I am not being hyperbolic by saying the protestors are “pro-Hamas” rather than “pro-Palestinian,” as they themselves extol Hamas (see below). What kind of student would glorify muderous terroristic thugs? Columbia ones, of course.
You didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to predict that pro-Palestinian protests which violate campus regulations, as well as the law, would start up again as soon as fall classes resumed. And so they have at Columbia, which is one hot mess of a campus, and whose leadership can’t seem to control the skirmishes, hate, and anti-Semitism that pervades the campus.
Click below to read the article at the World Israel News, apparently written by Jessica Costescu, at The Washington Free Beacon:
Remember, right now access to Columbia’s campus is strictly limited to Columbia students with IDs or approved visitors. The vandalism below, then, is likely done by Columbia students themselves.
An excerpt.
Anti-Israel students brought chaos to Columbia University on Tuesday morning, returning the campus to its new normal: dozens of keffiyeh-clad protesters blocked the entrance to the school, praising Hamas, vandalizing a statue, and clashing with police. At least one group involved aims to bring violence to America, while others called on their followers to help shut down the university. Agitators with Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) and the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter prevented students from entering campus, promising that “this is just the beginning.” A flyer posted to social media advertising the protest encouraged attendees to “wear a mask,” “bring noisemakers,” and to “shut it down.” Columbia’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter released a statement praising Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin and the terrorist group’s current chairman, Yahya Sinwar. .“Sheikh Yassin was assassinated by the Zionists in 2004, but even in death, his legacy of unrelenting resistance in the face of oppression lives on,” the group wrote on Telegram. “He lives on in his students, which includes the current head of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar—the man who fooled the Zionist entity—and all the Palestinian fighters who embody the steadfastness that Yassin taught.” On X, the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter said protests will continue.“ As we begin our new semester, students in Gaza have no universities to return to. Instead of listening to the student body, Columbia University is doubling down. We will not stop & we will not rest until @Columbia divests from apartheid and genocide. This is just the beginning,” the group posted to X.“ We refuse to trade in the blood of Palestinians, and until Columbia commits to full financial disclosure and complete divestment from Zionist apartheid, occupation, and genocide — we do not deserve a first day of school,” a statement by CUAD said.“In the belly of the beast, we have the highest responsibility to crush the gears of this cold and unloving death machine and to build something new. For us and for Palestine, the only option is revolution.”
Two tweets showing vandalism, both of which I retweeted, and one showing the protestor’s risible demands:
This is a well-known statue by Daniel Chester French at Columbia University. I doubt that this vandalism will win support for the cowardly protestors, who scurry away like rats, unwilling to accept the consequences of their “civil disobedience.” https://t.co/MUc7b04Wdq
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) September 4, 2024
Here are their demands:
“We act in full support of the Palestinian resistance. This action is first & foremost an effort to extend the successes of the Palestinian resistance to the heart of the empire itself, to translate their resilience in Gaza to unrest &violence in America” pic.twitter.com/O6ZyjwaaDn
— Unity of Fields (@unityoffields) September 3, 2024
More:
Unity of Fields, a self-described “militant front against the US-NATO-zionist axis of imperialism,” formerly known as Palestine Action US, took credit for the vandalism.
Campus access is restricted to Columbia ID holders, suggesting the perpetrator was affiliated with the university.
“The first day of classes at Columbia University are drenched in blood,” the group posted to X
“We act in full support of the Palestinian resistance. This action is first & foremost an effort to extend the successes of the Palestinian resistance to the heart of the empire itself, to translate their resilience in Gaza to unrest & violence in America.”
“Divestment is not an incrementalist goal. True divestment necessitates nothing short of the total collapse of the university structure and American empire itself,” the group wrote in a follow-up post listing its demands.
“It is not possible for imperial spoils to remain so heavily concentrated in the metropole and its high cultural repositories without the continuous suppression of all populations that resist the empire’s expansion; to divest from this is to undermine and eradicate America as we know it.”
Their demands in full (click to enlarge):
Note that these hate-filled morons argue, as others have noted, that destruction of Israel is only an incremental goal: the true goal is to bring down America itself. Will these students like living in a country ruled by Hamas? I doubt that at least women and gays will!
The protestors can’t write well, either.
This makes me ill: a bunch of supposedly educated people whose moral compass is turned 180° the wrong way, supporting a bunch of terrorists who hate Jews and want to kill them all (ergo the students must feel the same way).
Call these students out for who they are: morally obtuse, Jew-hating idiots who might as well be worshiping Hitler. Fot no longer bother to hide the fact that they’re not just supporting Palestine, but are supporting Hamas.
