Police and private security throng every entrance but one. Steel barriers line the streets. Students pack up belongings in their cars and leave for home - classes are cancelled, and exam plans are up in the air.
Everywhere there is gloom, and uncertainty about what happens next at Columbia University.
Students told the BBC that the university’s decision to call in police to clear a Gaza protest late on Tuesday, leading to a raid on the occupied Hamilton Hall and hundreds of arrests, has left the college community shattered.
The university president, Nemat Shafik, said that it was with great regret that she ordered the police raid against students and others she said had infiltrated the protest. It would “take time to heal”, she added in a message in the operation’s aftermath.
For students of this prestigious school in Manhattan, New York, how long is unclear.
Only authoritarian governments crush student protests
Name a government that doesnt do their damndest to crush student protests.
That isn’t the contradiction you imply…
I struggle to think of a more authoritarian structure than the hierarchic state.
Stateless areas, such as Rojava and the Zapatistas are a good example of a “government” that doesn’t crush student protests, but they really don’t have them in the first place, since their bottom up structure makes it such that the students can directly use political power to prevent shit like supporting genocidal ethnic states.
There are no universities there for students to protest in :(
:(
There are plenty in Europe.
How to radicalize a lot of smart people in a very short period of time
are those people registered to vote?
If not, it doesn’t take very long to do so. When people feel they have a personal and vested interest in voting, they do so reliably and vocally.
It’s apathy that makes people not bother. That’s not the case when someone is willing to put out even minimal effort protesting.
If only they had someone worth voting FOR.
I’d say preventing a dictatorship is worth voting for, but YMMV.
If someone is politically engaged enough to get arrested at a political protest, it seems like a reasonable assumption that they would be registered to vote
You actually have to register to be eligible to vote in the US? Aren’t you automatically getting your voting cards when there is an election and you are over the age of 18?
Yeah actually.
What’s it matter? You think they are going to be lining up to vote for Biden who condemned the protests on campus and called the students (many of whom are jewish) antisemitic…
If you see people being radicalized and can’t think of anything other than voting, you’re part of the problem.
It would “take time to heal”, she added
That’s some big “I’m sorry you made me do this to you” abuser energy there
It is with great regret that she [did something nobody was forcing her to do].
I can make some educated guesses on who forced her to do it.
Edit: upon learning more about her, no, it seems like she’s just like that
Most of what she said are pretty typical non-exuses in British politics and upper class circles, which is were she made her whole career up to this.
The President needs to resign.
I had never heard of her before. Wow:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minouche_Shafik
Nemat Talaat Shafik, Baroness Shafik, (Arabic: نعمت طلعت شفيق) DBE, HonFBA (born 13 August 1962), commonly known as Minouche Shafik (Arabic: مينوش شفيق), is a British-American academic and economist.[2] She has been serving as the 20th president of Columbia University since July 2023. She previously served as president and vice chancellor of the London School of Economics from 2017 to 2023.
From 2014 to 2017, Shafik served as deputy governor of the Bank of England and also previously as permanent secretary of the United Kingdom Department for International Development from 2008 to 2011.[3] She has also served as a vice president at the World Bank[4] and as deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund.[5] She was created a life peeress by Elizabeth II in 2020.
She’s taking a “World Bank” approach to this situation, that’s for sure. This quote by her is hilarious:
“The point of university is to be intellectually challenged and confronted with difference.” She argued that universities needed to ‘teach people to have difficult conversations’, adding: “It’s through that process of listening that you learn, you build consensus, and you move forward as a community."
Quotes by yourself that by yourself you will live down.
No, see, the students listen to their superiors, the ones in charge. That’s how you build consensus and everyone who agrees gets to move forward as a community.
GiGaLuL
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Imagine if the Columbia administration decided they could swim in regular water instead of a moneybin like Scrooge McDuck and divested the university from Israel. Maybe all of this could have been avoided.
Other than “wrong thought” what was it that the protesters were doing that required such a heavy handed response?
By contrast, in a country with actual freedom Student protesters at McGill encampment determined to stay after judge rejects injunction
Not free for long if we get our own Trump Jr (aka Bitcoin Milhouse, aka Pierre Pollievre) elected. This would likely be ’ too woke’ for them.
Anti-trans Pierre Pollievre? The same Pierre Pollievre who opposed a tax change only affecting the richest 0.13% of Canadians each year?
Not a big fan oir conservative but pretty sure comparing Pollievre with Trump is laughable at best. You’re thinking of something like the PPC.
Keep fighting! We’re starting to win
First they ignore you…
Then they laugh at you…
Then they fight you… (I think we’re in this vicinity now)
Then you win.
and others she say had infiltrated the protest
What’s this about?
Ahhhh, the good old land of the free…
I’d put a #IthoughtthiswasAmerica here
People with six months of training arresting people getting 4-year degrees.
God I hate the dramatization of articles like this.
Then don’t give them your money or time and transfer to another school?
Try not giving boomer ass platitudes that you have clearly put about 20 seconds of thought into.
Do you tell struggling minorities in southern states to ‘just move to a blue state’? I’m sure no one has forgotten this is an option, and I expect that future enrollment to the school is going to be way less, but this is an immediate problem and transferring is a semester-scale solution. Some of the students may be ready to graduate as well.
Actually, a national student strike would be incredibly effective. Just like it was after Kent State.
You cannot fund weapons development on donations alone.
I totally agree! That will probably take some time to get up to speed but I would support that in any way I could
Harvard makes more money from it’s investments than from tuition. I can’t even imagine what their land holdings are netting them.
nothing can screw up a kids future quite like college
The verbiage on these posts have me laughing.