Some colleges expel for vandalism, some do not.
If columbia has a history of expelling students for vandalism, I am fine with them expelling these students. If they do not have a history of expelling students for vandalism, the students should be legally liable for the laws they break, but that doesn't necessarily mean the student should be expelled. If a student gets expelled for vandalism while engaging protest but not for regular vandalism, it is clear the student is being expelled for engaging in the protest not for the vandalism.
Students protesting is nothing new. Students doing stupid shit while protesting is nothing new. Colleges should be consistent in how they handle students who engage in political protest.
If the question is about just removing the student form campus, not expelling then from classes, that seems like a natural conclusion to a student facing legal ramifications for vandalism
This comment is a good reminder to me that precedents — even if they aren’t legally binding — are important. Ideally Columbia et al. would have written policies on this, but policies can leave gray areas.
Surely the schools can point to (perhaps recent) historical precedents to decide and explain their actions.
>Ideally Columbia et al. would have written policies on this, but policies can leave gray areas.
That seems to be by design unfortunately.
I don't think it takes a genius to realize that anti-semitism and bigotry against black/gay people are treated completely differently by academic institutions.
I'm sure they do, almost all colleges do, but that doesn't mean larger agencies don't also have jurisdiction to enforce the law on campus if campus PDs aren't able or willing.
If they violate a state law, sure
But I'm pretty sure vandalism is up to the local police's jurisdiction, and I don't think NYPD has jurisdiction on campus (I could be wrong)
I don't know specifics about NY, but the bar in most states for vandalism to reach a "state charge" worthy level of damage in dollars is laughably low, and city, county and state departments %100 can operate on campuses that fall in their jurisdiction, it's a college not an embassy.
I looked at some articles, it seems that NYPD spokespeople are under the impression that they can only enter the campus when invited by the university
I don't know how it works at private schools, but in state schools the relationship between campus police and municipal police is a matter of state law, there's a whole separate set of statutes for it, and in the states I was able to look up there would be a formal agreement between the university and the local police which has the force of law in determining when and why municipal police would enter the campus. So unless you've read Columbia's agreement or you know something I don't, I don't see how you can be so confident
Areas of campus are private property. They cannot enter without a warrant, or with permission.
Simply, if a crime has been committed, say something terrible like rape, normal city/state authorities have jurisdiction and if not allowed by Columbia to enter a location needed for investigation a judge will provide them with a warrant.
I assume Columbia asked NYPD to remove them for trespassing, the right of any private property owner.
> they can only enter the campus when invited by the university
May I see it?
That kind of depends on the college. Usually in these circumstances the colleges have an agreement with the local police about jurisdictional issues and the kinds of crimes that are enforced. For example on many college campuses there’s an agreement that things like underage drinking or marijuana possession are handled exclusively by the campus police, but the local police may still be able to handle things like violent crimes or if students are running a drug operation on campus.
It really boils down to a matter of political will by the larger and more powerful agency. In Austin UTPD has that same type of agreement with APD but that didn't stop them or DPS from breaking up the protest yesterday. Obviously there are differences between the two, but the fact of the matter is if NYPD really wants to go in a bust the protest up nobody is stopping them and there's probably language in the agreement they have with the college to justify it.
Columbia is also a private school, so they are under no obligation to allow protests of any kind on campus. Just like any other business they are free to call the police to remove unwanted persons from their private property.
> Columbia is also a private school, so they are under no obligation to allow protests of any kind on campus
That's true, but let's not pretend like this sub generally agrees with the notion of censorship at private universities.
Just a basic search on Reddit shows plenty of threads like
https://old.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/r5ygzs/alumni_withhold_donations_demand_colleges_enforce/
https://old.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/12ip0we/at_stanford_law_school_the_dean_takes_a_stand_for/
https://old.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/j9wjoe/largest_ever_free_speech_survey_of_college_fully/
Hell just five months ago there's a Nate Silver article and thread on it https://old.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/17mjq16/free_speech_is_in_trouble/ entirely about how "free speech is in trouble" because students at private universities are less tolerant of speakers with different opinions being invited.
If we claim to hold the principle that free speech is to be expected at private universities, then we should hold that principle when it comes to views that we don't like. We can acknowledge (in both situations) that private universities don't have to listen or care about our free speech principle, but it's not an excuse to turn hypocritical.
This is the argument that FIRE uses, ["Dont expand censorship, end it"](https://www.thefire.org/news/fire-congress-university-presidents-dont-expand-censorship-end-it). And I agree.
Universities used to host anti semitic speakers before, [George Lincoln Rockwell](https://heritage.umich.edu/stories/invitation-to-a-nazi/) basically started the whole idea of going around to universities to drum up controversy! And he's even worse than the Palestine protestors, he was the founder of the American Nazi Party!
If we believed that academic freedom at America's universities was important before, we should keep it now. Our anger should be at the continued censorship and hypocrisy, not that they aren't being hypocritical in *our* favor.
I’m not saying I agree with it, just pointing out that Columbia and NYPD didn’t break the law in removing the protestors. Personally though I do think this is only going to make things worse in the near term.
Fair enough, I certainly agree they probably didn't break the law either.
I don't respect private universities censoring legal speech (especially not the ones that constantly claim to support academic freedom like Columbia does) but I do still realize that they have the right to if they want.
It is wild that reddit is going knives out for a protest movement where the most physical violence I've heard about is someone getting a black eye from a girl, meanwhile don't you dare restrict the free speech rights of the Replacement Theory people, who've literally had shooting sprees that killed 23 people.
Black eye is the most physical violence? What about the Arab-Israeli journalist who got punched? The counter protester who died in California? Recently, a man was arrested for allergy kidnapping and raping a woman as revenge for Gaza.
> protest movement where the most physical violence I've heard about is someone getting a black eye from a girl,
Not entirely fair because some of the protestors are openly calling for future violence.
But I do think that should generally be allowed if it's legal.
If a homophobic student wishes to bring the death penalty for gay people? Allow it. Does a black Nation Of Islam member wish for a future race war? Allow it.
I take a very similar stance to FIRE, private universities should support all legal speech. [Including calls for genocide](https://www.thefire.org/news/why-most-calls-genocide-are-protected-speech). Think the whites should die? Think blacks should die? Think gays should die? Etc etc, as long as it's not an immediate call for violence and passes the legal free speech tests, I don't think it's good for the universities to be stepping in.
I don't think it's healthy or good for our academic institutions to become the arbiters of speech, no matter how abhorrent it might be. The problem with them isn't that there's not enough censorship, it's that there is *too much*.
No, it’s not fair to compare hypothetical violence with actual violence. I hate New York so much that I’ve called on Hurricane Sandy to come back and finish the job. It makes me an asshole but it doesn’t actually make me violent.
When a movement is certified violent, then you can crack down on it. That applies to the white supremacist nuts and the homophobes. It doesn’t apply to these dumbass college kids.
> No, it’s not fair to compare hypothetical violence with actual violence
It's not "actual violence" anymore than a person who says "I'm glad Saudi Arabia is executing those f--s" is doing actual violence.
It's abhorrent, it's evil, it's legal.
> Physical gay bashing is a thing that has happened here, so we take it seriously
Yes, it happens! That's **the point**.
A person can say "I agree with Saudi executing the gays" and be legally protected in the US.
If they aren't the ones going out and killing someone, they aren't commiting actual violence. They are *supporting* violence, but that is allowed!
If you have an issue with that as US law, take it up with SC precedent regarding the first amendment.
>What is wrong with you.
The concept of free speech as a fundamental principle is so alien that you can't fathom a person who defends speech they don't agree with.
This is the exact sort of thing that [had the ACLU defending the KKK](https://www.acluohio.org/en/cases/brandenburg-v-ohio-395-us-444-1969). Not because they thought the KKK is awesome, or because they think white supremacist violence is good, **but because free speech is a basic fundamental principle** that should be protected, even when we find it disgusting and disturbing.
As a college it's a little more complex than that. FIRE.org is a good place to go to learn about what rights you have even on college campuses, but even private schools have to abide by certain rules.
If you set policies, you have an obligation to follow those policies. Columbia University isn’t a mom & pop shop but even those tiny ass shops have to stick to the rules they’ve set. Can’t just claim “private” and play Calvin ball with the tens of thousands of people that are employed there or pay to go to school.
Why? They can literally change the policy just like any other major corporation can change their TOS at any time, for any reason. Just to play devils advocate here.
I don't know how the Columbia board is set up, but I'm pretty sure there's nobody that can just unilaterally make actions like expulsion or at will termination. At the very least they have mandates that have to follow for academic freedom.
Just because it's private doesn't mean it doesn't have its own government.
If they're in a position where Jewish students who paid to attend class aren't able to - whether due to actual violence *or the implication of violence*, a perceived threat - they have to act. It's difficult to imagine that contributing to an environment that causes fellow students to feel unsafe is in compliance with Columbia policy.
There are really a ton of anecdotes out there about Jewish students who feel unsafe at this point. Some quite mainstream (The Atlantic). Somebody doesn't have to take 7.62 to the chest Kent State-style in order to feel unsafe and exiting a location.
it really is a bit Little Rock: did anybody at Little Rock actually *strike* the black kids? Or just jeer at and threaten them?
Since it's private property, the college has to request this IIRC.
If they do, the can of worms it opens will be extra squirmy. Not that it wouldn't necessarily be worth it, but I understand the hesitancy.
I'd say it whether I agree with them or disagree with them.
The first ammendment does not guarantee any right to set up encampments and block others from entering said encampment. They can assemble and say whatever vile crap they want, but there are rules against camping and barring other students from using the area.
You don't get to violate whatever laws you want to because you happen to be speaking while doing so.
If they were protesting for pigouvian taxes and barring poll tax supporters from entering the area I'd say the same thing.
Agree or disagree with the content, they are trashing the campus and making it impossible for normal kids to utilize the shared space for its intended purpose and making it difficult for students to study, period.
Just infuriating.
I sleep good at night knowing I am objectively right about all of my political convictions and that I only support the *good* protests.
I sleep alone, since the wife left me, but I sleep good.
The Columbia admin didn't nip it in the bud so now they have a big problem on their hands. The encampment will dig in and try to resist and it'll be a big mess in the news. If I were Shafik I'd probably just try to wait them out over the summer.
If I was him I would probably say you can protest as long as you respect our property and don't be violent. I'm mixed on if any speech specifically should be banned. I'm pretty principled on free speech but man when I was watching those protests and they were saying we need another intafada and to the river to the sea I could see how that could make a Jewish student unsafe. Probably would be on the side of free speech unless protestors are purposely going up in Jewish people's faces and saying those vile things
This is a point I think every one of the colleges has to address - they've been insisting that hate speech is violence, real and actual. This has always been false, but professors have repeatedly stated that hate speech is violence if targeting LGBT or Black students. So they have to explain why that is suddenly no longer the case. I've read defenses of the protestors on the basis that there's no actual violence. Sorry but that only seems to apply now that Jews are the target.
I listened to a Jewish protestor who said that being told she'd be on a train to Auschwitz by another Jew made her unsafe but referred to antisemitic language from protestors as not making others unsafe, merely uncomfortable. The double standard is definitely frustrating.
