Category: protests

Harvard bans “study-in” protests in libraries

November 17, 2024 • 11:15 am

This article from Harvard Magazine documents the occurrence of “silent study-ins” in the University’s main library: Widener. While protests on the wide Widener steps have always been countenanced, these demonstrations are new because they take place inside—in the reading rooms.

They of course involve pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel protestors, who can’t seem to refrain from disrupting anything, whether it be traffic, classes, putting up graffiti, or, in this case, studying in the library. These sit-ins have been conducted by both students and faculty (faculty are often more anti-Israel than students). Click to read.

Some excerpts:

Throughout this fall, groups of students and faculty members have again taken to libraries with taped signs and coordinated reading lists. These demonstrations—direct challenges to Harvard’s protest restrictions—have ignited campus discussions on what defines a protest, when free expression obstructs learning, and how to introduce new regulations meant to sustain both academic operations and speech.

On January 19, 2024, just after Alan M. Garber assumed the interim presidency, he and the deans released a statement clarifying University policy regarding “the guarantees and limitations” of campus protest and dissent. That January policy states that “demonstrations and protests are ordinarily not permitted in classrooms…libraries or other spaces designated for study, quiet reflection, and small group discussion.” But it did not define what constitutes a protest.

That ambiguity was put to the test on September 21, when approximately 30 pro-Palestine students sat in Loker wearing keffiyehs and displaying signs protesting Israeli strikes in Lebanon. A day before the event, a Harvard administrator warned students that such an action would violate Harvard policies, The Crimson reported. During the protest, library staff informed the students that they could not protest in the library and recorded their Harvard ID numbers. (Students are allowed to protest outside of the library—the Widener steps are a popular location. This semester, both students and faculty held pro-Palestine protests there and were not punished by the University.)

The students were punished, but lightly. Then the faculty got in on it (they were given the same punishment), and the idea spread:

In response to the study-in, Widener Library banned participating students from the building for two weeks. “Demonstrations and protests are not permitted in libraries,” Widener Library administration wrote in an email to punished students that was obtained by The Crimson. The email specified that the recipient had “a laptop bearing one of the demonstration’s flyers.” During the students’ two-week Widener suspensions, they could pick up library materials from other locations, but not enter Widener itself.

The University response angered some faculty members. What made this study-in a protest? Why did a silent action merit punishment? Three weeks after the initial student action, approximately 30 faculty members followed suit. The participants read texts about dissent (ranging from Martin Luther King Jr. and Henry David Thoreau to materials published by Harvard itself) and displayed placards quoting the Harvard Library Statement of Values (“embrace diverse perspectives”) as well as the University-wide Statement on Rights and Responsibilities (“reasoned dissent plays a particularly vital part in [our] existence”).

. . . . Following those initial confrontations, library actions become more numerous on campus. In the month following the October 16 faculty study-in, there have been two such events at the Law Library, one at the Graduate School of Design, another at the Divinity School (a “pray-in”), and two more in Widener (one faculty-led and another student-led). A November 8 Widener faculty study-in pushed the University’s punishment calculus to its logical extreme, with professors displaying blank papers.

Some pushback from a librarian:

 The administrative response to the library protests has, if anything, prompted more faculty members to express concerns. Since the fall wave of demonstrations began, the library has twice articulated why the study-ins merit punishment. On October 24, University librarian Martha Whitehead published an essay titled “Libraries are places for inquiry and learning” in which she argued that the study-ins—which she firmly classified as protests—disrupt academic life:

While a reading room is intended for study, it is not intended to be used as a venue for a group action, quiet or otherwise, to capture people’s attention. In the study-ins in our spaces, we heard from students who saw them publicized and chose not to come to the library. During the events, large numbers of people filed in at once, and several moved around the room taking photos or filming. Seeking attention is in itself disruptive.

What we have here is a conflict between free speech and disruption of University regulations, which prohibit demonstrations in libraries. Granted, these are silent demonstrations, so I had to think it over. In the end, having studied at Widener Libary, which has a huge and beautiful reading room, I decided I agree with Ms. Whitehead.  I thought, “What if I were trying to study in Widener and a bunch of people came in with posters affixed to their computers, sometimes walking about, and all of them expressing an opinion on ideology or politics. I concluded that such demonstrations, no matter what ideology they favored, are disruptive of study, which of course is one of the functions of the University. I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on my work if I were surrounded by protestors.

By all means these demonstrators are free to gather and hold up signs on the Widener steps (shown below), but to have silent demonstrations like this in libraries, symposia, or classrooms, is disruptive to the mission of a university, and should be banned. Harvard has already banned them, but perhaps you disagree. Give your opinion in the comments, please:

A photo of the Widener showing its famous steps. This is from about 1920. They look pretty much the same today, but there are no cars or buggies in front.

Abdalian, Leon H., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Here’s a short video of the spaces inside Widener, including the reader rooms. Isn’t it lovely? They show the steps in an outside view at the end.

Anti-Israel and pro-BDS students harass Brown University trustees

October 22, 2024 • 9:45 am

You didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to predict that last spring’s pro-Hamas (or “anti-Israel”) protests would continue into this academic year.  Despite Hamas being pretty well crushed, the entitled and enraged fans of Palestinian terrorism continue to cause trouble on campus.  The latest target is the elite Brown University. (Elite universities are the ones where protests are most vocal.)

Earlier in October, the University rejected a BDS proposal to divest from Israeli corporations, and also affirmed that such political moves were not in the University’s interest.

As The Algemeiner previously reported, Brown University earlier this month voted down a proposal — muscled onto the agenda of its annual meeting by an anti-Zionist group which attempted to hold the university hostage with threats of illegal demonstrations and other misconduct — to divest from 10 companies linked to Israel.

