusations of crimes by manipulating evidence.
Importantly, neither the existence, possession, or even prevalence of any technology necessarily indicates increased atrocity risks; this depends on context and application. Thus, analytically, the precise impact of technology on modern atrocity dynamics is complex and multifaceted. Nuance is key, and can only be captured by adopting a “tech lens” in early warning efforts. Specifically, this can be achieved by incorporating tech-based indicators of atrocity risks into existing early warning frameworks, enabling users to adopt a tech-sensitive approach to detection.
A Tech-Sensitive Approach to Risk Assessment and Forecasting
Detection refers to the process of identifying and analyzing signs – often called “indicators” – that may signal an increased risk of atrocity crimes in a given context. To enable users to practically identify risk factors, early warning frameworks must offer guidance on what indicators of these risks might be. This includes listing specific signs, as well as offering general guidance for interpreting data and evidence, assessing risk levels based on these indicators, and specifying when early warning actions are warranted.
Instead of completely overhauling existing risk assessment frameworks, a tech-sensitive approach to detection can be achieved by applying a “tech lens” to tools like the U.N. Framework of Analysis and others developed before the widespread adoption of digital and cyber technologies. Applying a tech lens involves systematically examining how technologies may influence or amplify risk factors outlined in that U.N. Framework, both by introducing new threats and by changing the way existing risks manifest. This approach allows users to more accurately assess technology’s impact on other risk factors and indicators, and to identify where new ones may be needed.
Increased Surveillance of Vulnerable Groups
For instance, the increased surveillance of vulnerable groups – often facilitated by technology – can serve as an early warning sign of perpetrators’ increased capacity to commit atrocities (Risk Factor 5 in the U.N. Framework). It can also indicate other risk factors, such as “enabling circumstances or preparatory actions” (Risk Factor 7), “triggering factors” (Risk Factor 8), and “intergroup tensions or patterns of discrimination against protected groups” (Risk Factor 9). However, none of the eight indicators listed under Risk Factor 5, the 14 indicators under Risk Factor 7, or the 12 and six indicators under Risk Factors 8 and 9, respectively, address the role of technology in how these risks might manifest.
Under Risk Factor 5, Indicator 3, which concerns the “capacity to encourage or recruit large numbers of supporters,” and Indicator 6, which addresses the “presence of commercial actors or companies that can serve as enablers by providing goods, services, or other forms of practical or technical support that help sustain perpetrators,” could be expanded to account for the presence of specific technologies that enable recruitment and mobilization, such as social media or the dark web. Similarly, companies may act as enablers of mass surveillance by sharing user data with authorities, often as a condition for accessing their products and services.
Recognizing the potential role of tech companies and specific products or platforms in increasing atrocity risks – particularly in contexts with weak legal protections for users’ data and privacy – would be highly beneficial. Even better would be adding an indicator that addresses the risks of mass surveillance in situations where access to goods and services relies on technology, but legal safeguards for users’ data are absent. Additionally, regarding “enabling circumstances or preparatory actions” under Risk Factor 7, Indicator 6—which addresses the “imposition of strict control on the use of communication channels, or banning access to them”—could be expanded to include authorities’ use of these channels for mass surveillance rather than just restrictions or bans.
The Spread of Hate Speech and Mis/Disinformation Online
Insights into the spread of hateful rhetoric and incitement online – including by whom, against whom, and through what means – can also indicate several risk factors in the U.N. Framework, such as “intergroup tensions or patterns of discrimination against protected groups” (Risk Factor 9), “signs of an intent to destroy in whole or in part a protected group” (Risk Factor 10), and “signs of a plan or policy to attack any civilian population” (Risk Factor 11). Adding indicators under each of these risk factors to capture how they may manifest through technology could sharpen the ability to detect them.
A tech-sensitive approach to detection also requires differentiating between the impacts of specific tech tools and platforms based on the nature and source of the content. For example, disinformation or hate speech spread by isolated private accounts will have different effects compared to content spread by government-lined accounts, whether they are real users or bots. Monitoring and distinguishing account types, such as those linked to State actors or their proxies, as well as assessing their potential reach, can also deepen understanding of how such content spreads. For instance, “influencer” accounts with hundreds of thousands or even millions of followers may spread disinformation either deliberately or unknowingly. Recognizing these dynamics can help identify measures to address or mitigate their impact in escalating situations.
In all cases, improved detection requires closer examination of patterns in how actors behave and how the use of digital technologies in at-risk societies might interact with other risk factors. By analyzing the relationship between these technologies and other risk factors, analysts can gain insight into patterns of escalation and identify structural weaknesses that may increase risk.
Ultimately, the primary danger of any technology in atrocity scenarios lies not in its mere existence or prevalence, but in the effectiveness of the governance system regulating its misuse. Because atrocity risks tend to increase when actors operate outside apt regulatory frameworks, the absence or dismantling of such frameworks is equally, if not more, indicative of atrocity risk and should be integrated into revised approaches to detection.
Equally important is the need to improve governance of the technology sector and its societal impact, rather than simply monitoring the absence or dismantling of regulatory frameworks. This ensures that legal protections and access to remedies keep pace with technological advancements, preventing tech innovation from outstripping the law’s ability to protect the users such innovation is meant to serve. Achieving this requires increased collaboration among all stakeholders directly and indirectly involved in tech regulation processes, including legislators, policymakers, academic experts as well as other civil society groups, and tech companies.