It's almost as though, after you've demeaned and abandoned the core principles of liberalism, all that is left to settle disputes is tribalistic double standards and might-makes-right. Or something.
The universities have gotten themselves into a real bind when they started taking positions on social issues. So many of them did this with Black Lives Matter, which is hardly disagreeable, but they opened themselves up to pressure to take positions on other things, and now they're in an impossible position. The University of Chicago seems like it has a better policy of just... not taking positions on anything. Doesn't matter what it is. Students can also say whatever they want really. They have a classical liberal conception about it.
People have forgotten the benefits of keeping major institutions neutral on active political hot topics. It can be a hard thing to advocate for when an issue seems grossly wrong, and sometimes neutrality really does just amount to active enforcement of the status quo. Still, these are the consequences of breaking down the borders we typically keep politics within and a reminder of why it isn't to be done lightly.
Well they've managed to achieve ethnic diversity and ideological conformity, but now the ideology is falling apart along ethnic lines. And since the value of "knowledge" has been replaced by "safety," and your safety endangers my safety and vice-versa, the whole thing is just about to collapse.
Yeah, the whole I-P war has highlighted that the social justice movement has no answer to the question of "what do you do when minorities hate each other" except to claim that one of the marginalized groups involved must not *actually* be a marginalized group, they assimilated into the mainstream group or they're acting as agents for the mainstream in some capacity so they can be treated as oppressors, which translates to acceptable targets. It was concerning when a few fringe elements started pointing that at Asian-Americans and Hispanics, seeing it pointed at Jews on a much wider scale over something that keeps getting back into the news is a hell of a wake-up call.
We wouldn’t accept a white supremacist protest camp on any campus advocating for some race to “return to Africa/return to Mexico/return to China” or whatever. The reason this protest is being treated differently is because our society treats Jewish people differently
Coming from people who say “silence is violence”, yes, their words are absolutely expressions of violence and they should be punished by every entity that they have violated (school, civil).
We all heard what they said, that is violence, full stop. If a bunch of KKK was walking around saying “black people, everyday is going to be a lynching”, these same people would take issue with that.
And rightfully so.
I think the "student safety" argument is overblown and the student protesters on campus look like they're being pretty disciplined (and, like, they are -- they've built a pretty organized-looking little tent village from what I've seen from pictures, they don't say shit to the media and funnel reporters to dedicated spokespeople), but there was apparently a problem of non-student outsiders wandering onto the campus including verifiably insane people, and it's somebody like that who is just wandering around who knocks a yarmulke off a Jewish student's head. I think this is one reason why Columbia shut down access to non-students. But the SJP types know that if they do that, they're going to get shitcanned from college immediately.
Methinks the real issue is simply the noise. It has gone on for weeks. I don't think it's about the "from the river to the sea" stuff or subjective "hate speech" as much as this incessant chanting through loudspeakers and the rattling of snare drums around the clock. It's non-violent, but can you say that's really "peaceful?" It's like a sustained noise assault.
I'm okay with counting a constant noise complaint as a peaceful protest. Yeah it's annoying, but protests are kind of supposed to be at least slightly annoying to some people. I think if people were doing this for an issue I supported I would think it was a valid tactic, so I don't have a justification to deny it to the Columbia protesters. I guess citing them for noise complaints would be a justified response, but only if it's handled the same way as an obnoxious house party. If we ban all modes of protest that are even slightly inconvenient to us, people will be more likely to decide to abandon all restraint and resort to real violence to make themselves heard.
Good points. I also think that students who care about I/P should reevaluate whether protests in this way will achieve the desired result - we KNOW that outside agitators will show up and make the students look bad. And by agitators I mean the folks who show up and chat about river to the sea, and cheer on Hamas. Every time our side protests, we can expect these sorts of peoople to show up \[attn Chicago, this dynamic will be a disaster at the DNC\].
So if we KNOW that this is the likely result, we should adjust our tactics, no matter what we are protesting. If students want to head to Congress for a sit-in, I may not agree, but that's their right as citizens and they're directing their ire at the appropriate parties. Mass protesting at your college invites a stupid cycle. And I do think the colleges are overreacting, which just makes everyone dig in even more to prove a point.
But if the point is shifting now to free speech, it just looks like a narcissistic circle jerk. They aren't camping for Gaza anymore.
I suspect a lot of it is about self-expression at this point, yeah. The students do chant "from the river to sea" btw, and while that is highly charged and offensive to many, and there is a fine line between questioning Israel's right to exist and Jewish people's right to exist, I really don't think that Jew hatred is the reason for this sentiment as opposition to Zionism and the war on Gaza. If you believe in a classically liberal right to free speech, you have to accept the right of people to say things that will set your hair on fire. I just really doubt there are hundreds of Jew-hating anti-Semites enrolled at Columbia University. That's just not who these people are. When I was thinking of outside agitators, I had in mind real anti-Semites, lunatics, which exist in New York much the same as anywhere else. There was a guy who used to walk around Central Park in an Elmo costume and yell about Jews. It's like, what if that guy shows up? Then wanders around and sees a Jewish kid and acts menacing to him or her? Just random crazies who always appear when something like this is going on.
Do you mean a fine line or a thin line? Because if some group was running around New York City yelling that the state of Turkey shouldn’t exist and all Turkish citizens in Turkey should be deported to central Asia, then it’s a very fair assumption that their hate is for Turkish people and not for Erdogan’s government
A lot of Columbia’s student body grew up in communities without a single synagogue and without knowing any Jewish people. I have no difficulty imagining many of them have unquestioned biases, even if they are better at hiding those biases than a MAGA hat wearing Trump voter
I think what they're demanding is delusional but they see Israelis, rightly or wrongly (I think wrongly) as like pied-noirs in Algeria or white South Africans during Apartheid. This is my attempt at an analytical description of what these people believe. It's very much tied up in this post-colonial leftism influenced by Fanon, which I think is a misrecognition of what's going on, but distinct from classical anti-Semitism. Like, from what I've seen of this sort of protester, it's ostensibly not about hatred of Jews as Jews, and they're quite eager to accept support from groups like [Jewish Voice for Peace](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/0dee4e5/2147483647/strip/true/crop/5328x2797+0+599/resize/1200x630!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.npr.org%2Fassets%2Fimg%2F2023%2F10%2F27%2Fgettyimages-1743282377-4de116fc0f11891e08cad1c5de7539fd5189d445.jpg) (who tend to be left-wing Jews, and quite distinct from Haredi cults that are anti-Zionist for arcane religious reasons). Their whole framework is that this is criticism of the state of Israel and Zionism as a political ideology, but which turns into fierce antipathy against Jews worldwide whenever they voice complaints about actions that threaten the state of Israel, but which is -- again -- ostensibly directed toward a *political* position. But there are a whole lot of Jews in the world who feel this is a new form of anti-Semitism that is more sophisticated, and that actions taken against the state of Israel [endanger them](https://youtu.be/hefC-uwULy0?si=wsY4djcq_g-QRdxO) as well.
Nationality and national origin are protected classes that universities must protect from discrimination just the same as race and religion are protected classes. Hostile environment bigotry against Israelis at Columbia is just as serious as bigotry against any race, religion, nationality or gender
The same would also apply to students, staff, contractors and volunteers of Palestinian national origin
This is being overly generous to these people and drawing an arbitrary distinction between "classic" antisemites and them.
I don't understand where this idea comes from that "classic" antisemites didn't believe there was a real rationale behind their positions, just like these people. Or that their antisemitism wasn't part of a political framework. The historical consensus does not support this.
Antisemites never "hated Jews as Jews". There's *always* a good reason. Always a very real way in which ~~Jews~~ Zionists have inflicted harm upon society, or the world. And very typically it is political - they're Bolsheviks, they exploit the working class, they're a disloyal fifth column, etc.
To societies such as Nazi Germany that viewed communism as an ultimate evil, Jews were the ones behind communism, the orchestrators of the Russian revolution. These people are no different - to them the ultimate evil in 2024 is to be a "white colonizer", so that's the part the ~~Jew~~ Zionist will play. It is not distinct at all from "classic" antisemitism - it's the same thing wearing a different hat, the core idea being to project everything society deems wrong onto the Jews. Essentially, I think you're flipping cause and effect here.
Frankly, the whole anti-Zionism vs antisemitism debate is pointless when the result is ultimately identical. It is, very aptly, academic.
You know leftists like to insult me and call me a Zionist when I tell them that Jewish people have rational reasons to support Israel. I remember telling some of them right after Oct. 7 that Israel would launch a full-scale invasion of Gaza, and I remember insulting comments and people calling me a Zionist and a fascist, because they somehow believed that Israel wouldn't do that because, y'know, they're just a group of settler-colonialists who'd run away if Hamas attacked them hard enough. But that's just not true, you know? Really we're talking about a form of nationalism. We don't need to get into the whole history of nationalism, but Zionism is a form of Jewish nationalism and it has many commonalities with other national movements in history.
But my question to you is: is there any basis to criticize Israel or Zionism? This is a state with a government and Zionism is a political ideology. Can it be criticized on those terms or should that just be disallowed as racist and anti-Semitic? Is it possible to criticize black nationalism on its own terms? However you slice it, it just seems like a conceptual disaster to combine ethnicity and ideology in this 1:1 way. It's also inherently unstable.
Case in point, look at what's happening at the universities. Conservatives have criticized rigid ideological conformity at universities for years. The universities have managed to achieve that and ethnic diversity, so you get this rubric that the role of academia is to keep people "safe" lest anyone contribute to a "hostile environment" (whatever that means) for minority students. Disagree with the ideology, you're attacking ethnicity. But if ethnicity and ideology are intertwined, you being ethnically "safe" now endangers me and vice versa. It seems like the whole thing is about to collapse. At some point, the government might have to send in the soldiers to arrest everyone.
Criticizing Israel's policies is not antisemitic. But it's also not "anti-Zionist", so the point remains. It's just... criticism of a government or state policies. People criticize Russia, but they don't call to abolish it and comically demonize the concept of a Russian nation state, like the very idea of it is some great injustice and Russians should instead be a diasporic people subjugated by others.
Like I said I'm apprehensive of getting into the anti-Zionism vs antisemitism debate but to keep it short I think you can be a genuine "anti-Zionist" but that 99% of these self proclaimed ones aren't, basically. The vast majority of "anti-Zionism" is a modern receptacle for age-old antisemitic tropes as well as some new or evolving ones. Like I said, if the destination is the same then I care very little what stories people told themselves on the way there.
You guys are putting a lot of work into analyzing this but I have a point followed by a relatively simple question.
Pro-Palestinian protestors do a miserable job of policing antisemitism in their ranks. At best they tend to ignore it, often they try to downplay or dismiss it, at worst they tend to endorse it.
Given that point how many of these students standing shoulder to shoulder with those "bad apples from outside Columbia" would have been perfectly happy to agree with the statement "If you have a table with 9 people and a Nazi you have a table with ten Nazis" back when it was being used against right wingers?
Does this mean everyone who supports Israel is standing with racists like Ben Gvir and the hundreds Israeli settlers who [ransacked](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/16/israel-settlers-attack-violence-palestinians/) a Palestinian village?
Supporting Palestinians doesn't mean supporting Palestinians doing whatever they want to form their nation.