“The Corporation also discussed the broader issue of whether taking a stance on a geopolitical issue through divestment is consistent with Brown’s mission of education and scholarship. The Corporation reaffirmed that Brown’s mission is to discover, communicate, and preserve knowledge. It is not to adjudicate or resolve global conflicts,” university president Christina Paxson and Brown Corporation chancellor Brian Moynihan said in a letter commenting on the vote. “Whether you support, oppose, or have no opinion on the decision of the Corporation, we hope you will do so with a commitment to sustaining, nurturing, and strengthening the principles that have long been at the core of our teaching and learning community.”

In effect, Brown here is espousing institutional neutrality, refusing to make political statements through investing or divesting. (Brown does not appear on FIRE’s list of 22 colleges besides the University of Chicago that have adopted a Kalven-like institutional neutrality.)

Click below to read more from The Algemeiner:

The students didn’t get their way, so, like toddlers denied a cookie, they acted out, going after the trustees, impeding their movements, and calling them names. Some of that may be free speech, but it’s not clear whether any University rules were violated:

Brown University has launched investigations of anti-Israel groups and individual students following their riotous conduct during a protest of the Brown Corporation that was held on Friday.

Staged outside the Warren Alpert Medical School to inveigh against the Corporation’s recent rejection of a proposal to adopt the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement — which aims to isolate Israel from the international community as a step toward its eventual elimination — the demonstration saw the Ivy League students engage in harassment and intimidation, according to a community notice first shared by the Brown Daily Herald and later obtained by The Algemeiner. The protesters repeatedly struck a bus transporting the Corporation’s trustees from the area, shouted expletives at them, and even lodged a “a racial epithet … toward a person of color.”

Other trustees were stalked to their destinations while some were obstructed from entering their bus, according to the missive by Russell Carey, Brown’s interim vice president for campus life and executive vice president of planning and policy. The official added that the students — many of whom are members of Students for Justice in Palestine, which has links to terrorist organizations, and its spin-off, Brown Divest Coalition (BDC) — harmed not only the trustees but also the university as an institution of higher learning.

“No member of the Brown community would want or expect to be treated in the manner some of our members experienced on Friday, and it was troubling to read in media reports the express intent of some organizers to provoke discomfort that ultimately targeted individuals,” Carey wrote. “Disciplinary sanctions will be imposed where violations of conduct codes are found.”

He added, “As we continue to navigate challenging times on campus and in the nation, our resolve and our principles as a compassionate learning community will continue to be tested. I am hopeful that members of the Brown community will engage in discussion with each other about these challenges and commit to treat each other with respect and dignity.”

Anyone who thinks that civil discussion will ensue between anti-Israel and pro-Israel (or neutral) groups, much less come to any agreement, is an arrant optimist.  Obstructing trustees from getting on their bus, as well as harassing individuals and striking their bus, is likely to be committing violations. And shouting a racial epithet, which of course is odious behavior, may well be “fighting words” prohibited by the First Amendment. (Brown, however, is a private university.)

This is just more evidence that the toddlers will continue their tantrums for an indefinite time.  But schools are getting tired of it, and, I hope, more of them will start punishing the protesters when they violate university regulations (my own school has been clearly reluctant to levy such punishments).  Without such sanctions, there is simply no deterrent to breaking the rules, leading to more and more (and more violent) demonstrations. Pomona College struck back last week:

Last week, Pomona College in Claremont, California levied severe disciplinary sanctions, ranging from expulsion to banishment, against 12 students who participated in illegally occupying and vandalizing the Carnegie Hall administrative building on the anniversary of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.

The news was first reported by an Instagram accounted operated by Pomona Divest from Apartheid (PDfA), the group which led the assault on the building. PDfA acknowledged that “property crimes” were perpetrated but maintained that the college lacked evidence to identify the offenders. Noting that PDfA members concealed their identities with masks, it charged that Pomona president G. Gabrielle Starr has resorted to “indiscriminately” punishing minority students, as well as depriving them of housing and food, for the sake of upholding fascism.

Starr, who is an African American woman, told a different story, however, accusing the group of “violation of our collective life on campus” in a statement which noted that the pro-Hamas student group was aided by non-student adults who managed to gain access to the campus.

“The destruction in Carnegie Hall was extensive, and the harm done to individuals and our mission was so great,” Starr wrote. “Starting this week, disciplinary letters are going out to students from Pomona and other Claremont Colleges who have been identified as taking part in the takeover of Carnegie Hall. Student groups affiliated with this incident are also under investigation.”

This, of course, is why the cowardly protesters wear masks, taking their actions out of the real of civil disobedience, which they also erode when demanding that, even when caught violating the rules, that they not be punished.

But on the other side we have P. Z. Myers, who has emerged as a full-blown demonizer of Israel.  Myers proclaims this about protests at a branch of his school (The University of Minnesota)  that just led to the arrest of students:

“Free Palestine. End the genocide. Divest now. Those are simple, clear ideas that won’t be answered by arresting people.”

The genocide to which Myers refers is committed by Hamas and Hezbollah, not Israel. And yes, free Palestine—but from Hamas. (Lebanon also needs to be freed from Hezbollah, but the UN apparently lacks the will.)

And of course the point of arresting people is to ensure that campus rules are followed, which are intended to produce a climate that doesn’t chill speech. And somehow Myers neglects to give details about what the protesters actually DID to warrant their arrest. But ABC News did:

A demonstration at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities Monday led to 11 arrests after pro-Palestinian protesters barricaded an administrative hall on campus, locking staff members inside the building.

The protesters blocked the entrance and exit of Morrill Hall, which houses the offices of the university president, Rebecca Cunningham.

According to a statement from the university issued Monday night, the protest began with a peaceful assembly on a lawn in front of the campus’ Coffman Memorial Union at about 3 p.m. local time.