And the lesson for parents is clear: don’t send your kids to Columbia.
They want “total collapse of the university structure”–but they’re there, having enrolled and paid tuition?
Came here to say precisely this. What a bunch of idiots. I’m sure their parents are thrilled.
These protestors are endearing themselves to no one—except perhaps to Hamas.
I suspect even Hamas just sees them as (slightly) useful idiots.
That is *precisely* how Hamas sees them. The joke is on the spoiled Americans. As the article of Monday said, “they’re playing into Sinwar’s hands”. These kids wouldn’t last one day in Gaza and they clearly are not critical students of history. We’ve said it here over and over. I’m ready to look away. I really don’t want to give these toddlers any more attention.
Hamas, Russia, China, and Iraq.
This declaration seems like it should leave the author(s) open to charges of sedition or seditious conspiracy.
Perhaps, but it seems to me that the threat would have to be credible and this threat is not. It’s nothing more than the delusional rantings of an unhinged and morally unmoored fool(s).
Very true Edward, but the rise of the Nazi party ranting hatred and scapegoating the Jewish people started in much the same way. And young elites today seem to be open to seeing the Jews and Israelis as oppressors so eligible to be victimized by oppression themselves. The parallels are troubling and some or more college faculty and staff are fanning the flames behind the scenes, as may also be true of social media. So surreptitious institutional forces added to youthful fervor is amping up the students’ emotions in furtherance of nefarious adult goals. That scenario is dangerous on many levels. As victims of Mao’s Red Guards can attest if still alive..
Well, there you are. America is the target.
…and the only “success” this could possibly be referring to is the Oct. 7 attacks. It’s a barely veiled threat of rape/murder/kidnapping.
Remember tho, according to “feminists skeptics” such as Rebecca Watson, any claim of rape on 10/7 is “propaganda”…
Of course. As the Ayatollahs say: “Death to Israel. Death to America.”
They’ve been saying that since 1979.
In watching these protest actions over the past year at Chicago, Harvard, and Columbia at least – I leave out West Coast schools from these observations- it seems that even the highly touted graduation walk-outs involved around a few hundred students at most at each school, not a thousand and certainly not thousands. Columbia has around 9,000 undergrads at Morningside (and another 25,000 grad, professional, medical students). So these hoodlums are really but a pimple on the ass of a student body – a student body which is being prevented from pursuing their day to day studies. Is the administration really so incompetent as to not be able to round up a few dozen of these thugs, take their ID’s, expel them, and then have them arrested for trespass and press charges if they return to the grounds sans ID? And repeat a few dozen at a time….Take a lesson from our immune systems…consistency and patience…but continuously progress.
I really miss Ken K at times like this to point out the fallacy in my approach based on his real world experiences.
“Is the administration really so incompetent as to not be able to round up a few dozen of these thugs, take their ID’s, expel them, and then have them arrested for trespass and press charges if they return to the grounds sans ID?”
They’d likely get a lot of heat from the professorship at a place like Columbia if they did that. That’s what’s really fueling this.
Otherwise, what you suggest should work in short order.
I hear that about the faculty, but when push came to shove last Spring, it appeared to me that the fraction of Hamas-friendly faculty was no different (or at least ball parkish to) than the student fraction. They were loud and self-centered, but a real minority of the total faculty. Or at least it seemed that way at Harvard I believe. But I am looking in from the outside. Maybe we could hear from some boots on the ground faculty like greg or steven or maybe even a west coast reading on faculty from anna.
But remember that when the students invaded and occupied a Columbia building last spring, the faculty joined hands and circled the entrance, preventing the cops and anyone else from approaching the building.
Are you not disturbed that the rest of the faculty, which you conceive as a clear majority, didn’t pass a resolution condemning the illegal behavior and calling for it to stop? Faculty have free speech, but they don’t have the right to engage in illegal behavior on campus. One of the duties of the other faculty is to prevent this.
You are correct. They need to get off their tucheses and take some initiative like the academic freedom faculty groups did last year (or the year before). I think that it was at Harvard around graduation time that there was something like a “big” faculty vote supporting the hamas kids, according to media reports. And it was like 180 to 30…but it was at a meeting that only these 200 out of a 1000 or more attended. When the larger group got together in an emergency session, they overturned the earlier vote. The numbers here are not exact and it may not have been Harvard, but it was one of the elites. It just seems like we have a tyranny of the loud minority in many cases masquerading as majority opinion…both for students and faculty. But of course I could be wrong….just observing the numbers of actual demonstrators.
