Barnard College was founded in 1889 as a woman’s school because only men were allowed in the nearby Columbia University. Now the two institutions are affiliated and share considerable resources, including classes and dining halls. Barnard students also get their diplomas from Columbia University.
As you may know, three Barnard students were expelled this month for sit-ins in University buildings, and the expulsions are, so far, still in force. Because of that, a passel of pro-Palestinian protestors of unknown origin held their own illegal sit-in in Barnard’s Milbank Hall, a sit-in that included vandalism. And students also marched on Columbia University, injuring one worker and also committing vandalism. In neither of these last two cases were any protestors punished.
Over the last two years, Columbia has been an epicenter of pro-Palestinian and anti-Semitic activity, so much so that the HHS has decided to review Columbia’s federal funding in light of their accused violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, prohibiting “discriminationon the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance.” (There’s a whole Wikipedia article on “Antisemitism at Columbia University,” a practice that goes back nearly 100 years but of course has ramped up since the Gaza War. Before she resigned as President of Columbia, Minouche Shafik created a Task Force on Antisemitism, but, given their laxity towards protestors who violated Columbia’s rules, I’m not expecting much from it. All I can say is that if I were a Jewish parent or student, even a secular one, I wouldn’t ever send my kids to either Barnard or Columbia, not only because of their pervasive antisemitism but also because loud and illegal demonstrations are constantly interrupting academic activities.
Columbia is also uber-woke, which is another reason to avoid it, since it practices indoctrination of students. To see how it works, let’s just look at one ideologically-based department, Women’s Gender and Sexuality studies. Click on icon below to see some stuff about it:
Here are two of the three pictures on the front page. I don’t think this department is going to abide by institutional neutrality! (There is of course no pro-Israel photo.)
As the reader who sent this to me said:
I guess the “Inclusive” part of DEI at the school does not include Jews or white males. But yeah — AAUP opposes institutional neutrality, arguing that it violates the academic freedom of departments to express their communal voice.
And on that front page, check out the articles.
Spotlight on Faculty Research:
Neferti Tadiar, “Why the Question of Palestine is a Feminist Concern”: “During our weeklong investigative trip, we were witness to multiple and varied testimonies to and clear evidence of the daily acts of violence, harassment and humiliation that Palestinians are subjected to, both massive and intimate.” Read the full article here.
I’d suggest checking out Tadiar’s article for a real word salad that ignores the fact that Palestine, like many Arab countries, is explicitly anti-feminist. Dr. Tadiar, who is head of this department, includes this as the closing of her essay:
Ultimately, however, what makes the question of Palestine a feminist concern does not rest on any one of these analytical perspectives or points of critique. It rests rather on the connections that the oppression and struggle of Palestinians enables us to draw across those differences on which the oppression depends and that the question as it is now posed presumes. It is a feminist concern because it calls us to forge new relations beyond the province of interests and inherited forms of social belonging to which we might have become tethered and, for those of us not already called, to feel the suffering and aspirations of Palestinians as also our own. The strangulation of Palestinian life is, after all, not the accomplishment of one aberrant state, inasmuch as the latter is supported by a global economy and geopolitical order, which condemns certain social groups and strata to the status of absolutely redundant, surplus populations – an order of insatiable accumulation and destruction that affects all planetary life. The question of Palestine is thus an urgent question of a just and equitable future that is both specific to this context and to this people, and a general and paradigmatic global concern. To take a stand in solidarity with and to be involved in the struggle of Palestinians to resist and transform the conditions of their own dispossession and disposability – to join in their aspiration for collective freedom and self-determination – is also to participate in the remaking of global life, which cannot but be a paramount feminist act.
Also, have a look at the course offerings, which are heavily larded with Social Justice, though I do note one course on “Contemporary American Women’s Jewish Literature.” The rest of the courses comprise a farrago of courses with explicitly political aims, concentrating on victims.
But I wonder what kind of job a graduate in this department is suited for. I can think of only two: to become an academic in a similar department elsewhere, or go to work for a DEI organization.
It’s exasperating. I wonder if mockery would help break the spell, but what would the mockery of antisemitism look like?
Maybe the dumb slogan From The River To The Sea could get the mockery treatment… but I will not be trying that any time soon.