However, “A group of these individuals quickly moved north, up the Northrop Mall, and entered Morrill Hall,” according to the university.

“Once inside the building, protesters began spray painting, including covering lenses of all internal security cameras, breaking interior windows, and barricading the building’s entrance and exit points,” the statement said.

, , , , The university has said that “a number” of staff were present, and many were unable to exit the building “for an extended period of time.”

Police officers arrived on the scene and began to detain protestors around one hour after the first alert was issued, according to the university’s statement.

“With necessary support from the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office, UMPD entered the building at approximately 5:40 p.m. and arrested 11 people,” it said.

Barricading yourself inside buildings, vandalizing it and breaking windows, and preventing staff from leaving: those are not things that are going to win supporters to their “cause”.

A tweet-video of the protesting students at U. Minn.

 

Anti-Israel protestors vandalize Henry Moore sculpture on our campus, battle with police

October 12, 2024 • 11:00 am

It’s been quiet at the University of Chicago—too quiet!  We almost got through Students for Justice in Palestine’s “week of rage” without nary a megaphone blaring or any graffiti painted on campus walls and sidewalks. But, as I predicted, this was not to last. With Hamas losing the war with Israel, and all universities refusing to divest their endowment from any Israel-related companies, the protestors were bound to get even more enraged than last year.

They’re already back at it at Columbia University, and yesterday afternoon the terrorism-lovers struck our campus again. One of their targets was a famous Henry Moore sculpture on campus called “Nuclear Energy.” It sits on the site of the world’s first nuclear reactor, built by Fermi and his colleagues underneath the old Stagg Field, an athletic field. Wikipedia gives the themes of this work:

Moore cited a number of inspirations for the sculpture, from earlier works with similar forms to natural objects like stones. About the shape of the sculpture, Moore said:

When I had made this working model I showed it to them and they liked my idea because the top of it is like some large mushroom, or a kind of mushroom cloud. Also it has a kind of head shape like the top of the skull but down below is more an architectural cathedral. One might think of the lower part of it being a protective form and constructed for human beings and the top being more like the idea of the destructive side of the atom. So between the two it might express to people in a symbolic way the whole event. (Henry Moore quoted in Art Journal, New York, Spring 1973, p.286)

Moore’s work explores the hopes and fears of the Atomic Age. The potential of controlled nuclear power or a nuclear holocaust is tied to the historical events of the site with the iconography of a mushroom cloud or skull, supported by pillars topped by arches like a protective cathedral. Interviews with Moore highlight the dual nature of the top and bottom portions of the sculpture, meant to represent the creative and destructive power possible with nuclear energy. An abstract sculpture was chosen by the University to highlight the importance of the events at the site, and their implications for humanity, rather than the importance of Fermi in bringing them about.

Curiously, this campus attraction draws a lot of Japanese tourists, who visit it by the busload, competing to have their picture taken in front of the mushroom cloud.

But yesterday, the enraged activists covered it with red paint and then spray-painted “FREE GAZA” on the sidewalk beside it. Here’s a picture taken by a member of the University community, who sent it to me.  What on earth do the protestors think they are accomplishing by doing this? They sure aren’t enlisting sympathy. They are simply acting out, like the petulant toddlers they are.

The person who took the photo sent it to me along with this email (all words and photos are used with permission):

I just came back to work to find this (see attached). It is probably a very good thing that I was not around a few minutes ago.
The protestors are now one block down and I cannot see any signs of arrests having been made, regardless of heavy UC and City police presence. About one hundred and fifty children of privilege, calling the UC Police “the KKK’. To their face—with most officers present being black. We are dealing with imbeciles of a species the world has never seen before.
Every single student involved in the desecration of this monument needs to be expelled, ipso facto. The whole lot.

Another member of the University community weighed in, and sent some photographs as well:

Today at about 3pm, pro-Palestine protesters forcefully attempted to lock the University gate on 57th Street with chains and padlocks. Two brave UChicago police officers fought back and were able to prevent that. Police cars joined the scene shortly afterwards. I was about to walk through the gate when this happened.

Actually, according to the news report below, they protestors did lock the gate.

Below: the photos (captions are mine). The protestors put their signs on Hull Gate, which is right outside my building, and then tried to lock the gate so their signs would be visible and conspicuous (see more below):

Both campus cops and Chicago city police were on the site. Here two campus cops try to prevent the protestors from locking the gate, the main entry from the north to the Quad:

Note that many of the protestors are masked. That is not for health reasons, but because they are cowards, fearful of being identified because they might be punished. Many are also wearing keffiyehs, sometimes described as “swastikas for hipsters”.

Whoops—there’s a coward inside the gate:

Masks everywhere. I can’t tell you how reprehensible I find acts of civil disobedience that are not only not peaceful, but whose perps try to disguise themselves:

The outside. Whoops, we have an identifiable human here:

More from outside the gate. My building is to the left, and the Anatomy building, housing Organismal Biology and Anatomy, is to the right:

University of Chicago cops on the scene:

The student newspaper, the Chicago Maroon, did a live-stream report on the protests that is now a full news report. There were student scuffles with cops, three arrests, and reports that police used batons and pepper spray. Here are a few indented excerpts from the news, with my words flush left.

A UChicago United for Palestine (UCUP) rally saw three protesters arrested and physical altercations between protesters and officers. Earlier, protesters locked Cobb Gate using a bike lock despite UCPD’s efforts to keep the gate open. During the rally multiple police officers used pepper spray and batons. Protesters damaged UCPD vehicles and kicked at least one officer.

The rally, which began with a walk out at 2:30 p.m., morphed into a brawl that involved at least 200 University- and community-affiliated protesters, 20 University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD) officers, and 30 Chicago Police Department (CPD) officers.