Conclusions
Rapid technological advancements, particularly in the digital and cyber realms, are reshaping the dynamics of atrocity crimes. This requires early warning frameworks to systematically engage with how technology affects the risk factors and indicators commonly used for detection. Analysts using existing frameworks for detection should apply a tech lens to discern how these frameworks currently account for technology’s impact on escalation dynamics and identify where additional indicators are needed to enhance detection capabilities.
While technology is crucial, it operates within a broader context of political, social, and economic factors that influence the nature and onset of atrocity crimes. Thus, the mere presence or prevalence of certain technologies does not inherently indicate increased risk in vulnerable societies. However, technology can, under certain circumstances, heighten specific risks, warranting its incorporation into the indicators leveraged by existing frameworks for detection.
In doing so, analysts should guard against “tech fetishism,” or a novelty-driven urge to overhaul the foundational principles of atrocity prevention and risk assessment. Instead, it is often sufficient to tweak existing indicators within current frameworks to better reflect the nuanced ways in which technology can act as both a tool for de-escalation and a catalyst for specific atrocity risks.
In some instances, improved detection may also require the development of sophisticated, targeted tools by tech companies, including to curb the spread of certain harmful content and better protect users’ data from authorities, particularly where such data collection is a prerequisite for accessing basic goods and services. That, in turn, requires ongoing engagement between tech companies and the broader atrocity prevention field, including diplomatic, policy, legislative, and academic circles. Such partnerships are essential for developing a systematic understanding of how rapid technological changes and specific tools or products may impact atrocity dynamics, both generally and in specific contexts.
Moving forward, establishing new connections between technology and prevention strategies must be part of a broader, multi-stakeholder effort to improve governance of the technology sector and its societal impact, extending well beyond the specific context of atrocity scenarios.
IMAGE: This photo taken on June 4, 2019 shows schoolchildren walking below surveillance cameras in Akto, south of Kashgar, in China’s western Xinjiang region. The recent destruction of dozens of mosques in Xinjiang at the time highlighted the increasing pressure Uighurs and other ethnic minorities face in the heavily-policed region. (Photo GREG BAKER/AFP via Getty Images)
(Editor’s Note: This article introduces the Just Security symposium “Thinking Beyond Risks: Tech and Atrocity Prevention,” organized with the Programme on International Peace and Security (IPS) at the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict. Links to each installment can be found below as they are published. The symposium emerges from research conducted by IPS on the role of technology in atrocity prevention and response.)
Technological advances are creating both new opportunities and risks for atrocity prevention. On the one hand, AI and digital technologies present urgent challenges by providing tools to incite or perpetrate mass violence. Social media platforms, for instance, have become notorious as hotbeds for misinformation and disinformation. Through engagement-based algorithms, they often enable the spread of hate speech and polarizing content that can fuel the commission of atrocities in the real world, as was starkly demonstrated in Myanmar.
This underscores another risk of civilian harm from emerging technologies: the growing integration of AI into military operations. Beyond its role in target generation, AI is creating a new generation of dronescapable of selecting and attacking targets autonomously. These systems can result in unpredictable outcomes on the battlefield, potentially with devastating consequences for civilians, and create an “accountability gap” that complicates efforts to ensure compliance with international law and bring wrongdoers to justice.
Crucially, conventional technologies still hold significant potential for atrocity prevention as well. Internet access, for example, can be a life-saving tool in wartime, enabling civilians to communicate and obtain vital information about resources, aid, safe escape routes, and more. Donated eSims, while far from a perfect solution, have helped Gazans stay connected, while Starlink satellite Internet has provided Sudanese civilians a lifeline during internet blackouts imposed by the warring parties and allowed aid groups to continue operating.
The recent surge in debate over new technologies such as AI and advancements in social media has often – and understandably – focused on their potential to heighten atrocity risks. But it is equally important to consider how these tools can advance prevention and protection efforts, as well as how existingtechnologies can make a difference before, while, and after atrocities unfold.
This symposium seeks to address this gap by identifying opportunities for governments and civil society to harness both new and established technologies for atrocity prevention, as well as to proactively mitigate associated risks. Experts will outline, for example, the impact of technology on early warning, how social media has affected atrocity dynamics and how it might be harnessed to further adherence to the laws of war, and even how camera-fitted drones can aid accountability.
The symposium features the following articles. The list will be updated as each installment is published:
Over the past five years, Just Security has published a variety of articles analyzing the diplomatic, political, legal, security, and humanitarian issues and the consequences of the international climate crisis.
The catalog below organizes our coverage into general categories to facilitate access to relevant topics for policymakers, researchers, journalists, scholars, and the public at large. The archive will be updated as new pieces are published.
We welcome readers to use the archive to follow climate change developments and generate new lines of analysis. To search headlines and authors, expand one or all of the topics, as needed, and use CTRL-F on your keyboard to open the search tool.
IMAGES (left to right): Natural disaster and its consequences (via Getty Images); In this picture taken on September 28, 2022, an internally displaced flood-affected family sits outside their tent at a makeshift tent camp in Jamshoro district of Sindh province (Photo by Rizwan Tabassum/AFP via Getty Images; Trees smolder and burn during the Dixie fire near Greenville, California on August 3, 2021. – Numerous fires are raging through the state’s northern forests, as climate change makes wildfire season longer, hotter and more devastating. (Photo by JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images)
Since day one, our administration has had a clear mission: build a safer, more affordable city for working-class New Yorkers, and every day, we are delivering on that mission. Jobs are up, our streets are safer with crime down across the city every month this year, and we have a record 183,000 small businesses across the five boroughs — the highest ever in our city’s history.