… I’m thinking something along the lines of that joke that goes …but Goldberg’s prices remain the same!…
“what would the mockery of antisemitism look like?”
“Springtime for Hitler and Germany…” Hmm, time for some new lyrics.
Ceiling Cat bless Mel Brooks.
There’s a huge pile of turds one hundred blocks north of my home right now.
A gaping Columbia U shaped hole in morality.
I didn’t vote for him but thank goodness Trump won or the entire might of the USG would be cheering these terrorists on. At least there’s some pushback to this adolescent madness.
D.A.
Chelsea, Manhattan, NYC
You wonder how welcome men are in that course. Especially if they say anything against the feminist script or have any humanity towards men.
Word salad? Indeed — sure enough, the p-word: “paradigmatic global concern.” What job — don’t forget acquisitions editor for formerly respectable university or commercial publishers.
RE: “But I wonder what kind of job a graduate in this department is suited for. I can think of only two: to become an academic in a similar department elsewhere, or go to work for a DEI organization.”
I recently listened to an interview by Peter Boghossian with a woman who used to be woke (Keri Smith, now also creator of the podcast Deprogrammed). She has a degree from Duke University, where she was a biological anthropology and anatomy major, with a minor in women’s studies (she was introduced to woke ideas through her classes in women’s studies, what is now called gender studies). After graduation, and now I’m quoting from a newspaper article,
This is pretty niche as an occupation. But it’s different than DEI or staying in academia. I guess there is also the NGO sector for graduates of the academic critical studies programs.
I’m looking to the Justice Department to fix this. There’s no way that it can fix itself from within.
100% agree, from the inside these universities cannot be fixed. Only politicians, donors and tuition-paying parents can do that (though pushback by faculty members who oppose the politicization is helpful) – follow the money.
Norm and Peter,
I’m still unsure of how this can be fixed. The mechanism eludes me. It seems like an unsolvable problem when you consider the motivations, actors and more than anything the incentives. All seem misaligned.
D.A.
NYC
As long as students continue to enrol in these classes…
Perhaps big donors could have an impact?
Do these universities get federal funding? Could it be cut just for the woke courses? I honestly have no idea.
I believe this cannot be fixed from the outside or the inside. The outside fix will result only window dressing. The inside sees nothing to fix. In fact, this is the apotheosis of 40 years of work by grievance studies faculty. This is what gender studies at most (all?) universities strive for.
A Woke comedian: “Three White Cis Het Males walk into a bar…PATRIARCHY!!!”
Was supposed to be a reply to #4
And they say women have no sense of humour….
When you said “here are two pictures from the front page” (of the department’s catalogue entry), I thought surely I misunderstood. But that was it! Holy crap. Beyond the belief of how I was brought up and have lived. Where are the doggies chasing frisbees on the quad?…a trivial but warmly human activity…as opposed to the violent and vicious warlike hatred in these photos. Who would send their children to such a place? I can only hope that these pictures are a spoof of the Barnard Catalogue and are not real, so that you got me!
These lying liars. The Palestinian struggle has nothing to do with feminism. There are women on both sides of this conflict !!!
And yes, this is quite a word salad that Jerry is quoting.
And shame on Columbia that it allows these clearly political pictures to be published on departmental websites.
I often wonder how people would react if they went to their local police department and found it decked out in paraphernalia signaling the political leanings of police officers, who we know to be mostly on the right side of the political spectrum.
US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said “Everybody is entitled to their own opinions but not to their own facts.” I second that and add “Nobody is entitled to turn their workplace into a site for their own personal political activity, unless they own the company.”
The irony of this is that the Israeli women who were brutally raped, murdered, incinerated, and kidnapped were living in a country with long-accepted equal rights for women, whereas the perpetrators of the violence against them were against all of the things that feminists have traditionally fought for. How can people who are supposed to be intelligent be brainwashed so easily?
War is peace
Freedom is slavery
Ignorance is strength
Abuse of women is feminism
Mutilation is medicine
Suppression of speech is safety
I can’t get over – or process emotionally – the wild dissonance and hypocrisy which you talk about above Darryl.
Like… the obvious truth is RIGHT IN FRONT OF OUR DAMN EYES!
And allegedly the “smarties” at ivy league schools don’t get it?
WTF? I burn a lot of wasted fuel thinking about this problem.
