Also on today’s menu:
Alabama Supreme Court Decision Outlaws IVF
Shakeup At Boeing Aimed At Reassuring Regulators
Concerns about the impact of the Israeli-Hamas war and the growing death toll in Gaza have led to protests on college campuses, including at Dartmouth, where earlier arrests have prompted eight students to go on a hunger strike “for Palestine and campus justice”. Two of those on hunger strike — Roan V. Wade ’25 and Kevin Engel ’27 — had been arrested on October 28 for occupying the front lawn of Parkhurst Hall, the college’s administration building. According to President Sian Leah Beilock, peaceful protests are allowed, but “the situation changed when [Wade and Engel] threatened in writing to ‘escalate and take further action,’ including ‘physical action,’ if their demands were not met.”
On February 19, Wade and Engel were joined by six others others in starting the hunger strike, demanding that the college divest its holdings in organizations that support Israel, that it commit to reviewing policy goals in the Dartmouth New Deal which demands cutting ties with “apartheid and war”, taking steps toward achieving climate justice, dealing with class struggle, seeking racial justice, decolonization, and inclusion, and enabling “future change-making work”. They also want law enforcement to drop the misdemeanor charges against Wade and Engel. The New Deal Coalition includes the Palestine Solidarity Coalition, the Sunrise Movement at Dartmouth, the Student Worker Collective at Dartmouth, Co-FIRED, Fuerza, Dartmouth’s NAACP chapter, Dartmouth Asian American Studies Coalition, and Dartmouth Student Prison Initiative.
Ramsey Alsheikh ’26 joined the hunger strike because “Many Palestinian Muslim students were feeling extremely unsafe. We needed the administration to do something. They refused to send out a statement” when three Palestinian students were killed in Burlington, Vermont.
Jana Barnello, speaking for the college, said, “Dartmouth values, supports, and defends the right of freedom of expression, including the right to protest and demonstrate peacefully…. Our student life professionals are in contact with these students and continue to provide health and wellness care to make sure they are safe. The safety and well-being of all Dartmouth students is our top priority.” For their part, the students say that, although they will not be eating, they will consume liquids without caloric value.
Discussion: Peaceful protest is not the issue here. It was the implied threat of violence, contained in the Dartmouth New Deal document, that prompted the arrests last fall. The document stated that its authors “will escalate” their actions on campus if college officials do not publicly address its demands. The protesters claim it was not a threat, and that they have face threats for their stance, with the college refusing to intervene.
Alabama Supreme Court Decision Outlaws IVF
The University of Alabama at Birmingham health system has halted in-vitro fertilization after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled in a civil case that frozen embryos are children, meaning that people can be held liable for accidentally destroying them.
The ruling came in a wrongful death lawsuit brought by three couples against the Center for Reproductive Medicine and the Mobile Infirmary Association after their embryos were destroyed by a patient who wandered into the embryo storage area and accidentally dropped them. They cited the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act, a law that covers fetuses in the mother’s womb. A lower court ruled that the embryos did not qualify as a person or child, so the wrongful death lawsuit could not move forward. The Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos were considered “children” and that the wrongful death law applied to “all unborn children, regardless of their location”. Chief Justice Tom Parker wrote, “Even before birth, all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.”
The National Council of Jewish Women issued a statement: “This weekend’s decision from Alabama’s highest court classifying frozen embryos as children is wildly outrageous and sets a harmful precedent that violates separation of church and state and will make it nearly impossible for families in Alabama to access fertility treatments such as in-vitro fertilization (IVF) …. Religious freedom exists as a shield to protect religious minorities, and should never be used as a sword to discriminate. Weaponizing a personal religious belief to create law for millions is not just unconscionable, but unconstitutional.”
Discussion: There are reasonable arguments on both sides of the abortion debate, but extending the law to external fertilization in a laboratory setting is absurd, especially when the whole purpose of IVF is to help couples conceive children, not abandon them. The Alabama Medical Association had filed an amicus brief warning that access to fertility treatments could become severely limited under such a ruling.
Shakeup At Boeing Aimed At Reassuring Regulators
Ed Clark, leader of Boeing’s 737 Max program, is being replaced as part of a shakeup inside the company’s commercial airplane division in the wake of safety violations that include crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people and a January incident in which a piece of one of its jets blew out during a passenger flight in Alaska. Clark has been with the company for nearly 18 years, having served as chief mechanic and engineer for the 737 before being placed in charge of the division.
In announcing the changes, Boeing said they are aimed at improving quality and safety. Stan Deal, the head of Boeing’s commercial airplanes division, said Clark was leaving with the company’s “deepest gratitude for his many significant contributions over nearly 18 years of dedicated service to Boeing”. Katie Ringgold, currently vice-president of 737 delivery operations, will take Clark’s place, and the company also is creating a new position, senior vice-president for quality.
The company will be meeting with regulators about the safety concerns after the Federal Aviation Administration barred Boeing from expanding its 737 Max output during a review of its production line.
Discussion: Once again, I urge you to watch the documentary “Downfall: The Case Against Boeing” which shows how the once-proud company known for its safety record fell prey to demands for corporate profits, leading to shortcuts and demands for shortened production times.