Day after day, we are working to make sure New Yorkers have the opportunities to grow their businesses and service their city. That is why we have made record investments towards our Minority- and Women-Owned Business Enterprise Program — also known as M/WBEs — putting money back into communities that have been denied a fair shot for too long; and this year has been another record-breaking year for M/WBEs.
This past year, we awarded the highest number of city contracts to M/WBEs ever and set a record for M/WBE awards within our city agencies, awarding a total of $1.59 billion dollars to M/WBEs across the five boroughs — that is a 15 percent increase since Fiscal Year 2022, the first fiscal year of our administration. But behind each of these numbers is also a human story — sisters and brothers of color finally able open to their small businesses, support their families, and get ahead; small business owners with big dreams that want a fair shot to turn that dream into a reality; and so many more.
For too long, communities of color have been locked out of building wealth and have found it difficult to get their businesses off the ground. We cannot accept a city where people of color miss out on the chance to build wealth for themselves, their children, and their grandchildren. That is why city government is leading the way with our M/WBE program and showing we can invest in communities of color, while simultaneously delivering a quality product for New Yorkers. We know that when we create the conditions for small businesses to succeed our entire city wins.
Our M/WBE program is supporting that young couple who is dreaming of building a small business, the mom-and-pop stores that mean so much to our neighborhoods and tapping into the talent we have in our communities that want to help build our economy and our city.
Three decades ago, Mayor David Dinkins made history by creating the city’s Minority- and Women-Owned Business Enterprise Program, and while we have achieved historic milestones within the program, we must set the bar even higher going forward. That is why, last week, we announced the creation of the M/WBE Advisory Council to help advance the administration’s historic progress on supporting minority- and women-owned businesses.
Under our administration, Black and Brown unemployment in New York City is at its lowest point in half a decade. We have narrowed this gap by delivering new opportunities to communities across the five boroughs that have been overlooked for far too long. Our administration understands that a job is what enables us to achieve the American Dream. That is why we have made historic investments in M/WBEs — working to connect New Yorkers to city contracts, career opportunities, and good-paying jobs. We are opening the doors of opportunity for communities across the five boroughs because working people deserve their fair share, and we are giving it to them.
Donald Trump is often described as unprecedented, but in winning a non-consecutive second term—thus occupying two numerical slots in the presidential order—he has a significant antecedent: Grover Cleveland, the 22nd and 24th president.
For more than a century, Cleveland, the first Democrat to occupy the White House during the postbellum period, enjoyed the distinction of being America’s only president to serve non-consecutive terms. With Trump’s reelection, that’s about to change—and one New Hampshire-based history buff has a unique perspective on that development: Cleveland’s grandson, George Cleveland. (Yes, grandson: born in 1952, George never met his famous grandpa, who served as president in the late 1800s and had children late in life.)
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]
In an interview, Cleveland, 72, told TIME about Grover’s unusual presidency and why he isn’t feeling great about Trump being compared to his grandfather.
TIME: Your grandfather Grover Cleveland is getting quite a lot of attention in the wake of Trump’s win. How does that feel, as a direct descendant?
CLEVELAND: Well, the thought has been brewing for a while. Although I never really considered we’d get to this point. I think the most unfortunate part is that the question “Who is the only non-consecutive president of the United States?” was one of the most popular Grover-related [trivia] questions. Now we’ve lost that. But he’s still the first.
That’s what Cleveland is best remembered for. Are there other aspects of his legacy that people should know him for?
Well, I don’t know how many people carry $1,000 bills in their wallet, but he’s on there. Beyond that, Grover was kind of a quiet president. He sat down and did the job, dealing with what was in front of him. I don’t think he had a really broad view of things ideologically, like Teddy Roosevelt a few years later. He just hunkered down to deal with, “What is the money problem?” The patronage system was certainly something he was violently opposed to and may have been one of the factors that caused him not to get reelected [in 1888].
It’s rare for presidents to mount a reelection campaign after being voted out of the White House. There must be some sort of defiance that Trump and Grover Cleveland share.
I think the motivation may have been different. Grover really… he… I’m trying to say this in a really not Trump-negative way. And right now that’s difficult for me [laughs].
Grover had work that he wanted to get finished and I don’t know if that was really the driving force behind Donald Trump. …
It sounds like you’re not a Trump guy.
That would be a safe thing to say.
So how do you feel that Grover Cleveland’s name is now invoked as being a predecessor to Trump?
I’ve gotten used to it now, but in the beginning I definitely wanted to reach for a Tums every time I heard it. It is what it is. Whether I like it or not, or anybody else likes it or not, Trump won the popular vote and he won the Electoral vote.
What have the last six months been like for you as it became increasingly clear that Trump might actually pull this off and people were invoking Grover’s name?
Well, I didn’t get overexcited about it because, I mean, I’m just a guy. Like it or not, presidential descendants have to get used to the fact that their predecessors’ names and acts are gonna be floated around under a 21st-century microscope, which sometimes is fair and sometimes is not.
There is a group, the Society of Presidential Descendants. We have an unwritten rule that we don’t really rag on other presidents. They were duly elected and some did what we now look at to be a great job, some were perhaps less than stellar.