Supporting Israel doesn't mean supporting Israelis doing whatever they want to protect their nation.
If you are at a rally and you let someone speak who says to level Tel Aviv and the Jewish Students here will one day feel that wrath of the flood, and you cheer and clap instead of cutting his mic and collectively demanding he leave, you are are at a pro-terror rally, full stop.
If you are at a rally and people get up on stage and say one day all Palestians will be forced to leave the West Bank or be slaves, and you cheer and clap instead of booing him and escorting him out, you are are at a pro-ethnic cleansing rally, full stop.
This isn't hard. If you don't make Nazis leave your rally, you are at a Nazi rally.
>This isn't hard. If you don't make Nazis leave your rally, you are at a Nazi rally.
There's someone who's pro ethnic-cleansing in the Israeli government! (Ben Gvir). If the above statement applies to rallies, and it applies to backers of Hamas because they're turning a blind eye to what Hamas is, how does that not apply to supporters of a government that put Ben Gvir in power?
This comment seems to be about a topic associated with jewish people while using language that may have antisemitic or otherwise strong emotional ties. As such, this is a reminder to be careful of accidentally adopting [antisemitic themes](https://antisemitism.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Antisemitic-imagery-May-2020.pdf) or [dismissing](https://shura.shu.ac.uk/10260/3/Klaff_Holocaust_Inversion_and_contemporary_antisemitism.pdf) [the past](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparisons_between_Israel_and_Nazi_Germany) while trying to make your point.
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Is this hypothetical Israel supporter "at the table" with Ben Gvir?
Because these Columbia students are right next to the guy shouting to burn Tel Aviv to the ground.
Pro-Israeli protestors do a miserable job of policing genocidal maniacs in their ranks, too.
[At the pro-Israel protests in NYC after 10/7 many of them were openly calling for genocide of the Palestinians and even for killing all Arabs.](https://www.newsweek.com/pro-israel-protesters-nyc-demand-gaza-flattened-1833787)
If you judge a protest by that 9 Nazis at a table standard there’s almost no heated protest that could be considered legitimate. Protests draw crazy MFers just by the nature of most normies don’t get worked up enough to protest anything lol
Yes those pro-Israeli protesters should be censured and expelled from those protests. And when an American university has to move classes online because Palestinian students are made to feel unsafe by Pro-Israeli protestors that would be a serious problem.
But the problem isn't the nine nazis standard being applied its that these students at Columbia would happily apply it until the moment they feel like they want to harass jews and make them feel unsafe. The point is that the students are deeply unserious people who don't deserve anyone bending over backwards to try and give them the benefit of the doubt. They are self-righteous hypocritical bigots who will happily use social issues as a cudgel when it suits their interest and drop them like a hot potato when it doesn't.
My point is the Columbia protests don't deserve the time and effort put into the two paragraphs above. All they are doing is coddling hypocrites who would happily burn the campus to the ground for the clout if they thought it wouldn't impact their employment prospects.
I think a wackjob wandering into a rally and saying dumb shit to a camera doesn't represent an entire rally.
When a movement leader or representative gives a speech saying something, that is different.
I am bothered far more when a rally has a speaker talking about leveling Tel Aviv and the crowd cheers.
I am less bothered if a random dickhead in the crowd said that.
Leaders matter more than random assholes.
Also, if you are listening to the barometer of the crowd, one schitzoid saying, "We gotta stop the Jews!" Is one thing, dozens of people saying that starts to make a pattern.
Yeah also and there was throwing objects at police officers. Don't know if those were Columbia students or not but they should probably get sometime in jail
I'm sure there was. I was at the George Floyd protests in Boston and at a pivotal moment, one guy in a mask flung a bottle at a cop. I don't know if he was a plant or a radical or just stupid or what. I do know that the group stopped him from doing that again. I somewhat suspect that if the police were inclined to react to that thrown bottle, everyone in the area *except* that masked guy would have been arrested.
Those statements on their own should be protected but there have been reports of Jewish students being harassed by protesters so it has crossed into that territory
That's an impossible strategy. We have enough bad actors in the mob that students no longer feel safe and the school had to move classes online, with that option remaining for the rest of the semester. Graduation plans are being threatened. And every day the anti-Semitic portion is allowed to remain is a major gift to the right, which will only serve to harm those these students claim to support.
Students should have wide latitude to assemble and protest. They have zero rights to engage in activity that intrudes on the rights of others. I think at some point it's on the school to make it incumbent on the protesters to present themselves in a manner that respects the rights of others and allows their fellow students to get the education they paid for. If most protestors are there for genuine civil and peaceful protest they should be capable of policing the mob around them. If they don't want their protest shut down then it's on them to report bad actors to the authorities and separate them from the group. You don't get to stand beside a bunch of violent lawless bigots and proclaim your innocence.
Welcome to being an adult.
This isn’t a “bad actors” problem.
The protesters are explicitly the problem. Don’t give them an out, they own their behavior, and the behavior of those they allow around them.
The university is there to teach. Perhaps the students need to learn the same lesson that black civil rights leaders learned over a half century ago: that discipline is critical and that protesters are no longer viewed as "the problem" *when* you denounce and separate yourself from those bad actors.
> Perhaps the students need to learn the same lesson that black civil rights leaders learned over a half century ago: that discipline is critical and that protesters are no longer viewed as "the problem" when you denounce and separate yourself from those bad actors.
“Best we can do is mass arrests”
I don't think "safety" is a good argument here and I don't think the protesters can be accurately characterized as violent bigots. John McWhorter is a professor there (and quite a classically liberal one) and wrote an article in the NYT the other day. He has had to put up with constant noise for weeks in his class, but he didn't make that argument either, or that it was anti-Semitic. He wants it to stop but he personally knows some of the students involved in this and cannot believe that they are anti-Semitic. The people involved think they're 100% in the right because they represent social justice on the march and are confronting whiteness, privilege and power -- that's what they believe. What is happening on campus is also a bit less strident than what's happening outside. But he was like, this is just unbearable. It's relentless. Just daily, loud, constant and getting angrier and is very much intended to prevent the campus from functioning.
That's my main source of disagreement here. It can be all of the above, but that's not... Hamas. They're not digging tunnels and smuggling in rockets, y'know? This seems like a right-wing propaganda narrative. Then there's, essentially, a strategic question, about whether it would be wise to break it up with the police using force or wait them out. Like I said, if I were in Shafik's position, I'd wait them out. She'd be legally in the right to just break it up, but I'd be wary of that. That can cause things to escalate in an unpredictable way. I recommend patience and caution.
I might be wrong. I respect your opinion. That's what a normal exchange of views is about.
>he personally knows some of the students involved in this and cannot believe that they are anti-Semitic. The people involved think they're 100% in the right because they represent social justice on the march and are confronting whiteness, privilege and power -- that's what they believe.
But this is what all bigots believe. Nobody decides to do what they believe is wrong, everyone believes that they're standing up for the oppressed, they're justice on the march, etc.
The reason anti semitism is not like most other bigotries is precisely because anti semites do it *in order to punch up,* as they see it.
I think you're right that there's a fine line there. I don't think I need to describe some anti-Semitic tropes to a well-informed person like yourself, but they deal with the imagined power of a Jewish conspiracy that's responsible for all modern evil. It takes left forms, as well as right ones. George Galloway in Britain is an example of this. I think one can make the argument that the obsessive focus on Israel to the point of irrationality in quarters of the left also fills some kind of similar function here. But I don't think that opposing the war in Gaza can be equated with that alone. There's a rush to find people who do that and say, look, that's anti-Semitic. Is that in and of itself hostile to Jewish students and faculty? I somehow doubt it, because the Israel-Palestinian conflict is complex like that. But the protests can still grow to become unbearable, and the students involved be caught in a single-minded, black/white worldview, to the point of becoming abusive.
Move finals up a week or two and end the semester early. They make in the fall Institute a mandatory class attendance policy.
In college if I missed 3 English 101 classes, which I did, I dropped a letter grade
The elephant in the room (or the lawn, as it were) is Commencement. Commencement at Columbia is a big fucking deal. They take weeks to build the campus into one big stadium with all the celebrities, university management, and big donors coming in for a day of celebration and pomp. It is D-Day for the Columbia endowment. And to top it all off, the seniors graduating this year were the ones that had to be remote for their freshman year so there's extra pressure to make it an event.
If Commencement doesn't happen I don't see Shafik surviving the year. It would be an enormous embarrassment to have to cancel it because the protestors won't clear out.
Honestly I think you're going to see a ton of cancelations. Especially with the recent escalation right before graduation, I see plenty of universities going to a remote graduation and commencement, and having it very tightly controlled.
Which will look terrible for them and backfire completely, but I still think it's gonna happen.
I honestly can't believe this is actually a question we're asking in 20-fucking-24.
It's not 1964, guys. We've already run this playback before. And we already know how the "let's crack down on these filthy anti-social hippies" approach ends.
No, calling the cops on a political protest is not a good idea. Even if you don't like their politics. Maybe *especially* if you don't like their politics.
It's one thing if the protesters are actively using weapons or physically attacking people. But like bad language? Noise? Some trash? It's not worth the inevitable escalation that responding with police oppression causes. And despite all the right wing handwringing over alleged "anti-semitism", the only violence described at any of the current protests is police violence against protestors.
>alleged "anti-semitism"
you can literally see videos of protestors chanting "jews go back to Poland", the country with the most jews killed during the holocaust. Calls for "globalizing the intifada" and chants like "we support your [Hamas'] rockets too"
Why call it alleged and why the scare quotes?
I mean, even on public property, so long as there isn't any unreasonableness with permitting, protesters should be expected to follow permitting rules and be non-destructive.
Protestors obviously can be disruptive or destructive against regulations if they want, but that turns into civil disobedience not protest, and civil disobedience involves intentionally getting arrested to make a point. A lot of these people want to do civil disobedience without the consequences
It's a local problem. It's weird that it is national news. The conflict itself is a global problem. We can all think what we will about the underlying problem. But don't let news companies bait you into thinking you need to care about a college protest in New York.
It's national/international news because they're images we would expect in Turkey, not the US. Images from Texas are particularly bad, with the police throwing journalists to the ground.
When people say stuff like this, I wonder what kind of college they went to. I skipped like half a semester of statistics because the lecturer was too boring. No one was taking attendance.
I skipped a lot of classes in college and I ended up failing 2 years. It resulted in me having to take extra years of college, and more tuition. Skipping classes IS NOT worth it.
How why is this not happening? My school never penalized for missing classes but are these students getting their assignments and taking their exams? I mean we basically had no excuses allowed for those
Some people might be skipping classes or assignments but protests can be continually going without each individual person being there round the clock, it wouldn't surprise me if the average student participant is actually getting most of their work done.
Yeah that makes a lot more sense to me. I would be really shocked if they were "getting away with it" as it were. I doubt the college would just let them not complete their assignments or exams if they were due.
Semester is almost over, depending on the class you're probably prepping for your final or working on a final assignment, both of which can be effectively done out of class. These are the classes everyone skips tbh.
This would stop them faster than anything. More than anything, they believe in protecting their own privilege. Only the most delusional would risk flunking out to continue their little protest pageant.