Deans-on-Call informed UCPD at approximately 2:15 p.m., that the University had “zero tolerance” for excessive noise before attempting to hand out warning cards to protest leaders using bullhorns to lead chants on the quad at 2:45 p.m. The cards read, “FINAL WARNING: This card serves to inform you or your student organization that your conduct is violating policies outlined in the Student Manual.” The cards also contained four QR codes linked to relevant University policies, which were updated in advance of the beginning of the academic year. Protesters refused to accept the cards.

The Deans-on-Call have always been useless in these altercations. From the lack of punishments last year, the protestors know that “zero tolerance” really means “infinite tolerance.”

. . . At approximately 3 p.m., protesters marched from the center of the quad and proceeded through the Hull and Cobb Gates on the north end. Once all protesters had passed through Cobb Gate, protesters pushed the gate closed and secured it with a bike lock despite police attempts to stop them. They also hung a banner on the gate that read “Free Palestine” and “Hands Off Lebanon.”

By this point, the protest had grown to include over 150 people, spilling out onto East 57th Street. Protesters allowed space for cars to pass through, but UCPD patrol cars blocked the street on both ends.

Protesters told police officers “Pigs go home” and chanted “Intifada, intifada, long live the intifada.”

The “intifada” is an armed uprising of Palestinians against Israel. The protestors want that, and doubtless many of them are proud of the butchery of October 7.

At 3:15 p.m., protesters left Cobb Gate and proceeded north on S. Ellis Avenue. They stopped in front of the Nuclear Energy Sculpture next to the Regenstein Library, at which point some protesters threw paint on the statue and wrote graffiti in the surrounding area that read “Free Gaza,” “hands off Lebonan” [sic], and “fuck the bombs.” CPD officers arrived on scene, joining at least 20 UCPD officers. Some were in riot gear and carried batons and zip-ties.

At approximately 3:30 p.m., the protest moved further north along the street, stopping between Ratner Athletics Center and the Court Theater. Police searched for and then tackled and detained one protester, whom they put into a patrol car. Protesters attempted to prevent the detainment, physically confronting officers. The Maroon was unable to confirm why that protester was detained.

Other protesters began chanting “Let him go!” and surrounded the patrol car that held the detained protester. An officer attempted to drive the UCPD patrol car away from the scene but was blocked by the crowd of protesters. Officers and protesters continued to push against each other.

Another protester struck the side mirror of a separate police car several times with what appeared to be a rock and then rejoined the crowd.

As tensions escalated, a third protester kicked a CPD officer in the back of his leg. Officers attempted to detain the protester, hitting him with a baton. They chased him briefly and tackled him halfway down the block, at which point they detained him and placed him into a patrol car.

The attack on cops takes the protest out of the realm of civil disobedience, which is supposed to be peaceful protests. And of course rule #1 of that type of demonstration is NEVER HIT A COP.

Officers used pepper spray on protesters, who were seen afterward rubbing and washing their eyes with water. One student told the Maroon that he was pepper sprayed by an officer who had “harassed students at the encampment.” A Maroon reporter witnessed a UCPD officer inadvertently pepper spraying a Chicago Police Department Captain, an incident which the UCPD officer later apologized for.

I don’t know about the pepper spray, but I saw the encampment taken down, at least the beginning of it, and I saw no harassment of students by the University police.

At approximately 3:45 p.m., protesters began dispersing north along South Ellis Avenue, south towards the quad, and through the SMART Museum courtyard. One CPD officer remarked to gathered officers, “that was fun for a little while.” Shortly after, CPD and UCPD officers also dispersed. By 4 p.m., the lock on Cobb Gate was removed and the gate was reopened.

And of course the mess around the sculpture, involving painted vandalism, had to be cleaned up by workers from Facilities. The protestors don’t care that workers have clean up after them.

The University issued a statement (below) that seems to me a bit ambiguous. Yes, university policiers prohibit disruptive violations and destruction of property, but what will happen if (as happened during the last academic year) the arrested protestors have their charges dropped by the Chicago district attorney, who seems sympathetic to the protests?  Here’s the statement:

According to a University spokesperson, “the University of Chicago is fundamentally committed to upholding the rights of protesters to express their views on any issue. At the same time, University policies make it clear that protests cannot jeopardize public safety, disrupt the University’s operations, or involve the destruction of property.”

This year, I hope, the University will actually enforce violations of the law and of university regulations. As far as I know, despite arrests and dismantling of the encampment last academic year, in the end not a single student was punished. Last spring I recounted four protests by Students for Justice in Palestine and their umbrella organization, UChicago United, and yet though all of these constituted legal or university violations, not a single student was punished. 13 of them had their degrees withheld, but they all got them reinstated after a short while. And though a sit-in in the admissions office led to the arrest for criminal trespassing of 28 people by Chicago Police (18 undergraduates, eight graduate students, and two professors), all the charges were dropped.

As far as I know—and there may be proceedings of which I’m unaware—the only punishment meted out the entire academic year was a mild rebuke to Students for Justice in Palestine–just a note on their record that if they continue to violate university regulations, there may be trouble for them in the future.

Frankly, I’m tired of the University proclaiming that violations will be punished, but then doing nothing about it. I don’t want to live through another year with protestors illegally shouting through megaphones during class hours, spraying graffiti on University walls, and holding sit-ins in University buildings.  Many of us feel that the University, despite eventually dismantling the illegal encampment, is doing as little as it can to punish protestors—perhaps because they don’t want the attention. But if this kind of mishigas continues, it will eventually lead to more attention focused on the University of Chicago, and perhaps, as has happened at Harvard, a decline in the number of Jewish students applying for admission.