That sounds like a fascinating group. Do you guys have conventions?
Oh, yeah! We don’t have a secret handshake yet, which I’ve been pushing for. But as I like to tell people, we sit around and talk about all the UFO papers that are hidden that we’ve seen.
You’re being serious?
[laughs] No. The subject has come up, once or twice. I will admit that.
Do you know who killed JFK?
[laughs] Yeah, but we can’t talk about that. No, but I believe the first reference to a UFO was made by Thomas Jefferson regarding something sighted in the sky over Louisiana. The modern presidential descendants are always being bugged about it.
Grover Cleveland was president in the 1880s and 1890s. People must find it hard to believe that his grandson is living today.
I think there’s only three living 19th century presidents’ grandchildren: me, my sister Frances, and believe it or not, John Tyler still has a grandson, Harrison, who’s alive. I never met Harrison. But I met his brother, Lyon, who was a good guy.
Do you think Trump knows who Grover Cleveland was?
He may now. He had to walk by his picture in the White House. If he was like a lot of other people who got Cleveland confused with Taft, because they were both big, portly guys, I don’t know [laughs].
What do you think was Grover Cleveland’s greatest accomplishment?
Oh, God. It was a lot of little things. He favored a large investment in the United States Navy—which turned out to be a real godsend when the First World War came to be. Our ships were way more modernized than many other places.
There are also aspects of Cleveland’s presidency that seem less flattering to his legacy. He expanded the Chinese Exclusion Act—
Ah, took the words right out of my mouth. I was reading something about all this immigration stuff, and I started reading about the Chinese Exclusion Act, and I said, “My God, this is barbaric!” You would like if your forebear was a little more tolerant and liberal in that area, but he wasn’t.
Grover Cleveland entered office as a bachelor, didn’t he? And married during his presidency?
Yes. The first two years of his presidency, his sister Rose Cleveland served as—you can’t really call it First Lady, most people refer to it as White House hostess. And, sidenote, she was the first LGBTQ+ person in that position.
Are you concerned about the direction the country is heading in?
Yes. The whole concept of Project 2025 just terrifies me. But, like I said, it’s what we asked for. Or at least over half the country. As with other presidents, like Grover Cleveland after his first term, if you don’t like it, vote him out. Of course, Trump can’t be voted back in, because you can’t do three terms.
One positive thing we can say for Grover Cleveland is he did accept the results of the 1888 election and left office willingly.
That’s right—and with dignity. And I don’t think they stole anything. At least, if they have, I haven’t found it yet. It must be in the same place where all the UFO papers are.
In December, Bridget Rochios, a nurse practitioner and midwife at the University of California, San Francisco, showed up to work wearing a keffiyeh.
Later, she and other co-workers started coming to work wearing “Free Palestine” pins, as well as hospital ID badges shaped like a watermelon, a pro-Palestine symbol.
Rochios, whose work includes addressing health disparities within reproductive health care, had been moved by reports of Israel’s targeting and destruction of Gaza’s hospitals and health care system, and started wearing the items as a show of solidarity with Palestinian women and babies, as well as her medical colleagues in Gaza.
Supervisors ordered Rochios and her colleagues to remove the pins, threatening them with suspension or termination. Most complied, but Rochios refused.
In April, she traveled to Gaza where she spent a month delivering babies at a maternity hospital in Rafah and the al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah. She saw some of the many delivering mothers who have suffered under dire conditions in Gaza.
“The people who are really ‘unsafe’ are the women who I was supporting in labor as literally bombs were dropping.”
A week after she returned to the U.S., her supervisors at the UCSF Mission Bay campus, one of the graduate school and hospital system’s 10 campuses, placed Rochios on a three-month paid administrative leave for “insubordination.” Hersuspension was renewed in September after she again refused to remove her watermelon pin. She may still face further sanctions, including termination. University representatives have told her that several colleagues and patients said the pin made them feel “unsafe.”
“The people who are really ‘unsafe’ are the women who I was supporting in labor as literally bombs were dropping and shaking the walls of our hospital,” Rochios told The Intercept, recalling moments during Israel’s invasion of Rafah. “Women who have not had prenatal care at all; women who went to walk to the hospital in labor and have a baby, and then two hours later, walk back home to their tent where they did not have running water, where they don’t have enough food or hydration to breastfeed, no clean water, or money to buy formula for their kids.”
Medical professionals, especially those who have treated patients in Gaza’s and Lebanon’s hospitals over the past year, have spoken out about atrocities carried out by the Israeli military. Doing so at UCSF, one of the country’s most elite medical institutions, may come at a price.
Rochios is one of nine health care workers at UCSF who spoke with The Intercept about their experiences of censorship and punishment after speaking out about human rights for Palestinians as a part of their research and medical work.
UCSF declined to comment or respond to a detailed list of questions or multiple phone calls over the course of a week. A UCSF spokesperson said they were concerned that the accounts of UCSF employees were being “taken out of context.”
Rupa Marya, an internal medicine physician and lecturer at UCSF, is perhaps the most notable and vocal among those who have received pushback. In her social media posts in January, Marya, an expert in decolonial theory, questioned the impacts of Zionism as “a supremacist, racist ideology” on health care and drew immediate criticism from pro-Israel colleagues and Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener.
The university then published a statement across its social media accounts addressing the posts without naming Marya, disavowing her statements as “antisemitic attacks.” Wiener thanked UCSF for the statement. A flurry of online attacks against Marya followed, including racist and sexist attacks and threats of death and sexual violence. Wiener has continued to single out Marya on social media.