They would indeed get a lot of heat from faculty occupying the Edward Said Chair, and other epigones of the inventor
of “Orientalism”. All reviewed by Bruce Gilley at:
https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2023/11/03/edward-saids-long-reach-from-harvard-to-hamas/ .
Jim, do any of us doubt that the university administrators would find both competence and backbone if these protestors were using similar language, pursuing similar action, in support of right-wing causes? It is not about competence. Many have pointed out that faculty politics are part of the problem. I suggest that also the large, perhaps disproportionate, number of women among the protestors alters the potential response. Let’s call it the double standard of protest response: few people care when men who support terrorists and call for the destruction of America take billy clubs to the head. But male cops manhandling on TV any women who won’t go peaceably doesn’t play well for university publicity. It’s our domesticated version of Hamas throwing women and children into the line of fire; it gets more headlines than when men are casualties. (Interesting how that remains effective despite our supposedly egalitarian mindset.) It’s all ironic given that these women are cheerleading for violent men who would beat each of them into submission—and keep them there. Just another reminder that idiocy cannot always be corrected with education. But we could, at least, ask that it not make it worse.
No Ken am I but I think I can say that the weakness of your approach is that no one can “have” anyone arrested for anything and no one can “press” charges in the sense of obligating a public prosecutor to proceed with a prosecution. The decision to arrest and lay a charge rests with the police and the decision to prosecute or drop the charge rests with your DA’s office (in Canada with the local Crown Attorney.) The vast majority of offences committed on college campuses seem to be of a sort that the criminal justice system doesn’t want to spend any of its limited budget on. In that environment getting arrested is just part of the fun.
Trespass is one of those private property issues where the landowner has the right to use reasonable force himself to eject unwanted guests or customers—that’s what tavern bouncers do. The police may assist and are more likely to if there is a public order threat like weapons or breach of the peace. But you can’t just call the police and tell them to get rid of trespassers for you, and then tell the DA to throw the book at them. They are your premises. It’s chiefly up to you to secure them.
You are spot on that the university should impose academic sanctions against students (and faculty and staff, but these groups are protected by union contracts that constrain the university as employer) who break the rules, if it can identify them. (This would probably require laying hands on them to unmask them, search them for ID, and match photographs with student records if they had no ID. You have to want to.)
Thanks “no ken!” Leslie. Yep bottom line is surely “you have to want to”
Why have these people not been expelled yet?
Years ago, I read the remarks of Yenomi Park. She is a defector from N. Korea,
See “A North Korean defector says going to Columbia University reminded her of the oppressive regime, saying she felt forced to ‘think the way they want you to think’” (https://www.businessinsider.com/north-korea-defector-says-columbia-university-reminded-her-kim-regime-2021-6)
“I expected that I was paying this fortune, all this time and energy, to learn how to think. But they are forcing you to think the way they want you to think,” Park told Fox News. “I realized, ‘Wow, this is insane.’ I thought America was different, but I saw so many similarities to what I saw in North Korea that I started worrying.”
“Even North Korea is not this nuts. North Korea is pretty crazy, but not this crazy,” she added.”
Quote from the Washington Post.
“Park moved to New York City in 2014 and enrolled at Columbia. Park found her classmates perpetually seething over perceived “microaggressions,” she later wrote. They weren’t the only oversensitive people she encountered: In “While Time Remains,” Park described running afoul of an unspoken campus code when she praised Jane Austen during orientation.
“Wrong!” a professor thundered at her, in Park’s telling. “Those books promote female oppression, racism, colonialism, and white supremacy!””
Thoughts from Boomerland: the other students need to have access to one or more visual symbols of disagreement with violent and destructive rhetoric and demands. A pin maybe? My morning doodles revolved around interlocking circles with three or more different looking hands reaching together to support a peace sign in the middle. Boomer, don’tcha know. Maybe each of the hands could have one or more symbols of different religions tattooed on them. Some kind of symbol of tolerance and unity. But this notion may not be relevant to today’s youth culture.
I was reminded just recently of Popper’s Paradox.
“If everyone is tolerant of every idea, then intolerant ideas will emerge.”
That seems to be exactly what’s happened.
It blows my mind that these “educated” fools are simping for basically ISIS, the Taliban, etc.
That they’d stake big positions and their reputations on not understanding the historical issues – or how religion plays into this.
There are MINOR differences between the above groups but none large enough to matter… for the recipients of their violence.