Anti-Israeli group at Columbia University finally admits that it backs Hamas and terrorism

October 11, 2024 • 10:45 am

It’s not hard, if you watch anti-Israeli or pro-Palestinian demonstrations (which are pretty much the same thing), to realize that most demonstrators are really both antisemitic and pro-Hamas, seeing what happened on October 7 of last year as a good thing that produced “martyrs”, and explicitly calling for the elimination of the state of Israel. Yes, “Jews” have euphemistically morphed into “Zionists”, but up to now the demonstrators have pretty much avoided explicit worship of terrorism.

Times have changed. Now, after a year in which Hamas and now Hezbollah have taken a pounding, the demonstrators are getting more rabid, and one group at Columbia University, Ground Zero for antisemitism, is celebrating terrorism. Of course they’re celebrating it as justified “armed resistance”, but how reprehensible is it to justify “armed resistance” that involves rape, killing, and kidnapping of civilians, many of whom were working for peace?  A dance rave is not a threat to Hamas, except insofar as it involves Jews!

The NYT reports on a Columbia group that no longer masks its sentiments like they mask their faces. Click headline to read, or find the article archived here.

An excerpt:

The pro-Palestinian group that sparked the student encampment movement at Columbia University in response to the Israel-Hamas war is becoming more hard-line in its rhetoric, openly supporting militant groups fighting Israel and rescinding an apology it made after one of its members said the school was lucky he wasn’t out killing Zionists.

“We support liberation by any means necessary, including armed resistance,” the group, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, [CUAD] said in its statement revoking the apology.

The group marked the anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by distributing a newspaper with a headline that used Hamas’s name for it: “One Year Since Al-Aqsa Flood, Revolution Until Victory,” it read, over a picture of Hamas fighters breaching the security fence to Israel. And the group posted an essay calling the attack a “moral, military and political victory” and quoting Ismail Haniyeh, the assassinated former political leader of Hamas.

“The Palestinian resistance is moving their struggle to a new phase of escalation and it is our duty to meet them there,” the group wrote on Oct. 7 on Telegram. “It is our duty to fight for our freedom!”

The rhetoric poses a challenge to university administrators who must decide how to handle students and student groups that take such positions. Their statements are broadly protected under the First Amendment but could lead to federal investigations into campus antisemitism or on campus discipline if they are deemed to create a hostile environment for Jewish students.

There’s more.

The Columbia group’s increasingly radical statements are being mirrored by pro-Palestinian groups on other college campuses, including in a series of social media posts this week that praised the Oct. 7 attack. They also reflect the influence of more extreme protest groups off campus, like Within Our Lifetime, that support violent attacks against Israel.

“Long live October 7th,” Nerdeen Kiswani, the head of Within Our Lifetime, wrote on X on Tuesday.

Here’s Kiswani’s post in which she celebrates the brutal murder of civilians:

And more:

Students for Justice in Palestine, a pro-Palestinian student group that has chapters at hundreds of colleges across the country, was among the groups whose members posted praise for the Oct. 7 attack.

“Al-Aqsa Flood was a historic act of resistance against decades of occupation, apartheid, and settler colonial violence,” the Brown chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine posted on Instagram.

The increasingly revolutionary tilt of the student movement reflects an internal push among many pro-Palestinian groups to align their goals with principles known as the Thawabet, crafted by the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1977. They include the right of Palestinians to armed resistance and to self-determination on all the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

Here’s that Brown SJP Instagram post, which celebrates October 7, 2023, as beginning an “accelerated phase” of opposition to Israeli genocide. Now that’s a good euphemism!

More about Columbia University Apartheid Divest:

Since [October 7], the group has praised a Tel Aviv attack by Palestinian militants that killed seven people at a light rail station on Oct. 1, including a mother who died while shielding her 9-month-old baby. It also praised Iran’s missile attack on the Jewish state that began that evening, calling it a “bold move.”

On Tuesday, the group said it rescinded an apology it made last spring about the behavior of Khymani James, a student who had said in a disciplinary hearing that “Zionists don’t deserve to live,” and, “Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.”

“We let you down,” the group wrote in a statement, referring to Mr. James. No longer, the group vowed, would it “pander to liberal media to make the movement for liberation palatable.”

There’s really nothing to say except that a. this is still free speech until it reaches the point where the atmosphere at Columbia becomes such as to provide an intimidating atmosphere for Jewish students, impeding their learning, in which case it becomes a Title VI violation. (It may be there now.) But regardless of free speech considerations, CUAD is now an open exponent of butchering civilians, an antisemitic group that supports terrorism and rescinds an apology for someone who said that he was going to murder “Zionists”.  This is not just support for the Palestinian people, but support for murder, rape, torture, and kidnapping. After all, Israel must be eliminated “by any means necessary.”

When I posted a tweet that this article had appeared in the NYT, and calling out the protestors, I got this on my Twitter feed from an author.

Just be aware that this dude apparently supports CUAD and its aims. Things have come to a pretty pass when a Jew can be called a “Nazi” for opposing the killing of innocent Jews.

Are campus encampments unethical?

September 17, 2024 • 10:30 am

Given the spate of articles on antisemitism that Conor Friedersdorf publishes in the Atlantic, he would seem to be the house conservative (yes, defending Israel or criticizing campus antisemitism is now largely the purview of the right or of centrists). Indeed, Wikipedia says this about him:

In an interview with journalist Matt Lewis, Friedersdorf stated that he has right-leaning views but that he does not consider himself to be a doctrinal conservative or a member of the conservative movement.

I’m not sure, though, whether this is relevant when discussing his views, like those in the article below, as his arguments should stand on their own.  And I think that in the main they do, although perhaps the word “unethical” is a bit strong (I’d say “a violation of the right to a college education” or “campus protest encampment should be banned”). But you can decide for yourself by reading the piece. Click on the headline, or find the article archived here. (BTW, I’m going to try to find archived versions of articles that are paywalled, so look for “archived here” links in future posts.)