In September, Marya wrote a new post on social media that UCSF students were concerned that a first-year student from Israel may have served in the Israeli military in the prior year, then asked, “How do we address this in our professional ranks?”
The following month, the university placed her on paid leave and suspended her ability to practice medicine pending an investigation into the post. The university has since reinstated her ability to give clinical care, but she remains banned from campus, including the hospital where she worked.
“I wanted to protect people who have lost family members,” Marya said. “People are being murdered, doctors are being disappeared, hospitals are being bombed — you have this traumatized community in UCSF. I’ve been trying to give voice to the experience of the Muslim, Indigenous, Black, SWANA” — Southwest Asian and North African — “students who are afraid, like deeply afraid.”
The Center for Protest Law and Litigation, a First Amendment group, is assisting Marya in obtaining public records of possible communications about her social media posts between UCSF, Wiener, and the Helen Diller Family Foundation, the school’s largest donor that has in the past donated to pro-Israel propaganda groups. The center filed suit for the records after the university failed to produce documents after nine months of back and forth, during which the school claimed such records are exempt from freedom of information laws.
In a statement sent to The Intercept, Wiener said Marya’s social media posts “crossed a line,” accusing her of using “an antisemitic conspiracy theory targeting Jewish doctors” and an Israeli medical student. He said concerned UCSF faculty and students brought the January and October posts to his attention. “I then called out those posts as antisemitic, just as I have called out homophobic, transphobic, racist, and Islamophobic statements by various individuals,” he wrote.
Wiener, as a part of the legislature’s Jewish Caucus, previously targeted K-12 school districts for teaching history lessons that were critical of Israel, dismissing them as “bigoted, inaccurate, discriminatory, and deeply offensive anti-Jewish and anti-Israel propaganda,” according to a January letter to state lawmakers. He decried the online threats against Marya, calling for an investigation.
UCSF Medical Center at Mount Zion in San Francisco on April 8, 2024, left, and a devastated building at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City in the Gaza Strip on June 11, 2024. Photos: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images and Omar Al-Qatta/AFP via Getty Images
The school’s crackdown has been broad, targeting professors, doctors, and medical staff.
Doctors have had their lectures mentioning Gaza scrubbed from the internet or canceled outright. They have been accused of antisemitism and creating an unsafe work environment, and banned from lecturing entirely. Staffers, nurses, and students have been suspended for speaking out in solidarity or for acts as simple as wearing a watermelon pin or hanging a pro-Palestine symbol in their offices. Dozens of employees have criticized the ongoing silence from UCSF and its failure to condemn Israel’s war on Gaza, accusing the school of favoring pro-Israel views.
“This is really unprecedented where this university in particular has stepped in and taken such a strong stand in support of some speech and opposition to other speech,” said Dan Siegel, a longtime Bay Area civil rights attorney who is representing several UCSF employees facing discipline. “It’s really remarkable to me that there is so much content-based discrimination here.”
For the past 30 years, Siegel has represented faculty and staff across the UC system in employment and workplace issues. Before October 7, he had never seen such a widespread effort to punish employees for speaking out about a specific issue.
“Look, I don’t want to make people feel uncomfortable, but aren’t people made uncomfortable by 40,000 dead in Gaza?”
“Among the supporters of the Israeli government, this is a cynical and manipulative effort to limit debate,” he said. “They’ve promoted an atmosphere where you’re a student at the university or a patient at the hospital, and it becomes perfectly normalized for you to say or for someone to champion your saying, ‘I feel uncomfortable as a Jew because of people saying these things,” said Siegel, who is Jewish.
“Look, I don’t want to make people feel uncomfortable, but aren’t people made uncomfortable by 40,000 dead in Gaza or the efforts taking place in the West Bank to steal Palestinian land?” Siegel asked. “Those things make me feel uncomfortable — so now we’re all going to be censoring each other’s speech because it makes us uncomfortable, and that really can’t be the criteria for limiting speech.”
In late July, a group of House Republicans, including House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., told UCSF they would investigate allegations of antisemitism made by employees and patients at the institution. The members of Congress threatened to withhold all federal funding, including Medicare and Medicaid payments, from the school and health care system. Their investigation is a part of a larger partisan effort, led by House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., targeting universities whose students and faculty have been vocal critics of Israel.
Three UCSF physicians have been banned from giving lectures after mentioning the negative health impacts of Israel’s war on Gaza or the apartheid health system in the Occupied Territories.
Jess Ghannam had received pushback for his scholarship in the past. In 2012, an attendee of one of his lectures about Gaza at UCSF called the police on him, saying they didn’t feel safe with him on campus, Ghannam recalled. Later that year, a student burst into tears and ran out of a lecture Ghannam was delivering at UC Davis and later filed a complaint alleging that Ghannam had created an unsafe learning environment. (UC Davis launched a formal investigation, which eventually saw the complaint dismissed.)
In his 25 years at the university, Ghannam never had any of his lectures canceled outright. He is a well-known speaker who has shared his research on the consequences of war on displaced communities, such as Palestinians, in many venues over the past two decades. And he helped establish mental health and medical clinics for Palestinians, interviewing Palestinian torture survivors who were incarcerated in Israeli prisons.
In September, he was scheduled to speak to first-year medical students, after a group of medical students had met with the university’s deans to push for more education around Palestine.