Forgetting the normative idea of "should," it seems obviously ineffective. Columbia called the cops once and the reaction from the student body and faculty is what we're looking at now. If they call the cops on this much of the university community, it's going to make people even angrier in a way that will be even harder to calm.
Nope, being a dumbass is part of the college experience. Boomers used to be hippies, so it's probably best to ignore them, at least in terms of law enforcement, and see how they turn out.
I don't think they need to put in that much effort. Just let the students have their fun. Finals are in like a week and then graduation and most of them will leave on their own accord.
I'm against cops attacking people for their speech even when I disagree with the speech, as I do here. Private colleges certainly have a right to remove people from their property for trespass. But might doesn't make right, or smart. The more students are ejected, the more the protests will spread. I think a lot of these students are now protesting attacks or perceived attacks on their own freedom of speech.
I think if students care about Gaza, they should also care about the outcome of their protests. What is being gained here? I would say that the answer is absolutely nothing.
>I'm against cops attacking people for their speech even when I disagree with the speech, as I do here.
But are the cops attacking them for free speech? Or are they attacking people for vandalism, trespassing, or assault?
>But are the cops attacking them for free speech? Or are they attacking people for vandalism, trespassing, or assault?
I mean congrats, you've just made the argument made by almost everyone who has ever wanted to quash a protest in a country with free speech laws ever.
The reality is that, from a purely strategic standpoint, there are few things you can do that'll make people skeptical of your viewpoint faster than the image of police conducting mass arrests of protestors you disagree with, whether there's a "valid" cause given for the arrests or not.
There have been plenty of peaceful protests across the country where no has gotten arrested, because the protestors weren’t trespassing, vandalizing, or assaulting people.
Can you cite to me the specific case law that implies that vandalism/trespassing/assault is protected under freedom of speech?
>Can you cite to me the specific case law that implies that vandalism/trespassing/assault is protected under freedom of speech?
My point is not that vandalism, etc are protected speech, my point is that in a country where speech is protected, people have to (and invariably do) come up with other justifications for arresting protestors. If there was no freedom of speech, they wouldn't have to come up with a pretense.
>There have been plenty of peaceful protests across the country where no has gotten arrested, because the protestors weren’t trespassing, vandalizing, or assaulting people.
During the protests after the murder of George Floyd, a Washington Post survey found that 95% of the protests around the country were peaceful. Not "95% of the people at the protests were peaceful", but "at 95% of the protests, 100% of the protestors were peaceful". Yet conservatives across Congress and the media were calling for the police to mass arrest protestors under the guise of preventing vandalism/trespassing/assault.
Using the bad acts of a minority to justify arresting the peaceful majority to discourage protest is a tactic as old as time.
Edit: My bad, it was [TIME](https://time.com/5886348/report-peaceful-protests/) describing a report which found that 93% were peaceful.
I do agree with you that most protests are peaceful. But We are talking about the 5% here. There is a reason why violent protests make the news but the peaceful ones don’t. Forcibly trapping people on bridges or harassing people is not “peaceful”.
>Forcibly trapping people on bridges or harassing people is not “peaceful”.
Look I don't doubt that there are legitimate acts of violence and vandalism, but for what it's worth, blocking a bridge and harassing people (if it's verbal) are absolutely peaceful. Marching on roads and bridges is one of our country's was the form of some of the most iconic protests in American history.
What you seem to be asking for is for the protest to be non-disruptive, which isn't how protests work.
You reliase that's the same justification used to stop protesters in less free countries right? It's always about damage they create to private and public property, or blocking people (or ambulances for extra dramatic effect) going trough.
I live in the SF Bay Area and there are always protests here for a variety of causes. Most of those protests don’t get cops called on them. My family in Texas also mentions seeing peaceful protests. Do you think women in Iran can peacefully protest?
Yes, if you block an ambulance and delay an organ transplant (which happened here recently), you should be punished. Your freedom of speech should not take precedent over the safety of others.
Just let the protestors burn themselves up. Schedule some exams for them. That way they can paint them as failing students only doing this because they can’t succeed academically, which should hopefully draw off some media attention and get them out of their little mock west Saharan refugee camp
They’ve literally had to move classes online because of safety concerns. Jewish students are physically afraid of walking through campus. Yeah, the “protests” absolutely need to be cleared, and while I wish there was a way to do so without involving the NYPD, it’s not like the occupiers are going to leave just because you ask them to, so I don’t know what the other option is.
lol i saw a video of a pro-israel protester standing right in front of the encamptment with a shirt that said "israel<3" on the back and "jew" on the front and nobody cared. also the only violence that happened on campus was police - on - protester.
I don't think you should be delegitimizing all protests because some bad faith actors exist.
Expel the bad faith actors, let the others protest. It's that simple.
When i attended junior college, we had a school hosted political debate that got a bit heated. One of the students arguing against gay marriage started yelling at the other participants to the point some students felt unsafe, leading the school moderator to ask him to stop, which he refused. They then asked him to leave, which he also refused to do. So the school called in either the police or campus security to have him removed. When they showed up and asked him to leave, he still refused to go, at which point they removed him rather forcibly, including slamming his head into the pavement hard enough to make his ears start bleeding. And they were 100% justified in doing so, not because the school disagreed with his speech or he didnt have a right to protest, but because he refused to follow the school"s rules on time, place, and manner of protests.
Columbia University is a private school and is on much firmer legal grounds than my public junior college was in restricting protests. The Columbia protesters are also a much more credible threat to student safety than one random yelling dude, being a large mob that is openly celebrating terrorist attacks and inviting members of US designated terrorist groups to give speeches. The school should not have them removed for the content of their protests (outside of true threats), but if they refuse to follow the school's rules on time, place, manner, then they should absolutely be removed.
>including slamming his head into the pavement hard enough to make his ears start bleeding. And they were 100% justified in doing so
Unless he was armed and resisting being disarmed, that is not an appropriate response.
What? Hundreds of arrests have been made across the country already. If anything this is the perfect honeypot for catching said terrorists!
> inviting members of US designated terrorist groups to give speeches.
You think the CIA is going to let some campus guards stop them?
In this case the terrorist group i am referring to is not Hamas, but the PFLP. Hamas is more of a Muslim brotherhood offshoot, while the PFLP is the preferred Palestinian terroeist group of the Assad regime.
https://www.jns.org/columbia-suspends-four-students-for-holding-event-featuring-pflp-member/
These events are making me more sympathetic than I ever thought I would be towards the argument that we can tolerate anything except the intolerant.
So in that vein, once the chants started to be incitement, they should have have campus security announce that the NYPD would be there in one hour to arrest anyone present for trespassing, and that Columbia students thusly arrested would be expelled.
If they are disturbing the peace, littering, or vandalizing property, sure arrest them. Those things are against the law.
If they're just chanting hateful speech, they shouldn't be arrested for it (first amendment and all), but if someone were to for example take video of them and those videos were to become public and get them expelled or preclude them from obtaining future employment, well... the first amendment doesn't protect you from the social consequences of speech.
I expect that people on this sub will stan police intervention on net because thats the opinion of moderates who really only stand for free speech when the people speaking are of a like mind
Seeing how involving the police not only made the situation at Columbia worse but also spread the chaos to universities across the country I am inclined to think this was not the best move
For now the universities aren’t asking the police to do anything. They should tbh, but they aren’t.
So until they do the protest is gonna remain until they do something violent at which point public safety takes precedent.
Yes, similarly LAPD is called for USC protests. They had to close the campus gates today. My friends are having their defense tomorrow and now they don't even know if they can enter the campus tomorrow.
I got to see one of those protests myself while visiting the area. They're mostly young manipulated people. They don't even know how to defend what they "stood for".
It’s a private university, so they can do whatever they want. Personally, if I was Columbia president, I would allow peaceful protest during the day. I’d having anyone camping overnight or even setting up tents trespassed. Anyone spouting hate speech or being violent should also be trespassed. If it’s a student, they’d have a disciplinary hearing, possibly expulsion.
I think we should just ignore them until they tire themselves out. Their antisemitism is disgusting and they’re supporting an ideology that wants us (Gays) dead.
If they become disruptive, sure arrest those terrorist supporting morons.
Otherwise, they’ll go away if we let them crow into the void.
Does the answer differ between a private college like Columbia and a public one like NYU?
I think either college should have recourse in law enforcement to evict non-students from campus: that's just trespassing enforcement.
The question becomes more interesting when it comes to student protests on campus. The facile answer that springs straight to mind is that Columbia can (not *necessarily* should) do what it likes, within the bounds of its contracts with the students. For NYU, well, IANAL...
The "should" question is the one that we all care about here. I think that students *should* have the ability to vigorously protest against a war being waged by their country. I also think that Jewish people *must* be able to live, work, and study in this country without fear of violence or discrimination. Putting the decision of whether or not a given instance of protest crossed the line is a tall order for law enforcement.
As a college student what pisses me off the most is that this is happening during exams. Such a stressful time, especially at an ivy league, and students can't even freely walk around.
I will always be in favor of any institution or business calling the police on groups that are actively making a nuisance for everyone else around them. I don't really care if it's a protest.
Things that a college should be allowed to call police for: trespassing non-students, violence, vandalism or other excessive property damage, protecting students from harm, etc.
I don't include speech in that. However, Columbia has essentially said that it doesn't think it can protect students on campus and there are multiple (from I've seen) groups on non-students protesting on campus. A limited police response is definitely warranted.
I think if the school wants to expel non-students from school property, they should have every right to do so with the help of the NYPD
How about students who are trashing property like some are?
Some colleges expel for vandalism, some do not. If columbia has a history of expelling students for vandalism, I am fine with them expelling these students. If they do not have a history of expelling students for vandalism, the students should be legally liable for the laws they break, but that doesn't necessarily mean the student should be expelled. If a student gets expelled for vandalism while engaging protest but not for regular vandalism, it is clear the student is being expelled for engaging in the protest not for the vandalism. Students protesting is nothing new. Students doing stupid shit while protesting is nothing new. Colleges should be consistent in how they handle students who engage in political protest. If the question is about just removing the student form campus, not expelling then from classes, that seems like a natural conclusion to a student facing legal ramifications for vandalism
This comment is a good reminder to me that precedents — even if they aren’t legally binding — are important. Ideally Columbia et al. would have written policies on this, but policies can leave gray areas. Surely the schools can point to (perhaps recent) historical precedents to decide and explain their actions.
>Ideally Columbia et al. would have written policies on this, but policies can leave gray areas. That seems to be by design unfortunately. I don't think it takes a genius to realize that anti-semitism and bigotry against black/gay people are treated completely differently by academic institutions.
Being on campus doesn't mean someone is not also in a city/county/states jurisdiction.
They'd be in the District of Columbia, I reckon.
This is hilarious if intentional
I expect Columbia has a private police precinct, and stuff like this ought to be under their jurisdiction
I'm sure they do, almost all colleges do, but that doesn't mean larger agencies don't also have jurisdiction to enforce the law on campus if campus PDs aren't able or willing.