Indeed, Friedersdorf begins not by discussing ethical issues, but by arguing that campus encampments are maladaptive: the costs exceed the benefits. I’ve bolded the one place where he mentions ethics:

The practical, legal, and moral arguments against occupying the quad add up to a protest tactic with costs that far outweigh any benefits. Some of the problems with encampments are obvious, others subtle; taken together, they show that academic communities cannot thrive when any group uses coercion to try to force others to adopt its ideas––an approach that usually fails anyway. Activists should reject encampments as both unethical and ineffective.

Again, I’d say “ineffective and disruptive” rather than “unethical”. I can see where some could consider that activist notions that they have a right to disrupt the education of others is “unethical”, but if that’s the case, then any disruption in the cause of ideology is “unethical.” (Besides, it’s not at all clear that we’ll have any encampments this year.)

Now I know what you’re thinking: if encampments are unethical, why weren’t the disruptions of the Civil Rights movement in the Sixties—lunch counter sit-ins and so on—also unethical.  But there are several crucial differences between then and now, and I believe I’ve pointed them out before. But here they are again from Friedersdorf:

A standard defense of disruptive tactics is to invoke the civil-rights movement. Its leaders repeatedly engaged in civil disobedience––the knowing, willful violation of laws and rules to disrupt the status quo. If such “good trouble” played an integral part in a cause as righteous as the U.S. civil-rights movement, why are today’s encampments any different or less defensible? It’s a fair question to pose, but not a hard one to answer.

In the civil-rights-era victories, protesters were violating unjust laws, such as the ones that forced lunch counters to segregate. Today’s students are violating perfectly reasonable rules, such as the ones that forbid anyone, regardless of viewpoint, from erecting barricades to prevent fellow students from traversing the quad. Ending those illegitimate laws against segregated lunch counters made almost everyone better off. Ending legitimate rules against occupying the quad would make almost everyone worse off.

In addition, when “occupying” was a tactic in civil-rights-era civil disobedience, it was aimed at cogent targets. To protest segregation in a given jurisdiction, activists targeted segregated spaces in that jurisdiction.

Well, I suppose one could answer that divesting from Israel—the ultimate goal of encampments, which of course is completely futile—could be conceived as violating campus regulations in pursuit of a just cause.  After all, what’s really important vis-á-vis ethicality is the ultimate goal of your action, not which local regulations (short of proscribing violence) you violate to achieve it. Fortunately, for Friedersdorf (and unfortunately for the encampers), the immorality of colleges investing in Israeli companies (or even in funding through investments Israel’s war against Hamas) is not at all obvious.

There’s another difference, too, and one that Friedersdorf doesn’t mention. Civil rights protesters knew that they would be punished for their actions, and gladly accepted that punishment, even when it was severe, like being bashed by Southern cops, sprayed with water hoses, or jailed. The punishment was clearly part of the moral suasion that horrified onlookers. In contrast, today’s protesters and encampers regularly make it part of their list of “demands” that they not be punished for their actions. In other words, they insist on breaking the rules, but also insist on immunity to punishment.  That takes away from them the right to claim civil disobedience.

There’s no doubt that many, perhaps most, encampments are against college regulations and are disruptive. Ours certainly was, blocking access to campus and disrupting classes with noises, bullhorns, and megaphones.  These encampments are against most college regulations, but invertebrate administrators let them go up  anyway. In some cases, such as UCLA, the encampers even prevent “Zionist” students (i.e., Jews), from crossing the area or even entering class.  And that is not only disruptive, but against campus regulations.  Sadly, administrators, who are often weak and spineless, let this stuff happen under the misapprehension that it constitutes “free speech” (it might be in some situations; see below).

I found this story about UCLA interesting because the Jewish students filed suit against their school and won:

UCLA offers a case study in what’s wrong with encampments. Royce Quad is a space many students crisscross to access central parts of campus. On April 25, pro-Palestine protesters formed an encampment with barricades. Entrances were guarded by activists, many of them masked. They barred entry to students who support Israel’s existence. On April 30, an angry crowd gathered to protest the barricades and encampment. Counterprotesters “hid their faces behind masks and scarves,” CNN reported. “Some attackers sprayed protesters with chemical irritants, hit them with wooden boards, punched and kicked them and shot fireworks into the crowd of students and supporters huddled behind umbrellas and wooden planks, attempting to stay safe.” Authorities, who had failed to stop protesters from unlawfully occupying the quad, similarly did not intervene as counterprotesters unlawfully assaulted some of its occupiers.

Three Jewish students who were denied the ability to cross the quad filed a federal lawsuit against UCLA, arguing that they have a religious obligation to support a Jewish state in Israel, that their religious belief caused them to be denied equal access to their college education, and that UCLA nevertheless allowed the encampment to remain in place for a week. UCLA countered that it lawfully exercised the discretion that it needs when trying to avoid the escalation of conflicts.

The group Faculty for Justice in Palestine at UCLA submitted an amicus brief in the case, arguing that their allies are the ones who were mistreated. “Students and faculty of the Palestine Solidarity Encampment have been subjected to police brutality and mob attacks by self-proclaimed Zionists and white Supremacists, representing an almost total failure of UCLA to provide timely intervention or protection,” their brief asserts. In its telling, “Entrance to the encampment is contingent on principles, politics, and solidarity with the Palestinian struggle, and not on identity.”