Student protesters outside of UC San Francisco’s Rutter Center call for the UC system to divest from investments in Israeli companies as the UC Board of Regents holds meetings inside the university, in San Francisco, on July 17, 2024. Photo: Thomas Sawano/San Francisco Chronicle via AP
Then, four days before the scheduled talk, Ghannam heard from the course instructor that his lecture was being canceled. The instructor said there wasn’t enough time to provide “wraparound services” for students, or peer support or support services, for those who may be distressed by the topic, Ghannam said.
Students responded with outrage. Ninety-five medical students signed a letter addressed to school officials, calling the cancellation “an act of intentional erasure of historical harms that continue to affect our communities and our profession” and alleging that it was part of “a pattern of suppression that seemingly targets any element of acknowledgement or advocacy for the health of Palestinians, despite UCSF’s claimed position as a bastion of social justice.” The students went on to host Ghannam independently, allowing him to give his lecture in front of about 100 people.
“That’s the clear message: You can’t talk about Palestine, you can’t talk about genocide.”
“If you talk about Palestine,” Ghannam said of his critics’ perspective, “if you talk about the health consequences of genocide, and the negative impact of genocide and settler colonialism, it’s OK to talk about it in any other people except Palestinians — and then if you do try to talk about it in the Palestinian context, we’re going to shut you down.”
“I mean, that’s the clear message: You can’t talk about Palestine, you can’t talk about genocide.”
Leigh Kimberg had a similar experience. Kimberg, a medical school professor, primary care doctor, and leader in the field of violence prevention and trauma-informed care, had lectured at UCSF’s continuing education program several times in the past decade.
In April, she gave a 50-minute lecture and dedicated six of those minutes to a discussion of the health of Palestinians in Gaza. She argued that you cannot speak on trauma-informed care without mentioning the genocide in Gaza and described the connections between the liberation of Black, Palestinian, and Jewish people. She also decried antisemitism during her lecture.
Still, the following month, administrators told Kimberg that they had received complaints from attendees who called her speech “biased and antisemitic,” which prompted the school to remove the recording of her talk from the school’s website. When she protested the video’s removal, she said the school barred her from giving lectures at the program.
The ban was lifted after multiple emails from Kimberg and Siegel, who is representing her, but she was told that her future talks must comply with the program’s rules. She also received pushback from her division at the school of medicine, where colleagues have referred to her as “inflammatory” or “not trauma-informed.”
Healthcare workers in San Francisco on Jan. 14, 2024, at the March for Gaza, part of a national day of action against the war. Photo: Leigh Kimberg
Kimberg began to speak out about Palestine publicly last October, and her Palestinian colleagues welcomed her perspective as a person of Jewish ancestry. Her grandparents had fled antisemitic violence in Poland and Lithuania, and three of her relatives died in the Holocaust. But her colleagues also cautioned her of the backlash to come.
“We do want to warn you that the second you advocate for Palestine, you will be called ‘antisemitic,’” Kimberg recalled from earlier conversations with Palestinian colleagues. “It doesn’t matter that you’re Jewish — in some ways, it will be worse — but you will definitely be called ‘antisemitic’ if you say anything to value Palestinian life.”
“And that has been my experience.”
Such discrimination is what led Keith Hansen, a former chief resident of surgery at UCSF, to conceal his Palestinian heritage throughout his career. As chief resident in the fall of 2023, Hansen would send daily emails to his co-workers at the trauma surgery department at San Francisco General Hospital, highlighting updates across their field. In one of those emails in October, as reports of Israeli strikes on hospitals in Gaza began to compile, he skipped the updates and instead asked his colleagues “to take a moment to acknowledge that doctors and surgeons and patients, just like us, were being bombed by the Israeli government.”
Hansen received positive feedback for the email from his co-workers, but in his monthly review to assess his performance as a resident, an attending physician referred to Hansen as “a polarizing figure” because of the email.
In May, as student activists continued to occupy a protest encampment at the school’s Parnassus Heights campus, Hansen gave a lecture as chief resident about his work in organ transplantation along with health inequities of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank under Israeli occupation.
During the talk, he also disclosed his Palestinian heritage, something he had never done in his career. He shared that he was born in Jordan to Palestinian refugees, his mother from Ramallah and his father from Jenin. After running through data showing health disparities between Palestinians living under occupation and Israeli citizens, as well as the targeting of physicians in Gaza, he called on the university to do more to address such issues. He referenced other UCSF initiatives, such as fundraising to protect doctors and scholars in Afghanistan and Ukraine. He went on to call for an academic boycott of institutions “complicit in the genocide and medical apartheid.”
Following his talk, several colleagues lodged complaints against him that he was creating an unsafe working environment. The chair of his department also directed him and other speakers not to mention “anything political or anything that didn’t have to do with graduation.” At graduation, he said people he had previously gotten along with avoided him.
“Everyone kind of shows their true colors once they find out your background.”
“There’s that term — ‘liberal except for Palestine’ or ‘humanitarian except for Palestine’ — and a lot of people as soon as they hear you’re Palestinian just change their entire view of you,” Hansen said. “And it has changed my relationship — I mean, there were people at graduation who didn’t talk to me, who I had known for years and always got along with really well. Everyone kind of shows their true colors once they find out your background.”
