Shireen Al-Adeimi on Yemen Crisis, Alyssa Peterson on Campus Assault Rules

This week on CounterSpin: Now in its third year, the war in Yemen, and the resulting casualties, starvation, illness and displacement, have been declared by the UN the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. Images—like those from August of Yemeni schoolchildren on a field trip killed by bombs employed by the Saudi-led coalition, but made and sold by the US—have touched many Americans’ hearts; but what’s the bridge from concern to change? We talk about the crisis in Yemen and the US responsibility with Shireen Al-Adeimi, assistant professor of education at Michigan State University. Al-Adeimi’s recent article with Sarah Lazare, “Trump Quietly Overrides What Little Civilian Protections Remain in Yemen War,” appeared in In These Times.

Also on the show: Elite media reported Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s claim that her rewrite of rules on rape, assault and harassment in schools was about fairness to all parties (“not just students who survived assault, but those wrongly accused of assault,” as the Washington Post had it). And media, a few anyway, reported the fact that assault survivors groups protested outside DeVos’s event announcing the new rules, to which they were not invited. Largely off the page: the questions the latter fact raises about the first one. Alyssa Peterson is advocacy and policy coordinator with the group Know Your IX (as in Title IX); she joins us to help fill in that gap.

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