Federal Judge Mark C. Scarsi disagreed. Earlier this month, he issued a preliminary injunction siding with the Jewish students, writing that they “were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith.” He called this “abhorrent to our constitutional guarantee of religious freedom.” UCLA appealed the ruling, then dropped that appeal. The school is obligated to clear future encampments, or else to shut down any educational program––a class, lecture series, and so on—that is inaccessible to anyone due membership in a protected class.

Note that UCLA was on the side of the protestors!

I have to note, though, that even Friedersdorf isn’t down on all encampments, as he gives a pass to those that aren’t so disruptive:

Granted, it is possible to set up a peaceful encampment that is intended not to intimidate, but to raise awareness or show ongoing commitment to a cause. When visiting UC Berkeley one day last spring, I found the tents pitched in front of Sproul Plaza to be minimally disruptive, in a lively part of campus where free-speech activities are constant. The encampment was far from academic buildings, did not block pedestrian traffic, was easy to avoid by using other routes onto campus, and seemed easily monitored by UC police officers stationed nearby.

But nondisruptive encampments are the exception, not the rule, partly because crowds of young people behave unpredictably, and partly because disruption is often the point.

Does this mean that Friedersdorf considers encampments like the one at Berkeley to be “ethical”? Unless there are university regulations that allow encampments in some places but not in others, then they’re equally illegal.  But I guess to Friedersdorf, “ethicality” equates with “nondisruptive.”

I’m on the fence about this one, at least the “unethical” desription. Clearly, it’s illegal to blockade campuses in a disruptive way, and, after a warning, violators should be disciplined.  But for just a few tents in an out-of-the-way place that aren’t disruptive, I wouldn’t be so draconian.  That could, after all, be considered a demonstration of freedom of speech, and even if violations prohibit encampments, I wouldn’t necessarily enforce a small, unobtrusive one. But of course the very point of encampments is to be disruptive in a way that is supposed to force the university to divest (along with other demands).

About the “ethicality” trope, I am not sure I agree. But perhaps our difference is largely semantic. To me, “disruptive and illegal” would suffice.

h/t: Mayaan

The rise of “neotoddlerism”

September 16, 2024 • 11:30 am

This article, on the blog of Gurwinder Bhogal (“The Prism“), is long, especially given today’s attention span. (It’s five pages long when printed out in 9-point single-spaced type). But it’s well worth reading for its comparison of today’s political demonstrations to the tantrums of toddlers.

All of us have noticed the childish antics of many protesters: throwing soup on paintings, blocking roads, screaming through bullhorns, spray-painting graffiti that actual working people have to clean up, and so on. This contrasts strongly with the gravitas of, say, the Civil Rights movement of the Sixties.

Gurwinder lists some of these tantrums, which come from both the Right and Left (though in different forms), and says that they show many aspects of not only tantrums, but the form of tantrums that, when they persist in adults, are considered a form of hard-to-cure mental illness, “cluster B personality disorders“.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Click below to read, and I’ll group Gurwinder’s ideas into blocks (my grouping). Gurwinder’s words are indented. I’m taking only small portions of the article, so go read the whole thing (I assume the high-class readers here will have the patience). 

What are examples of neotoddlerism?

Across the West, protests are getting larger, more frequent, and more disruptive. Over the weekend, the UK saw nationwide anti-immigration riots in which cars were flipped over and buildings set aflame. A few days before that, Just Stop Oil activists sprayed orange paint in the world’s second-busiest airport, Heathrow. The week before, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the US Congress, pro-Palestine activists rioted in Columbus Square, vandalizing memorials and releasing a swarm of maggots and worms in his Washington hotel.

These are just the latest examples of a growing trend of shock-activism that combines political protest and public nuisance, and which has this year seen activists across the West spray-paint Stonehenge, squat on university campuses, block access to roads and bridges, occupy museums and government buildings, storm sports events and movie premieres, attack priceless artworks and historical artifacts, and even desecrate war memorials and holocaust monuments.

What causes neotoddlerism? 

This movement has its roots in the digital revolution of 2009, when use of smartphones and social media reached a critical mass, allowing strangers to easily unite and mobilize around shared views, which led to a rapid increase in the size and frequency of protests around the world. But protests didn’t just become bigger and more frequent, they also became more outrageous.

In infants, the chief causes of outrageous behavior — impulsivity, grandiosity, attention-seeking, and a sense of entitlement — are considered normal, but in adults they’re key symptoms of the “cluster-B” personality disorders. All four such disorders — narcissistic, histrionic, antisocial and borderline — are characterized by overemotionality and a need for validation. They’re also associated with heavy social media use, likely because dramatic cluster-B behaviors, such as playing the victim and catastrophizing, excel at getting attention on such platforms.

Gurwinder notes that because neotoddleristic behavior gets a lot of attention online compared to serious attempts to reform society, the attention the neotoddlers get simply energizes them to continue their tantrums.  But. . .

Neotoddlerism doesn’t work. 

The ease with which dramatic behavior gets attention online has convinced many political activists that a better world doesn’t require years of patient work, only a sufficient quantity of drama. Many activists on both the Left and Right now hope to bring about their ideal world the same way a spoiled brat acquires a toy they’ve been denied: by being as loud and hysterical as possible. This is neotoddlerism: the view that utopia can be achieved by acting like a three-year old.

. . . The Civil Rights movement succeeded because it was guided by leaders who had clear, specific, and realistic goals, and were able to negotiate to achieve them. Since neotoddlers “organize” mostly on social media, they’re decentralized, and don’t have leaders that can guide them or negotiate for them. They are therefore ruled by their loftiest ideals, in service to their basest impulses, and they don’t have the means to create, only to disrupt.

And so they disrupt, with the goal of spreading awareness. Yet their attempts to do so are misguided because, for all the issues they protest about, the problem is not a lack of awareness; it’s a lack of solutions. We don’t need to be told that war, crime, and pollution are bad, because we learned such lessons in primary school. What we need are clear, specific, and realistic plans of action. And the neotoddlers, being impulsive short-term thinkers, have only broad demands but no rational way to achieve them.