At the same time, pro-Israel speakers have been invited to campus while Palestinian voices have been opposed. Among those speakers were Elan Carr, a U.S. Army veteran and CEO of the Israeli American Council, an influential pro-Israel lobbying and advocacy group. UCSF’s Office of Diversity and Outreach invited him to speak during May’s Jewish American Heritage Month.
Nearly 100 faculty, medical workers, and students wrote to the diversity office, protesting Carr’s talk, citing his role at a counterprotest against student encampments at UCLA that turned violent a month earlier, as well as his endorsement of transphobic comments on social media. Carr’s speech on “the persistence of anti-Zionism, anti-Israel discrimination, and campus antisemitism” went on as planned.
The same office declined to sponsor and publicize an official screening of documentary “Israelism,” which was hosted by the school’s chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace. The film centers on the advocacy of anti-Zionist Jewish activists.
Some staffers havebeen disciplined for a speech act as quiet as wearing a pin.
Shortly after October 7, Rosita, a nurse at UCSF who gave only her first name out of fear of being doxxed by pro-Israel activists, started hand-making watermelon pins for her co-workers to attach to their hospital ID cards, green glittery resin disks with a small rubber watermelon glued on top.
A slice of the fruit has been a symbol of Palestinian liberation since the 1980s, when Palestinian artists started to use the depictions of the watermelon, with its red flesh, green rind, and black seeds, as a way to circumvent an Israeli ban on public displays of the Palestinian flag in Gaza and the West Bank. Rosita passed her pins out to interested colleagues at work and to others during pro-Palestine protests.
A watermelon pin attached to a UCSF employee ID card. Photo: Bridget Rochios
In a relatively uniform work environment such as a hospital floor or clinic, custom badge pins are typical ways for medical workers to express themselves. At UCSF, such displays are often political, with many wearing pins that advocate for LGBTQ rights or the Black Lives Matter movement. In the past, UCSF even gave away its own uterus pins meant to affirm reproductive rights, said Rosita, who also helped found the school’s faculty and staff pro-Palestinian group.
“I can tell what type of person you are by the pins that you have on your badge,” she said. “So it’s a sense of pride and solidarity and acknowledgment.”
In all, Rosita said she has made and given away 500 pins. And while many workers received compliments from colleagues and patients, those who wore the pins started to get approached by their managers, telling them the pins were antisemitic and ordering them to remove them under threat of suspension or termination.
In September, Rosita’s manager called her in for a “counseling” session where she was told to remove the pin because a staff member said it made them feel “uncomfortable.” She refused and responded with an email, calling the manager’s request “discrimination and denial of the Palestinian people.”
“My niece is Palestinian,” she wrote in the email. “She is 10 years old. She enjoys collecting Polly Pockets and does jujitsu on Saturdays, studies Arabic on Sundays.”
“She exists!” Rosita added. “I wear the watermelon because she exists!”
Rosita, who is Rochios’s union steward and has been representing her in disciplinary hearings, said she worried she would be met with similar punishment.
Another staff member faced similar pushback for displaying pro-Palestine symbols. A researcher at UCSF, who declined to give their name due to fear of workplace retaliation, was told by supervisors to remove a sign from their office that said “Queer as in Free Palestine” with a red and pink triangle. The staff member, who is queer, said the sign was meant to express solidarity between the LGBTQ community and Palestinians. They noted that their Mexican LGBTQ flag had been accepted. Leading up to the ban, the researcher had received an online death threat for displaying the symbol, and one community member confronted them inside their office, accusing them of supporting Hamas.
The school told them the red triangle was a Nazi symbol that is being used to promote violence against Jewish people. The ban remains on the staff member’s employee file. Since reporting the death threat, the school has yet to offer a safety plan for the staff member, who as a result has been working remotely since September.
“It’s been really tough. I’ve had to take time off, my mental and physical health is just shot at this point from the stress and anxiety, not knowing whether I’m going to lose my job,” they said.
“My mental and physical health is just shot at this point from the stress and anxiety, not knowing whether I’m going to lose my job.”
Another staffer received a notice of intent to fire her just for discussing accusations lodged against them with colleagues. In January, UCSF therapist Denise Caramagno quote tweeted, to her modest following of 500 users on X, the school’s public rebuke of Marya with the following: “@UCSF is coordinating an attack on its own faculty of color who are asking legitimate questions about social determinants of health. This is a violation of academic speech. How are we to achieve health equity if we cannot ask important questions about systems of supremacy?”
Several months later in May, Caramagno’s supervisor sent an email, flagging that a physician at UCSF sent a complaint about Caramagno’s post to school officials and a complaint officer in the diversity office, calling the tweet antisemitic and questioning Caramagno’s ability to “offer psychological support to Jewish and Israeli faculty and staff.”
Medical workers stage a die-in at San Francisco city hall on January 8, 2024. Photo: John Avalos
Over the past decade, Caramagno helped build the school’s CARE program, which provides resources and support to those on campus who have experienced discrimination, harassment, or abuse. As the co-director, she had remained the point of contact for students to reach out to confidentially and become a trusted source of support to students during difficult moments, including amid protests during the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements. She’s regularly called out systemic racism as a part of her role.
“When I see what’s happening in Palestine, it just looks like the most extreme form of racism,” Caramagno said, referring to the genocide in Gaza. “We’re a public health care system, so when we see the dismantling of the public health care system [in Gaza], we have an obligation to call that out.”
While the complaint did not lead to any discipline, she was barred from serving as a point of contact for individuals with reports of antisemitism.