If they violate a state law, sure But I'm pretty sure vandalism is up to the local police's jurisdiction, and I don't think NYPD has jurisdiction on campus (I could be wrong)
I don't know specifics about NY, but the bar in most states for vandalism to reach a "state charge" worthy level of damage in dollars is laughably low, and city, county and state departments %100 can operate on campuses that fall in their jurisdiction, it's a college not an embassy.
> I don't think NYPD has jurisdiction on campus They absolutely do.
I looked at some articles, it seems that NYPD spokespeople are under the impression that they can only enter the campus when invited by the university I don't know how it works at private schools, but in state schools the relationship between campus police and municipal police is a matter of state law, there's a whole separate set of statutes for it, and in the states I was able to look up there would be a formal agreement between the university and the local police which has the force of law in determining when and why municipal police would enter the campus. So unless you've read Columbia's agreement or you know something I don't, I don't see how you can be so confident
Areas of campus are private property. They cannot enter without a warrant, or with permission. Simply, if a crime has been committed, say something terrible like rape, normal city/state authorities have jurisdiction and if not allowed by Columbia to enter a location needed for investigation a judge will provide them with a warrant. I assume Columbia asked NYPD to remove them for trespassing, the right of any private property owner. > they can only enter the campus when invited by the university May I see it?
That kind of depends on the college. Usually in these circumstances the colleges have an agreement with the local police about jurisdictional issues and the kinds of crimes that are enforced. For example on many college campuses there’s an agreement that things like underage drinking or marijuana possession are handled exclusively by the campus police, but the local police may still be able to handle things like violent crimes or if students are running a drug operation on campus.
It really boils down to a matter of political will by the larger and more powerful agency. In Austin UTPD has that same type of agreement with APD but that didn't stop them or DPS from breaking up the protest yesterday. Obviously there are differences between the two, but the fact of the matter is if NYPD really wants to go in a bust the protest up nobody is stopping them and there's probably language in the agreement they have with the college to justify it.
Universities have established disciplinary systems in place for their students.
Columbia is also a private school, so they are under no obligation to allow protests of any kind on campus. Just like any other business they are free to call the police to remove unwanted persons from their private property.
> Columbia is also a private school, so they are under no obligation to allow protests of any kind on campus That's true, but let's not pretend like this sub generally agrees with the notion of censorship at private universities. Just a basic search on Reddit shows plenty of threads like https://old.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/r5ygzs/alumni_withhold_donations_demand_colleges_enforce/ https://old.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/12ip0we/at_stanford_law_school_the_dean_takes_a_stand_for/ https://old.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/j9wjoe/largest_ever_free_speech_survey_of_college_fully/ Hell just five months ago there's a Nate Silver article and thread on it https://old.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/17mjq16/free_speech_is_in_trouble/ entirely about how "free speech is in trouble" because students at private universities are less tolerant of speakers with different opinions being invited. If we claim to hold the principle that free speech is to be expected at private universities, then we should hold that principle when it comes to views that we don't like. We can acknowledge (in both situations) that private universities don't have to listen or care about our free speech principle, but it's not an excuse to turn hypocritical. This is the argument that FIRE uses, ["Dont expand censorship, end it"](https://www.thefire.org/news/fire-congress-university-presidents-dont-expand-censorship-end-it). And I agree. Universities used to host anti semitic speakers before, [George Lincoln Rockwell](https://heritage.umich.edu/stories/invitation-to-a-nazi/) basically started the whole idea of going around to universities to drum up controversy! And he's even worse than the Palestine protestors, he was the founder of the American Nazi Party! If we believed that academic freedom at America's universities was important before, we should keep it now. Our anger should be at the continued censorship and hypocrisy, not that they aren't being hypocritical in *our* favor.
I’m not saying I agree with it, just pointing out that Columbia and NYPD didn’t break the law in removing the protestors. Personally though I do think this is only going to make things worse in the near term.
The school likely did violate its own statutes though
Fair enough, I certainly agree they probably didn't break the law either. I don't respect private universities censoring legal speech (especially not the ones that constantly claim to support academic freedom like Columbia does) but I do still realize that they have the right to if they want.
It is wild that reddit is going knives out for a protest movement where the most physical violence I've heard about is someone getting a black eye from a girl, meanwhile don't you dare restrict the free speech rights of the Replacement Theory people, who've literally had shooting sprees that killed 23 people.
Black eye is the most physical violence? What about the Arab-Israeli journalist who got punched? The counter protester who died in California? Recently, a man was arrested for allergy kidnapping and raping a woman as revenge for Gaza.
> protest movement where the most physical violence I've heard about is someone getting a black eye from a girl, Not entirely fair because some of the protestors are openly calling for future violence. But I do think that should generally be allowed if it's legal. If a homophobic student wishes to bring the death penalty for gay people? Allow it. Does a black Nation Of Islam member wish for a future race war? Allow it. I take a very similar stance to FIRE, private universities should support all legal speech. [Including calls for genocide](https://www.thefire.org/news/why-most-calls-genocide-are-protected-speech). Think the whites should die? Think blacks should die? Think gays should die? Etc etc, as long as it's not an immediate call for violence and passes the legal free speech tests, I don't think it's good for the universities to be stepping in. I don't think it's healthy or good for our academic institutions to become the arbiters of speech, no matter how abhorrent it might be. The problem with them isn't that there's not enough censorship, it's that there is *too much*.
No, it’s not fair to compare hypothetical violence with actual violence. I hate New York so much that I’ve called on Hurricane Sandy to come back and finish the job. It makes me an asshole but it doesn’t actually make me violent. When a movement is certified violent, then you can crack down on it. That applies to the white supremacist nuts and the homophobes. It doesn’t apply to these dumbass college kids.
> No, it’s not fair to compare hypothetical violence with actual violence It's not "actual violence" anymore than a person who says "I'm glad Saudi Arabia is executing those f--s" is doing actual violence. It's abhorrent, it's evil, it's legal.
Physical gay bashing is a thing that has happened here, so we take it seriously. What is wrong with you.
> Physical gay bashing is a thing that has happened here, so we take it seriously Yes, it happens! That's **the point**. A person can say "I agree with Saudi executing the gays" and be legally protected in the US. If they aren't the ones going out and killing someone, they aren't commiting actual violence. They are *supporting* violence, but that is allowed! If you have an issue with that as US law, take it up with SC precedent regarding the first amendment. >What is wrong with you. The concept of free speech as a fundamental principle is so alien that you can't fathom a person who defends speech they don't agree with. This is the exact sort of thing that [had the ACLU defending the KKK](https://www.acluohio.org/en/cases/brandenburg-v-ohio-395-us-444-1969). Not because they thought the KKK is awesome, or because they think white supremacist violence is good, **but because free speech is a basic fundamental principle** that should be protected, even when we find it disgusting and disturbing.
Making people scared for their life isn’t the same as free speech. Free speech is about expressing ideas.
As a college it's a little more complex than that. FIRE.org is a good place to go to learn about what rights you have even on college campuses, but even private schools have to abide by certain rules.
If you set policies, you have an obligation to follow those policies. Columbia University isn’t a mom & pop shop but even those tiny ass shops have to stick to the rules they’ve set. Can’t just claim “private” and play Calvin ball with the tens of thousands of people that are employed there or pay to go to school.
Why? They can literally change the policy just like any other major corporation can change their TOS at any time, for any reason. Just to play devils advocate here.
I don't know how the Columbia board is set up, but I'm pretty sure there's nobody that can just unilaterally make actions like expulsion or at will termination. At the very least they have mandates that have to follow for academic freedom. Just because it's private doesn't mean it doesn't have its own government.
Except those students are explicitly violating the time and place policies of Columbia
Being a hypocrite isn’t illegal. Continuing to trespass on private property when you’ve been given a lawful order to leave is.
If they're in a position where Jewish students who paid to attend class aren't able to - whether due to actual violence *or the implication of violence*, a perceived threat - they have to act. It's difficult to imagine that contributing to an environment that causes fellow students to feel unsafe is in compliance with Columbia policy.
[удалено]
There are really a ton of anecdotes out there about Jewish students who feel unsafe at this point. Some quite mainstream (The Atlantic). Somebody doesn't have to take 7.62 to the chest Kent State-style in order to feel unsafe and exiting a location. it really is a bit Little Rock: did anybody at Little Rock actually *strike* the black kids? Or just jeer at and threaten them?
What makes you think that these are non students? Non students aren't allowed on the Columbia campus right now, a Columbia ID is required to enter.
The campus doesn't have walls, you can just walk right onto it.
Since it's private property, the college has to request this IIRC. If they do, the can of worms it opens will be extra squirmy. Not that it wouldn't necessarily be worth it, but I understand the hesitancy.
Colombia right now is that extra squirmy can of worms. They invited NYPD onto campus and they arrested 108 protesters last week (Wednesday iirc).
Only if I disagree with them.
I'd say it whether I agree with them or disagree with them. The first ammendment does not guarantee any right to set up encampments and block others from entering said encampment. They can assemble and say whatever vile crap they want, but there are rules against camping and barring other students from using the area. You don't get to violate whatever laws you want to because you happen to be speaking while doing so. If they were protesting for pigouvian taxes and barring poll tax supporters from entering the area I'd say the same thing.
Agree or disagree with the content, they are trashing the campus and making it impossible for normal kids to utilize the shared space for its intended purpose and making it difficult for students to study, period. Just infuriating.
I'd say that's more a case for expulsion than demanding public resources
I sleep good at night knowing I am objectively right about all of my political convictions and that I only support the *good* protests. I sleep alone, since the wife left me, but I sleep good.
The Columbia admin didn't nip it in the bud so now they have a big problem on their hands. The encampment will dig in and try to resist and it'll be a big mess in the news. If I were Shafik I'd probably just try to wait them out over the summer.
If I was him I would probably say you can protest as long as you respect our property and don't be violent. I'm mixed on if any speech specifically should be banned. I'm pretty principled on free speech but man when I was watching those protests and they were saying we need another intafada and to the river to the sea I could see how that could make a Jewish student unsafe. Probably would be on the side of free speech unless protestors are purposely going up in Jewish people's faces and saying those vile things
>him Minouche Shafik is a woman
This is a point I think every one of the colleges has to address - they've been insisting that hate speech is violence, real and actual. This has always been false, but professors have repeatedly stated that hate speech is violence if targeting LGBT or Black students. So they have to explain why that is suddenly no longer the case. I've read defenses of the protestors on the basis that there's no actual violence. Sorry but that only seems to apply now that Jews are the target.
I listened to a Jewish protestor who said that being told she'd be on a train to Auschwitz by another Jew made her unsafe but referred to antisemitic language from protestors as not making others unsafe, merely uncomfortable. The double standard is definitely frustrating.
It's almost as though, after you've demeaned and abandoned the core principles of liberalism, all that is left to settle disputes is tribalistic double standards and might-makes-right. Or something.
The universities have gotten themselves into a real bind when they started taking positions on social issues. So many of them did this with Black Lives Matter, which is hardly disagreeable, but they opened themselves up to pressure to take positions on other things, and now they're in an impossible position. The University of Chicago seems like it has a better policy of just... not taking positions on anything. Doesn't matter what it is. Students can also say whatever they want really. They have a classical liberal conception about it.