. . . Unsurprisingly, nuisance-protests often end up alienating ordinary people. While the public supports climate action, it has a negative opinion of Just Stop Oil. And while the public supports a ceasefire in Gaza, it has a negative opinion of the campus protesters. The same is true of Right-wing nuisance protests: while the public generally believes immigration should be curbed, it overwhelmingly opposes the recent riots, which have achieved little except convince the public that Right-wing extremism is a serious threat. So, though nuisance-protests do get attention, little of that attention is converted to sympathy and a lot to spite.

Both Left and Right engage in neotoddlerism

But if nuisance-protests are counterproductive, why are they spreading? Because protests are usually motivated more by emotion than reason. Take the recent Southport riots [JAC: these came from the Right, are performative, and you can read about them here.] These have been driven not by any rational plan but by the frustrations of Right-wingers and ordinary working-class people that their communities have been forgotten and their concerns about immigration are not being taken seriously by politicians. These frustrations, stoked by fake news, have led them to engage in infantile actions like vandalizing mosques and setting fire to police cars, all of which hurts their cause more than help it. It does, however, make them feel good for the moment, and they live mostly for the moment.

As for Left-wing neotoddlers, their motivations tend to be more complex (but no less childish), because they’re generally much more affluent than Right-wing neotoddlers. For instance, an analysis by the Washington Monthly revealed that the Gaza campus protests were largely confined to the most expensive and elite colleges. And Just Stop Oil members are themselves quick to admit that their movement is “privileged” and living in a white middle-class “student bubble”.

I’ve already stolen too many of Gurwinder’s words, but there’s one more issue, and this one I’ll partly paraphrase

How do you get rid of this narcissistic behavior?

While neotoddlerism is promoted and spread by the media—both MSM and social media—the reason the adult toddlers get attention is because we give them attention.  That is, we like to read about people having adult tantrums and acting out, actions that make for a short and engaging read that is neither as tedious nor as boring as reading about people really effecting positive change in society. In the end, Gurwinder maintains, neotoddlerism is our fault, for we click on articles that describe it, and retweet them on X. It’s just, as Gurwinder says, “business sense” for the media to cover this stuff.

The way to stop this behavior, says Gurwinder, is exactly the way we stop infant tantrums: we ignore them. And so I’ll give one more quote:

The more we share and comment on clips of people throwing soup over paintings, or graffitiing on memorials, or vandalizing mosques, or blocking roads, or spraying orange paint at airports, or pitching tents on university campuses, the more we’ll see such events recur in real life.

The solution to neotoddlers, then, is the same as the one to regular spoiled brats: to ignore their outbursts and deny them attention. The media will stop reporting on their meltdowns when we stop engaging with them. They’ll stop amplifying — and thereby incentivizing — the neotoddlers when we do.

If we gave less attention to those who outrage us, and more to those who inspire us, it would incentivize young people to invest their idealism in, and derive their purpose from, finding practical solutions instead of merely restating the problem in ever sillier ways. So we should learn to react more slowly to news, to pay attention to what we pay attention to, and give more of our attention to behaviors we wish to encourage. It’s not just the neotoddlers who need to be less impulsive, we do too.

And if we take the time to consciously focus our attention, we find there are many people in this world who actually deserve it. While Greta Thunberg became world famous by yelling and blocking entrances to public buildings, the Dutch inventor Boyan Slat has been quietly removing plastic from the oceans through his startup, The Ocean Cleanup. His project recently hit a milestone of 15,000,000kg of trash removed from oceans and rivers worldwide, but it’s hardly been reported by the press.

. . .Every child begins life throwing tantrums. And every good parent learns to ignore them, because they know that acknowledging attention-seeking behaviors validates them, and prevents their kids from outgrowing them. If we wish to stop seeing good causes ruined by bad actors, we must stop rewarding immaturity. If we wish to usher in an age of post-toddlerism, we must stop making neotoddlers famous.

Gurwinder is, in the main, correct. The behavior is performative, childish, and often times lapses into near-insanity.  But it would be very hard to stop paying attention to it. Can you resist clicking on a link describing food activists throwing soup on the Mona Lisa (it was protected by glass)?  See? Even I couldn’t even resist linking to it, and after I just wrote this post!

Humans are curious, and are you really going to avoid clicking on an article saying that pro-Palestinian protestors blocked Lake Shore Drive, angering Chicago drivers? I want to know what happened! (And see–I linked again.)

But Gurwinder has a point.  The media is simply not going to refrain from covering this stuff, so if we want them to stop, we should stop clicking. Still, given that this is very hard, I have an alternative suggestion:

PUNISH ILLEGAL PROTESTORS

We all know that punishing illegal demonstrations, particularly if they’re pro-Palestinian ones, doesn’t occur often. Encampers at the University of Chicago, for example, pretty much got off scot-free, as did the students who occupied buildings at Columbia University. People who block traffic don’t get arrested.

There are various reasons for failure to punish, but at least colleges should realize that the easier they go on protestors, the more protest will occur.

Since it seems that most of the protestors at Chicago who violated University Regulations were set free to menace the students again this year (and withheld diplomas were restored), I predict that we’re going to see the same kinds of protests we saw last year. We may not have an encampment (that was taken down and won’t be allowed to arise again), but given the promises of National Students for Justice in Palestine—the prime Neotoddler Group in America—that they’ll continue having tantrums even as Hamas loses its war with Israel, I think that this year is going to be a bumpy ride.

But I hope I’m wrong.

h/t: Mike

The pro-Hamas protests resume big time at Columbia

September 4, 2024 • 11:50 am

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:

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.