In June, her supervisors caught wind that Caramagno had shared the email from her supervisor that included the complaint with close friends and colleagues, seeking guidance and support on how to proceed. Supervisors told her that she was not allowed to share the email, which they considered confidential. Caramagno and her attorney, Siegel, insist the email was not confidential, which she dismissed as “defamatory.” Even so, by August she was suspended and then received notice of the school’s intent to fire her. She is barred from campus and from contacting her clients.
“I’m a trained clinician in this; I know the laws about confidentiality,” Caramagno said. “I know I had never breached confidentiality, and I never will.”
Last week, a group of faculty staff and students, including Kimberg and Ghannam, gathered for the first session of the UC People’s Tribunal, a group that aims to hold UC leaders accountable for the school system’s complicity with Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza and the ongoing displacement of Palestinians.
In addition to the violent crackdown on student encampments across the UC system last spring, school leaders have long shown a pro-Israel bias in their longstanding opposition to attempts by student and faculty groups to join academic boycotts of institutions with ties to Israel. The tactic is part of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or BDS, which aims to achieve Palestinian statehood.
The People’s group, which presented the tribunal charges at La Peña Cultural Center in Berkeley, focused on the UC’s investments in Israeli companies and the other activities of UCSF’s largest private donor, the Diller family. A collection of foundations created by the Bay Area real estate billionaire Sanford Diller, who died in 2018, gave a massive $1 billion to the school in 2017 and 2018, after giving $150 million over the previous 15 years.
Facade of the UCSF Helen Diller Medical Center in San Francisco on April 28, 2023. Photo: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images
The foundations, named for Diller’s late wife Helen, also donated $100,000 in 2016 to the Canary Mission, a group that aims to blacklist students and professors at universities who are found to be critical of Israel. Once an individual is listed on the Canary Mission site, a flood of cyberbullying messages often follow in an attempt to ruin the person’s reputation. The site has a profile for Ghannam and Marya, accusing both of supporting terrorism and antisemitism. Ghannam jokingly called himself one of the site’s “inaugural” members, or a “first-gen Canary Mission.” The group also recently celebrated Marya’s suspension on social media.
In 2016, the Diller Foundation also donated $25,000 to Regavim, an Israeli NGO that sues Palestinians who try to build homes in the occupied West Bank; $100,000 to Reservists on Duty, a group that pays for Israeli reserve soldiers to travel to U.S. universities to work with students on projects that challenge BDS; and $25,000 to Turning Point USA “for US campus efforts against BDS.” And the foundation has donated to Islamophobic groups American Freedom Law Center and Stop Islamization of America, along with American right-wing conservative groups, Project Veritas and the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
Jackie Safier, Sanford Diller’s daughter, who now runs the Diller Foundation, has dismissed connections between the foundation and the far-right Zionist and conservative groups in the U.S. and Israel. Given the foundation’s close ties with UCSF, however, faculty and staff who have faced punishment for their pro-Palestine speech have questioned whether the relationship was a factor.
“You can’t walk anywhere at UCSF without seeing Helen Diller’s name somewhere,” Ghannam said. “The foundation’s name is in the front of UCSF, the main entrance, they’ve endowed chairs and faculty positions.”
Ghannam had hoped to travel to Gaza to assist patients there during this past year, but has been barred due to Israeli travel restrictions into the territory for individuals with Palestinian ancestry. He instead has been forced to watch the conflict from afar, doing what he can with organizing at UCSF, while Israeli strikes kill people he’s close with.
“There’s this awesomeness of feeling the solidarity; people are finally understanding Palestine in ways that they never understood before,” Ghannam said. “But at the same time, the amount of fucking grief and pain that I feel every day with knowing that my colleagues have been killed, that all clinics that we helped build and all the programs we help build and all of the people whose kids I’ve seen grown up over the years and get married — they’re all dead, so there’s this profound sense of grief and guilt.”
Rochios speaking with Al Jazeera for an interview aired on May 26, 2024. Screenshot: Al Jazeera
Rochios’s advocacy on the health inequality experienced by Palestinians in Gaza began by speaking out at home, both at the workplace and at rallies in the Bay Area. When Rochios, who was allowed to travel to Gaza, was working in Rafah in April, she began to share what she was witnessing on television news for outlets such as Al Jazeera.
“While the West seems to not give any weight or validation to Palestinian reporters on the ground, these health care workers have become the journalists, the storytellers, all this information, and it became very clear to me to that it was my duty to try and be a voice to that,” she said.
UCSF escalated its punishment against Rochios this week, moving her from a paid suspension to three days unpaid. She will be allowed to return to work for the first time since June on November 21, but was again ordered not to wear her keffiyeh or watermelon badge. If she continues to wear the items, the school said, she would be in violation of UCSF’s PRIDE policies and Principles of Community, which are among several codes meant to reinforce diversity and inclusion within the institution. She expects to be fired, given the climate of repression she and her colleagues have experienced at UCSF.
Through conversations with colleagues in the OBGYN department at the nearby city-run San Francisco General Hospital, Rochios knows that this outcome is not the norm in her profession, even within the same city. Unlike at UCSF, the hospital workers have been able to display their support for Palestine, with some openly wearing sweatshirts that read “Healthcare workers for Palestine.”
“I’ve become such a pariah in this way within UCSF,” she said. “Whereas it exists without issue in a sister hospital in the same city.”