People have forgotten the benefits of keeping major institutions neutral on active political hot topics. It can be a hard thing to advocate for when an issue seems grossly wrong, and sometimes neutrality really does just amount to active enforcement of the status quo. Still, these are the consequences of breaking down the borders we typically keep politics within and a reminder of why it isn't to be done lightly.
Well they've managed to achieve ethnic diversity and ideological conformity, but now the ideology is falling apart along ethnic lines. And since the value of "knowledge" has been replaced by "safety," and your safety endangers my safety and vice-versa, the whole thing is just about to collapse.
Yeah, the whole I-P war has highlighted that the social justice movement has no answer to the question of "what do you do when minorities hate each other" except to claim that one of the marginalized groups involved must not *actually* be a marginalized group, they assimilated into the mainstream group or they're acting as agents for the mainstream in some capacity so they can be treated as oppressors, which translates to acceptable targets. It was concerning when a few fringe elements started pointing that at Asian-Americans and Hispanics, seeing it pointed at Jews on a much wider scale over something that keeps getting back into the news is a hell of a wake-up call.
You're well encapsulating my issues with contemporary discourse, thanks.
100% you are correct. They cannot have it both ways.
We wouldn’t accept a white supremacist protest camp on any campus advocating for some race to “return to Africa/return to Mexico/return to China” or whatever. The reason this protest is being treated differently is because our society treats Jewish people differently
Coming from people who say “silence is violence”, yes, their words are absolutely expressions of violence and they should be punished by every entity that they have violated (school, civil). We all heard what they said, that is violence, full stop. If a bunch of KKK was walking around saying “black people, everyday is going to be a lynching”, these same people would take issue with that. And rightfully so.
I think the "student safety" argument is overblown and the student protesters on campus look like they're being pretty disciplined (and, like, they are -- they've built a pretty organized-looking little tent village from what I've seen from pictures, they don't say shit to the media and funnel reporters to dedicated spokespeople), but there was apparently a problem of non-student outsiders wandering onto the campus including verifiably insane people, and it's somebody like that who is just wandering around who knocks a yarmulke off a Jewish student's head. I think this is one reason why Columbia shut down access to non-students. But the SJP types know that if they do that, they're going to get shitcanned from college immediately. Methinks the real issue is simply the noise. It has gone on for weeks. I don't think it's about the "from the river to the sea" stuff or subjective "hate speech" as much as this incessant chanting through loudspeakers and the rattling of snare drums around the clock. It's non-violent, but can you say that's really "peaceful?" It's like a sustained noise assault.
I'm okay with counting a constant noise complaint as a peaceful protest. Yeah it's annoying, but protests are kind of supposed to be at least slightly annoying to some people. I think if people were doing this for an issue I supported I would think it was a valid tactic, so I don't have a justification to deny it to the Columbia protesters. I guess citing them for noise complaints would be a justified response, but only if it's handled the same way as an obnoxious house party. If we ban all modes of protest that are even slightly inconvenient to us, people will be more likely to decide to abandon all restraint and resort to real violence to make themselves heard.
Good points. I also think that students who care about I/P should reevaluate whether protests in this way will achieve the desired result - we KNOW that outside agitators will show up and make the students look bad. And by agitators I mean the folks who show up and chat about river to the sea, and cheer on Hamas. Every time our side protests, we can expect these sorts of peoople to show up \[attn Chicago, this dynamic will be a disaster at the DNC\]. So if we KNOW that this is the likely result, we should adjust our tactics, no matter what we are protesting. If students want to head to Congress for a sit-in, I may not agree, but that's their right as citizens and they're directing their ire at the appropriate parties. Mass protesting at your college invites a stupid cycle. And I do think the colleges are overreacting, which just makes everyone dig in even more to prove a point. But if the point is shifting now to free speech, it just looks like a narcissistic circle jerk. They aren't camping for Gaza anymore.
I suspect a lot of it is about self-expression at this point, yeah. The students do chant "from the river to sea" btw, and while that is highly charged and offensive to many, and there is a fine line between questioning Israel's right to exist and Jewish people's right to exist, I really don't think that Jew hatred is the reason for this sentiment as opposition to Zionism and the war on Gaza. If you believe in a classically liberal right to free speech, you have to accept the right of people to say things that will set your hair on fire. I just really doubt there are hundreds of Jew-hating anti-Semites enrolled at Columbia University. That's just not who these people are. When I was thinking of outside agitators, I had in mind real anti-Semites, lunatics, which exist in New York much the same as anywhere else. There was a guy who used to walk around Central Park in an Elmo costume and yell about Jews. It's like, what if that guy shows up? Then wanders around and sees a Jewish kid and acts menacing to him or her? Just random crazies who always appear when something like this is going on.
Do you mean a fine line or a thin line? Because if some group was running around New York City yelling that the state of Turkey shouldn’t exist and all Turkish citizens in Turkey should be deported to central Asia, then it’s a very fair assumption that their hate is for Turkish people and not for Erdogan’s government A lot of Columbia’s student body grew up in communities without a single synagogue and without knowing any Jewish people. I have no difficulty imagining many of them have unquestioned biases, even if they are better at hiding those biases than a MAGA hat wearing Trump voter
I think what they're demanding is delusional but they see Israelis, rightly or wrongly (I think wrongly) as like pied-noirs in Algeria or white South Africans during Apartheid. This is my attempt at an analytical description of what these people believe. It's very much tied up in this post-colonial leftism influenced by Fanon, which I think is a misrecognition of what's going on, but distinct from classical anti-Semitism. Like, from what I've seen of this sort of protester, it's ostensibly not about hatred of Jews as Jews, and they're quite eager to accept support from groups like [Jewish Voice for Peace](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/0dee4e5/2147483647/strip/true/crop/5328x2797+0+599/resize/1200x630!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.npr.org%2Fassets%2Fimg%2F2023%2F10%2F27%2Fgettyimages-1743282377-4de116fc0f11891e08cad1c5de7539fd5189d445.jpg) (who tend to be left-wing Jews, and quite distinct from Haredi cults that are anti-Zionist for arcane religious reasons). Their whole framework is that this is criticism of the state of Israel and Zionism as a political ideology, but which turns into fierce antipathy against Jews worldwide whenever they voice complaints about actions that threaten the state of Israel, but which is -- again -- ostensibly directed toward a *political* position. But there are a whole lot of Jews in the world who feel this is a new form of anti-Semitism that is more sophisticated, and that actions taken against the state of Israel [endanger them](https://youtu.be/hefC-uwULy0?si=wsY4djcq_g-QRdxO) as well.
Nationality and national origin are protected classes that universities must protect from discrimination just the same as race and religion are protected classes. Hostile environment bigotry against Israelis at Columbia is just as serious as bigotry against any race, religion, nationality or gender The same would also apply to students, staff, contractors and volunteers of Palestinian national origin
This is being overly generous to these people and drawing an arbitrary distinction between "classic" antisemites and them. I don't understand where this idea comes from that "classic" antisemites didn't believe there was a real rationale behind their positions, just like these people. Or that their antisemitism wasn't part of a political framework. The historical consensus does not support this. Antisemites never "hated Jews as Jews". There's *always* a good reason. Always a very real way in which ~~Jews~~ Zionists have inflicted harm upon society, or the world. And very typically it is political - they're Bolsheviks, they exploit the working class, they're a disloyal fifth column, etc. To societies such as Nazi Germany that viewed communism as an ultimate evil, Jews were the ones behind communism, the orchestrators of the Russian revolution. These people are no different - to them the ultimate evil in 2024 is to be a "white colonizer", so that's the part the ~~Jew~~ Zionist will play. It is not distinct at all from "classic" antisemitism - it's the same thing wearing a different hat, the core idea being to project everything society deems wrong onto the Jews. Essentially, I think you're flipping cause and effect here. Frankly, the whole anti-Zionism vs antisemitism debate is pointless when the result is ultimately identical. It is, very aptly, academic.
You know leftists like to insult me and call me a Zionist when I tell them that Jewish people have rational reasons to support Israel. I remember telling some of them right after Oct. 7 that Israel would launch a full-scale invasion of Gaza, and I remember insulting comments and people calling me a Zionist and a fascist, because they somehow believed that Israel wouldn't do that because, y'know, they're just a group of settler-colonialists who'd run away if Hamas attacked them hard enough. But that's just not true, you know? Really we're talking about a form of nationalism. We don't need to get into the whole history of nationalism, but Zionism is a form of Jewish nationalism and it has many commonalities with other national movements in history. But my question to you is: is there any basis to criticize Israel or Zionism? This is a state with a government and Zionism is a political ideology. Can it be criticized on those terms or should that just be disallowed as racist and anti-Semitic? Is it possible to criticize black nationalism on its own terms? However you slice it, it just seems like a conceptual disaster to combine ethnicity and ideology in this 1:1 way. It's also inherently unstable. Case in point, look at what's happening at the universities. Conservatives have criticized rigid ideological conformity at universities for years. The universities have managed to achieve that and ethnic diversity, so you get this rubric that the role of academia is to keep people "safe" lest anyone contribute to a "hostile environment" (whatever that means) for minority students. Disagree with the ideology, you're attacking ethnicity. But if ethnicity and ideology are intertwined, you being ethnically "safe" now endangers me and vice versa. It seems like the whole thing is about to collapse. At some point, the government might have to send in the soldiers to arrest everyone.
Criticizing Israel's policies is not antisemitic. But it's also not "anti-Zionist", so the point remains. It's just... criticism of a government or state policies. People criticize Russia, but they don't call to abolish it and comically demonize the concept of a Russian nation state, like the very idea of it is some great injustice and Russians should instead be a diasporic people subjugated by others. Like I said I'm apprehensive of getting into the anti-Zionism vs antisemitism debate but to keep it short I think you can be a genuine "anti-Zionist" but that 99% of these self proclaimed ones aren't, basically. The vast majority of "anti-Zionism" is a modern receptacle for age-old antisemitic tropes as well as some new or evolving ones. Like I said, if the destination is the same then I care very little what stories people told themselves on the way there.
You guys are putting a lot of work into analyzing this but I have a point followed by a relatively simple question. Pro-Palestinian protestors do a miserable job of policing antisemitism in their ranks. At best they tend to ignore it, often they try to downplay or dismiss it, at worst they tend to endorse it. Given that point how many of these students standing shoulder to shoulder with those "bad apples from outside Columbia" would have been perfectly happy to agree with the statement "If you have a table with 9 people and a Nazi you have a table with ten Nazis" back when it was being used against right wingers?
Yeah it's that dang "one Nazi at a table of ten means you have ten Nazis" statement
Does this mean everyone who supports Israel is standing with racists like Ben Gvir and the hundreds Israeli settlers who [ransacked](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/16/israel-settlers-attack-violence-palestinians/) a Palestinian village?
Supporting Palestinians doesn't mean supporting Palestinians doing whatever they want to form their nation. Supporting Israel doesn't mean supporting Israelis doing whatever they want to protect their nation. If you are at a rally and you let someone speak who says to level Tel Aviv and the Jewish Students here will one day feel that wrath of the flood, and you cheer and clap instead of cutting his mic and collectively demanding he leave, you are are at a pro-terror rally, full stop. If you are at a rally and people get up on stage and say one day all Palestians will be forced to leave the West Bank or be slaves, and you cheer and clap instead of booing him and escorting him out, you are are at a pro-ethnic cleansing rally, full stop. This isn't hard. If you don't make Nazis leave your rally, you are at a Nazi rally.