I came to the US to study M.E. politics at graduate level at a very fancy uni, have read it for 30 years, visited the area a lot and studied Arabic at night some decades ago. I know what I’m talking about. I could give lectures in the differences between Hamas and ISIS/Taliban but they’re irrelevant here.
So now imagine these young, virtue signaling, CRT addled fools, schooled mainly by ticktok (this is the essential part of the conversation nobody is talking about)…imagine them marching for ISIS.
These “educated” people.
This from before Oct. 7
https://themoderatevoice.com/what-pro-palestine-student-groups-get-wrong/
I was an options trader before my (modest, criminal defense) law career and in the last 8 years have a column, variously syndicated.
One place that (of late) republishes my articles is Jihadwatch. Herein:https://jihadwatch.org/2024/07/kindergarten-jihad-who-plays-the-beheaded
Jihadwatch is excellent to follow to keep track of what really is happening in the Islamosphere. NBC and the NYTimes won’t touch the truth.
D.A.
NYC
https://themoderatevoice.com/author/david-anderson/
“…access to Columbia’s campus is strictly limited to Columbia students with IDs or approved visitors.”
I don’t buy that they’ve got the manpower to lock down the campus.
Bias alert: I have a STEM degree.
My guess is that the vast majority of the protesting students are in grievance study programs. My recommendation is to eliminate those, rolling them back into the history, literature, philosophy, and anthropology departments and requiring broader exposure to different ideas. The protestors would then either leave or flunk out.
I think Columbia actually wants lots of protests to make itself a magnet for tuition-paying protestors. There is a certain segment of high school graduates who actually want to go to such a college where they get to be protestors and their parents are keen on supporting them. Be in the thick of it and all. Once their frontal lobes mature at age 25* or so they may regret it profoundly but Columbia doesn’t give refunds.
————
* Maybe 30 these days….
I would disagree. Columbia now has a horrible reputation as a place where protesting takes the place of learning. There may be some parents who want their kids to participate in this, but on the whole I suspect applications will drop, as they have at other elite schools like Harvard where the press has highlighted the protesting (and the Claudine Gay affair).
In a STEM field you don’t time to protest. You’re either in lectures (not advised to skip classes), doing problem sets, writing up labs or studying for exams.
You don’t have time to protest (based on my recollections of many years ago).
You should see my university’s history, literature, philosophy, and anthropology departments. They are not bastions of common sense or providers of broad exposure to different ideas. They are incubators of intolerance, conformity, novelty pronouns, and pro-pal group think.
https://www.sfu.ca/sociology-anthropology/news-events/news/2024/sfu-department-of-sociology-and-anthropology-statement-against-g.html
This is just a taste:
https://www.sfu.ca/sociology-anthropology/people/faculty/travers.html
“Their recent book, The Trans Generation: How Trans Kids (and Their Parents) Are Creating a Gender Revolution, situates trans kids in Canada and the US, white settler nations characterized by significant social inequality. In addition to a central research focus on transgender children and youth, Dr. Travers has published extensively on the relationship between sport and social justice, with particular emphasis on the inclusion and exclusion of women, queer and trans people of all ages. A current research program in this field focuses on gender equity in youth baseball. Travers is also the leader of an interdisciplinary research team examining electric micro-mobilities (electric scooters/skateboards/unicycles/bikes) from a mobility justice perspective.”
Settler colonialism, transing kids, and electric scooters. What a research program. Cool head shot though.
If the protesters are truly committed, they should move to Gaza and the West Bank to show their solidarity with the Hamas murderous regime.
Agreed!
Blatant anti-Semitism with criminal acts and the NYT says “A Campus Protest Movement Seeks to Regain Momentum but Faces Hurdles”.
I can’t imagine they would say of the KKK that “A Southern Protest Movement Seeks to Regain Momentum but Faces Hurdles”.
Similar headlines at all the major media sources. Lots of talk about protests restarting, with very neutral reporting. There’s a groupthink going on within the Left that is OK with anti-Semitism when it it practiced by the educated class.
I’m loosely involved in local media, and when I see the same headlines and very similar reporting, it tells me that there are press releases being sent to these various media outlets. This is why they are coming out simultaneously as well. For example, the Teamsters Union calls a strike at some company. They send out a press release for broad media distribution, written like a news story. Newsrooms pick up the release, reword a few phrases, maybe get a reporter to call someone for some local color, and then publish it as their own. When you read it, you don’t know that the origin was that first release from the Teamsters, you think it’s a legit original news story written by a real “reporter”. Nope. This happens constantly and once you see it you can’t miss it. It looks to me like that’s what is happening here. I just don’t know the origin of the source material.