D.A.
NYC
Regarding that department and neutrality, recall that the Barnard admin had to take a statement down from their website in 2023:
https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2023/12/08/barnard-altered-its-policies-after-removing-a-solidarity-with-palestine-statement-from-a-departmental-website-faculty-are-calling-it-censorship/
The dept ended up reposting it on an independent website. Also, every core faculty member in that dept reportedly participated in the encampment.
Graduates of this program are also prepared for jobs at NGOs and a government led by the likes of Joe Biden.
It isn’t just Joe. All he did was to ignore the gradually increasing threat which has been moving since the 1960s – like a frog boiling.
The NGO sector has been hard left for a long, long time.
Their priorities are leftist so Dems ignore (or assist) and GoPers ignore them b/c they can’t control or cancel them. (Until lately it appears).
NGOs have been hard leftist fronts for about 20 years now. I only noticed this lately (for I am also, a boiling frog).
what turned me was NGOs actually ENCOURAGING dangerous international movements of “refugees” in the Med and Rio Grande. THAT was my lesson.
D.A.
NYC
You’re right that it started in the sixties. I’m wondering how much the excess of crazy wokeness helped elect Trump as the Dems refuse to criticize it.
Related: could the Republicans have found a less crude politician? JD Vance is not so crude but he’s 100% on tariffs and switching allegiance to Russia.
Are these latter two issues some kind of reaction to wokeness? I honestly don’t see it but maybe I’m not thinking clearly enough about it.
I’d say rather he’s 100% on sucking-up until he gets the top job.
JD Vance? Yes I think so.
Columbia has a bad reputation and has for some time. A lady by the name of Yenomi Park has described Columbia as ‘Crazier than North Korea’. She should know. She is from North Korea and attended Columbia.
More quotes from her:
“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”
“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.”
Does ANYBODY take these campus girls who are “not doing well emotionally” seriously at all? These small short life experience, low mate value (and that’s gotta hurt) women* as rational actors with evidence based arguments?
Who ARE the retards who do listen to their arguments? I don’t meet them. Thank goodness. Do they HAVE historical or moral arguments? I’ve only heard shrill shouting to date and I do listen.
D.A.
NYC
*seriously – this is a Big Problem. Fronting any hard left protest, the Pal terrorist cult included – is so hugely female coded. Nobody notices this?
The girls aren’t OK.
Maybe… b/c it always seems to be the “low mate value” girls… can’t get dates?
Often our motivations are much more simple than first appear. I learned this fact from evolutionary psychology.
So I defer to the nearest professor of evo biology for his reply. Now… where can I find one?
Oh right.
Jerry?
D.A.
NYC
I dunno, David. I think the girl on the right thinks the girl on the left would make fetchingly good mate material indeed. I know the hots when I see it. Maybe there was something in the hand clasp. But no sign that the girl on the left even knows the other exists.
It’s actually a most evocative photograph, leaving us hanging with the tension.
I shouldn’t make light of it because they’re both killers, or would be if they dared. But there is something besotted there that suggests they aren’t entirely in this for the jihad.
Many of them end up as teachers. Their learning style is such that they are able to succeed in the college environment and thus have an affinity for teaching. Thus they can inflict their madness on a new generation. This is what Paolo Friere had advocated for in Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
Many of them end up as HR staff in large organizations. HR is highly non-technical and deals a lot with policies of personal power and grievance, so they fit in well. This helps to explain the foothold in the corporate world for DEI.
Other than that, I would guess a lot of them end up as wives for well-to-do Ivy League graduate husbands and then take on hobby jobs on boards of charities and NGOs.
Maybe some get to be writers or editors (SciAm?).
I don’t see many other jobs they can get.
As well as the obvious moral bankruptcy, Dr. Tadir gives a good example of the worst kind of Butleresque horrible writing I’ve seen in ages.
Were I a professor I’d provide it as a “Now Not To” example to students.
Simple minds, simple words. For simpletons. And moral bankrupts.
Onwards Israeli heroes. Crush this trash.
D.A.
NYC
They are supporting Palestine, because they are against “hetero-patriarchy”?
Palestine is run by Hamas, a hetero-patriarchy.
The weapons-grade stupidity of these students, or whatever they are, is beyond my ken.