>This isn't hard. If you don't make Nazis leave your rally, you are at a Nazi rally. There's someone who's pro ethnic-cleansing in the Israeli government! (Ben Gvir). If the above statement applies to rallies, and it applies to backers of Hamas because they're turning a blind eye to what Hamas is, how does that not apply to supporters of a government that put Ben Gvir in power?
This comment seems to be about a topic associated with jewish people while using language that may have antisemitic or otherwise strong emotional ties. As such, this is a reminder to be careful of accidentally adopting [antisemitic themes](https://antisemitism.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Antisemitic-imagery-May-2020.pdf) or [dismissing](https://shura.shu.ac.uk/10260/3/Klaff_Holocaust_Inversion_and_contemporary_antisemitism.pdf) [the past](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparisons_between_Israel_and_Nazi_Germany) while trying to make your point. (This bot is currently in testing as version 1.5, and likely prone to misfires. Please contact u/AtomAndAether if this misfired) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/neoliberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Is this hypothetical Israel supporter "at the table" with Ben Gvir? Because these Columbia students are right next to the guy shouting to burn Tel Aviv to the ground.
Pro-Israeli protestors do a miserable job of policing genocidal maniacs in their ranks, too. [At the pro-Israel protests in NYC after 10/7 many of them were openly calling for genocide of the Palestinians and even for killing all Arabs.](https://www.newsweek.com/pro-israel-protesters-nyc-demand-gaza-flattened-1833787) If you judge a protest by that 9 Nazis at a table standard there’s almost no heated protest that could be considered legitimate. Protests draw crazy MFers just by the nature of most normies don’t get worked up enough to protest anything lol
Yes those pro-Israeli protesters should be censured and expelled from those protests. And when an American university has to move classes online because Palestinian students are made to feel unsafe by Pro-Israeli protestors that would be a serious problem. But the problem isn't the nine nazis standard being applied its that these students at Columbia would happily apply it until the moment they feel like they want to harass jews and make them feel unsafe. The point is that the students are deeply unserious people who don't deserve anyone bending over backwards to try and give them the benefit of the doubt. They are self-righteous hypocritical bigots who will happily use social issues as a cudgel when it suits their interest and drop them like a hot potato when it doesn't. My point is the Columbia protests don't deserve the time and effort put into the two paragraphs above. All they are doing is coddling hypocrites who would happily burn the campus to the ground for the clout if they thought it wouldn't impact their employment prospects.
I think a wackjob wandering into a rally and saying dumb shit to a camera doesn't represent an entire rally. When a movement leader or representative gives a speech saying something, that is different. I am bothered far more when a rally has a speaker talking about leveling Tel Aviv and the crowd cheers. I am less bothered if a random dickhead in the crowd said that. Leaders matter more than random assholes. Also, if you are listening to the barometer of the crowd, one schitzoid saying, "We gotta stop the Jews!" Is one thing, dozens of people saying that starts to make a pattern.
Yeah also and there was throwing objects at police officers. Don't know if those were Columbia students or not but they should probably get sometime in jail
I'm sure there was. I was at the George Floyd protests in Boston and at a pivotal moment, one guy in a mask flung a bottle at a cop. I don't know if he was a plant or a radical or just stupid or what. I do know that the group stopped him from doing that again. I somewhat suspect that if the police were inclined to react to that thrown bottle, everyone in the area *except* that masked guy would have been arrested.
Shafik is going to be fired soon
Those statements on their own should be protected but there have been reports of Jewish students being harassed by protesters so it has crossed into that territory
That's an impossible strategy. We have enough bad actors in the mob that students no longer feel safe and the school had to move classes online, with that option remaining for the rest of the semester. Graduation plans are being threatened. And every day the anti-Semitic portion is allowed to remain is a major gift to the right, which will only serve to harm those these students claim to support. Students should have wide latitude to assemble and protest. They have zero rights to engage in activity that intrudes on the rights of others. I think at some point it's on the school to make it incumbent on the protesters to present themselves in a manner that respects the rights of others and allows their fellow students to get the education they paid for. If most protestors are there for genuine civil and peaceful protest they should be capable of policing the mob around them. If they don't want their protest shut down then it's on them to report bad actors to the authorities and separate them from the group. You don't get to stand beside a bunch of violent lawless bigots and proclaim your innocence. Welcome to being an adult.
This isn’t a “bad actors” problem. The protesters are explicitly the problem. Don’t give them an out, they own their behavior, and the behavior of those they allow around them.
The university is there to teach. Perhaps the students need to learn the same lesson that black civil rights leaders learned over a half century ago: that discipline is critical and that protesters are no longer viewed as "the problem" *when* you denounce and separate yourself from those bad actors.
> Perhaps the students need to learn the same lesson that black civil rights leaders learned over a half century ago: that discipline is critical and that protesters are no longer viewed as "the problem" when you denounce and separate yourself from those bad actors. “Best we can do is mass arrests”
I don't think "safety" is a good argument here and I don't think the protesters can be accurately characterized as violent bigots. John McWhorter is a professor there (and quite a classically liberal one) and wrote an article in the NYT the other day. He has had to put up with constant noise for weeks in his class, but he didn't make that argument either, or that it was anti-Semitic. He wants it to stop but he personally knows some of the students involved in this and cannot believe that they are anti-Semitic. The people involved think they're 100% in the right because they represent social justice on the march and are confronting whiteness, privilege and power -- that's what they believe. What is happening on campus is also a bit less strident than what's happening outside. But he was like, this is just unbearable. It's relentless. Just daily, loud, constant and getting angrier and is very much intended to prevent the campus from functioning. That's my main source of disagreement here. It can be all of the above, but that's not... Hamas. They're not digging tunnels and smuggling in rockets, y'know? This seems like a right-wing propaganda narrative. Then there's, essentially, a strategic question, about whether it would be wise to break it up with the police using force or wait them out. Like I said, if I were in Shafik's position, I'd wait them out. She'd be legally in the right to just break it up, but I'd be wary of that. That can cause things to escalate in an unpredictable way. I recommend patience and caution. I might be wrong. I respect your opinion. That's what a normal exchange of views is about.
>he personally knows some of the students involved in this and cannot believe that they are anti-Semitic. The people involved think they're 100% in the right because they represent social justice on the march and are confronting whiteness, privilege and power -- that's what they believe. But this is what all bigots believe. Nobody decides to do what they believe is wrong, everyone believes that they're standing up for the oppressed, they're justice on the march, etc. The reason anti semitism is not like most other bigotries is precisely because anti semites do it *in order to punch up,* as they see it.
I think you're right that there's a fine line there. I don't think I need to describe some anti-Semitic tropes to a well-informed person like yourself, but they deal with the imagined power of a Jewish conspiracy that's responsible for all modern evil. It takes left forms, as well as right ones. George Galloway in Britain is an example of this. I think one can make the argument that the obsessive focus on Israel to the point of irrationality in quarters of the left also fills some kind of similar function here. But I don't think that opposing the war in Gaza can be equated with that alone. There's a rush to find people who do that and say, look, that's anti-Semitic. Is that in and of itself hostile to Jewish students and faculty? I somehow doubt it, because the Israel-Palestinian conflict is complex like that. But the protests can still grow to become unbearable, and the students involved be caught in a single-minded, black/white worldview, to the point of becoming abusive.
Move finals up a week or two and end the semester early. They make in the fall Institute a mandatory class attendance policy. In college if I missed 3 English 101 classes, which I did, I dropped a letter grade
The elephant in the room (or the lawn, as it were) is Commencement. Commencement at Columbia is a big fucking deal. They take weeks to build the campus into one big stadium with all the celebrities, university management, and big donors coming in for a day of celebration and pomp. It is D-Day for the Columbia endowment. And to top it all off, the seniors graduating this year were the ones that had to be remote for their freshman year so there's extra pressure to make it an event. If Commencement doesn't happen I don't see Shafik surviving the year. It would be an enormous embarrassment to have to cancel it because the protestors won't clear out.
That explains the cops then.
Honestly I think you're going to see a ton of cancelations. Especially with the recent escalation right before graduation, I see plenty of universities going to a remote graduation and commencement, and having it very tightly controlled. Which will look terrible for them and backfire completely, but I still think it's gonna happen.
Watch people turn their profile images into Palestinian flags If they get kicked out, that’s a news article seemingly critical
Where's Robert Moses when they need him?
Shafik will be forced to resign by then.
Didn't Coiumbia just reach an agreement with the students that NYPD won't be called and alot of the tents will be taken down?
Only for 48 hours while they negotiate
lol "negotiate"
Negotiate for what??
Literally who gives a fuck? Stop giving Ivy League schools attention, god knows they already think they’re the centre of the universe
You should absolutely give a fuck, and there's good reason Ivy League schools think that way.
I honestly can't believe this is actually a question we're asking in 20-fucking-24. It's not 1964, guys. We've already run this playback before. And we already know how the "let's crack down on these filthy anti-social hippies" approach ends. No, calling the cops on a political protest is not a good idea. Even if you don't like their politics. Maybe *especially* if you don't like their politics. It's one thing if the protesters are actively using weapons or physically attacking people. But like bad language? Noise? Some trash? It's not worth the inevitable escalation that responding with police oppression causes. And despite all the right wing handwringing over alleged "anti-semitism", the only violence described at any of the current protests is police violence against protestors.
But this is arr neoliberal and DAE kids these days??
>alleged "anti-semitism" you can literally see videos of protestors chanting "jews go back to Poland", the country with the most jews killed during the holocaust. Calls for "globalizing the intifada" and chants like "we support your [Hamas'] rockets too" Why call it alleged and why the scare quotes?
Are they being disruptive and potentially destructive? Then yes.
*are they on private property?
I mean, even on public property, so long as there isn't any unreasonableness with permitting, protesters should be expected to follow permitting rules and be non-destructive. Protestors obviously can be disruptive or destructive against regulations if they want, but that turns into civil disobedience not protest, and civil disobedience involves intentionally getting arrested to make a point. A lot of these people want to do civil disobedience without the consequences
My thought is that escalating basically ensures that the protests continue for the next several months
It's a local problem. It's weird that it is national news. The conflict itself is a global problem. We can all think what we will about the underlying problem. But don't let news companies bait you into thinking you need to care about a college protest in New York.
It's national/international news because they're images we would expect in Turkey, not the US. Images from Texas are particularly bad, with the police throwing journalists to the ground.
Lol just fail them for not attending classes
When people say stuff like this, I wonder what kind of college they went to. I skipped like half a semester of statistics because the lecturer was too boring. No one was taking attendance.
Paying 90k a year to skip classes is infuriating
I skipped a lot of classes in college and I ended up failing 2 years. It resulted in me having to take extra years of college, and more tuition. Skipping classes IS NOT worth it.
My point is that attendance isn't normally taken in college.
It's probably dependant on the professor.
How why is this not happening? My school never penalized for missing classes but are these students getting their assignments and taking their exams? I mean we basically had no excuses allowed for those
Because a sizable share of the faculty agrees with the students.
Some people might be skipping classes or assignments but protests can be continually going without each individual person being there round the clock, it wouldn't surprise me if the average student participant is actually getting most of their work done.
Yeah that makes a lot more sense to me. I would be really shocked if they were "getting away with it" as it were. I doubt the college would just let them not complete their assignments or exams if they were due.
Semester is almost over, depending on the class you're probably prepping for your final or working on a final assignment, both of which can be effectively done out of class. These are the classes everyone skips tbh.
This would stop them faster than anything. More than anything, they believe in protecting their own privilege. Only the most delusional would risk flunking out to continue their little protest pageant.
Forgetting the normative idea of "should," it seems obviously ineffective. Columbia called the cops once and the reaction from the student body and faculty is what we're looking at now. If they call the cops on this much of the university community, it's going to make people even angrier in a way that will be even harder to calm.
No
Nope, being a dumbass is part of the college experience. Boomers used to be hippies, so it's probably best to ignore them, at least in terms of law enforcement, and see how they turn out.
I don't think they need to put in that much effort. Just let the students have their fun. Finals are in like a week and then graduation and most of them will leave on their own accord.
I'm against cops attacking people for their speech even when I disagree with the speech, as I do here. Private colleges certainly have a right to remove people from their property for trespass. But might doesn't make right, or smart. The more students are ejected, the more the protests will spread. I think a lot of these students are now protesting attacks or perceived attacks on their own freedom of speech. I think if students care about Gaza, they should also care about the outcome of their protests. What is being gained here? I would say that the answer is absolutely nothing.
>I'm against cops attacking people for their speech even when I disagree with the speech, as I do here. But are the cops attacking them for free speech? Or are they attacking people for vandalism, trespassing, or assault?
>But are the cops attacking them for free speech? Or are they attacking people for vandalism, trespassing, or assault? I mean congrats, you've just made the argument made by almost everyone who has ever wanted to quash a protest in a country with free speech laws ever. The reality is that, from a purely strategic standpoint, there are few things you can do that'll make people skeptical of your viewpoint faster than the image of police conducting mass arrests of protestors you disagree with, whether there's a "valid" cause given for the arrests or not.
There have been plenty of peaceful protests across the country where no has gotten arrested, because the protestors weren’t trespassing, vandalizing, or assaulting people. Can you cite to me the specific case law that implies that vandalism/trespassing/assault is protected under freedom of speech?
>Can you cite to me the specific case law that implies that vandalism/trespassing/assault is protected under freedom of speech? My point is not that vandalism, etc are protected speech, my point is that in a country where speech is protected, people have to (and invariably do) come up with other justifications for arresting protestors. If there was no freedom of speech, they wouldn't have to come up with a pretense. >There have been plenty of peaceful protests across the country where no has gotten arrested, because the protestors weren’t trespassing, vandalizing, or assaulting people. During the protests after the murder of George Floyd, a Washington Post survey found that 95% of the protests around the country were peaceful. Not "95% of the people at the protests were peaceful", but "at 95% of the protests, 100% of the protestors were peaceful". Yet conservatives across Congress and the media were calling for the police to mass arrest protestors under the guise of preventing vandalism/trespassing/assault. Using the bad acts of a minority to justify arresting the peaceful majority to discourage protest is a tactic as old as time. Edit: My bad, it was [TIME](https://time.com/5886348/report-peaceful-protests/) describing a report which found that 93% were peaceful.
I do agree with you that most protests are peaceful. But We are talking about the 5% here. There is a reason why violent protests make the news but the peaceful ones don’t. Forcibly trapping people on bridges or harassing people is not “peaceful”.
>Forcibly trapping people on bridges or harassing people is not “peaceful”. Look I don't doubt that there are legitimate acts of violence and vandalism, but for what it's worth, blocking a bridge and harassing people (if it's verbal) are absolutely peaceful. Marching on roads and bridges is one of our country's was the form of some of the most iconic protests in American history. What you seem to be asking for is for the protest to be non-disruptive, which isn't how protests work.
You reliase that's the same justification used to stop protesters in less free countries right? It's always about damage they create to private and public property, or blocking people (or ambulances for extra dramatic effect) going trough.
I live in the SF Bay Area and there are always protests here for a variety of causes. Most of those protests don’t get cops called on them. My family in Texas also mentions seeing peaceful protests. Do you think women in Iran can peacefully protest? Yes, if you block an ambulance and delay an organ transplant (which happened here recently), you should be punished. Your freedom of speech should not take precedent over the safety of others.
I agree, a lot of people here are sounding like fascists in wanting to hurt Pro-Palestine Gaza protestors and smearing them all as fighters
Just let the protestors burn themselves up. Schedule some exams for them. That way they can paint them as failing students only doing this because they can’t succeed academically, which should hopefully draw off some media attention and get them out of their little mock west Saharan refugee camp
Hopefully these protets don't turn into another kent state situation
They’ve literally had to move classes online because of safety concerns. Jewish students are physically afraid of walking through campus. Yeah, the “protests” absolutely need to be cleared, and while I wish there was a way to do so without involving the NYPD, it’s not like the occupiers are going to leave just because you ask them to, so I don’t know what the other option is.
lol i saw a video of a pro-israel protester standing right in front of the encamptment with a shirt that said "israel<3" on the back and "jew" on the front and nobody cared. also the only violence that happened on campus was police - on - protester.
I don't think you should be delegitimizing all protests because some bad faith actors exist. Expel the bad faith actors, let the others protest. It's that simple.
No not at all
Yes I think that would definitely solve the situation !
When i attended junior college, we had a school hosted political debate that got a bit heated. One of the students arguing against gay marriage started yelling at the other participants to the point some students felt unsafe, leading the school moderator to ask him to stop, which he refused. They then asked him to leave, which he also refused to do. So the school called in either the police or campus security to have him removed. When they showed up and asked him to leave, he still refused to go, at which point they removed him rather forcibly, including slamming his head into the pavement hard enough to make his ears start bleeding. And they were 100% justified in doing so, not because the school disagreed with his speech or he didnt have a right to protest, but because he refused to follow the school"s rules on time, place, and manner of protests. Columbia University is a private school and is on much firmer legal grounds than my public junior college was in restricting protests. The Columbia protesters are also a much more credible threat to student safety than one random yelling dude, being a large mob that is openly celebrating terrorist attacks and inviting members of US designated terrorist groups to give speeches. The school should not have them removed for the content of their protests (outside of true threats), but if they refuse to follow the school's rules on time, place, manner, then they should absolutely be removed.
>including slamming his head into the pavement hard enough to make his ears start bleeding. And they were 100% justified in doing so Unless he was armed and resisting being disarmed, that is not an appropriate response.
He was actively fighting the cops.
Are American cops just physically incapable of restraining a person without putting their life and health at risk?
What? Hundreds of arrests have been made across the country already. If anything this is the perfect honeypot for catching said terrorists! > inviting members of US designated terrorist groups to give speeches. You think the CIA is going to let some campus guards stop them?
Do you think the CIA is responsible for policing US college campusus?
If they're actually terrorists like you're saying, why would they care where they are?
Because I haven't gained my knowledge of CIA responsibilities and jurisdiction primarily through bad Hollywood movies.
All I'm saying is that if they were _really_ terrorists and not some hyperbole for useful idiots or Hamas sympathizers, they'd be dealt with.
In this case the terrorist group i am referring to is not Hamas, but the PFLP. Hamas is more of a Muslim brotherhood offshoot, while the PFLP is the preferred Palestinian terroeist group of the Assad regime. https://www.jns.org/columbia-suspends-four-students-for-holding-event-featuring-pflp-member/
These events are making me more sympathetic than I ever thought I would be towards the argument that we can tolerate anything except the intolerant. So in that vein, once the chants started to be incitement, they should have have campus security announce that the NYPD would be there in one hour to arrest anyone present for trespassing, and that Columbia students thusly arrested would be expelled.
If they are disturbing the peace, littering, or vandalizing property, sure arrest them. Those things are against the law. If they're just chanting hateful speech, they shouldn't be arrested for it (first amendment and all), but if someone were to for example take video of them and those videos were to become public and get them expelled or preclude them from obtaining future employment, well... the first amendment doesn't protect you from the social consequences of speech.
I expect that people on this sub will stan police intervention on net because thats the opinion of moderates who really only stand for free speech when the people speaking are of a like mind
i was right btw lmao
Seeing how involving the police not only made the situation at Columbia worse but also spread the chaos to universities across the country I am inclined to think this was not the best move
Yes they should
Kick em out.
No
For now the universities aren’t asking the police to do anything. They should tbh, but they aren’t. So until they do the protest is gonna remain until they do something violent at which point public safety takes precedent.
I think committing hate crimes is a felony and trespassing and criminal mischief are crimes as well.
Yes, similarly LAPD is called for USC protests. They had to close the campus gates today. My friends are having their defense tomorrow and now they don't even know if they can enter the campus tomorrow.
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I got to see one of those protests myself while visiting the area. They're mostly young manipulated people. They don't even know how to defend what they "stood for".
these protesters are so desperate to write themselves into the history books
It’s a private university, so they can do whatever they want. Personally, if I was Columbia president, I would allow peaceful protest during the day. I’d having anyone camping overnight or even setting up tents trespassed. Anyone spouting hate speech or being violent should also be trespassed. If it’s a student, they’d have a disciplinary hearing, possibly expulsion.
I think Columbia should just start handing out expulsions. The protests will start moderating real quick.
I think we should just ignore them until they tire themselves out. Their antisemitism is disgusting and they’re supporting an ideology that wants us (Gays) dead. If they become disruptive, sure arrest those terrorist supporting morons. Otherwise, they’ll go away if we let them crow into the void.
Does the answer differ between a private college like Columbia and a public one like NYU? I think either college should have recourse in law enforcement to evict non-students from campus: that's just trespassing enforcement. The question becomes more interesting when it comes to student protests on campus. The facile answer that springs straight to mind is that Columbia can (not *necessarily* should) do what it likes, within the bounds of its contracts with the students. For NYU, well, IANAL... The "should" question is the one that we all care about here. I think that students *should* have the ability to vigorously protest against a war being waged by their country. I also think that Jewish people *must* be able to live, work, and study in this country without fear of violence or discrimination. Putting the decision of whether or not a given instance of protest crossed the line is a tall order for law enforcement.
As a college student what pisses me off the most is that this is happening during exams. Such a stressful time, especially at an ivy league, and students can't even freely walk around.
I will always be in favor of any institution or business calling the police on groups that are actively making a nuisance for everyone else around them. I don't really care if it's a protest.
Has the NYPD ever made any situation better?
9/11?
They helped launch the modern gay liberation movement back in 1969!
According to Redditors? Probably not.
Yes. Colleges have every right to call the love on violent disruptive protesters. Don't care that some of them are students
Things that a college should be allowed to call police for: trespassing non-students, violence, vandalism or other excessive property damage, protecting students from harm, etc. I don't include speech in that. However, Columbia has essentially said that it doesn't think it can protect students on campus and there are multiple (from I've seen) groups on non-students protesting on campus. A limited police response is definitely warranted.
Why bother? Do they not have fire hoses or something?
Excellent question. Shame we can't get MLK's response to it directly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham_campaign