This is a very good piece by a colleague accusing university presidents of lying, in their own narrow self-interest, about what's happening on campuses. Their craven behavior barely protects them and makes everyone else far less safe. Including Muslim and Jewish students, faculty, and staff.
This professor, who is Jewish, was suspended for posing a threat to Jewish students, AKA participating in a protest (where he was violently arrested). Now he's in a kind of limbo.
Aftermath of #Petrocultures2024 last week: colleagues are now sending emails urging the Academic Senate to take up the matter of #policing on campus. Because there was a SERIOUS police presence/perimeter. A number of attendees dropped out in protest of that alone... & I don't blame them one bit
I think it's gonna take a lot more than eloquent letters... And unf I don't think we should plan any more conferences for police state campuses, ever again
A variety of pretty interesting thoughts in this Peter Beinart podcast (I skimmed transcript):
"among Jewish students who were involved in pro-#Palestine organizing, it is awakening a kind of much greater interest that they had in what it means to be Jewish"
"the more powerful they grow, the more the repression we will see... the US government at state & federal level will start to punish these universities even more severely"
"A handful of powerful businessmen pushed New York City Mayor Eric Adams to use police to crack down on pro-Palestinian student protesters at #Columbia University, donating to the politician and offering to pay for private investigators to help break up the demonstrations, based on leaked WhatsApp conversations"
Every time there’s a student protest movement the argument against them is always the same, that they couldn’t possibly know their own minds. The young are always looked down upon and underestimated. They go to college to be educated yet simultaneously don’t have the capacity to educate themselves, a narrative that breaks down under scrutiny. #GazaProtests#Gaza#Palestine#StopGenocide#EndTheOccupation#FreePalestine
John Timoney, the former police chief who became infamous for developing the fascistic “Miami Model” of crowd control, was once quoted saying, “you can beat the rap but you can’t beat the ride.” IOW, arrests don’t have to be lawful or stand up to judicial scrutiny to accomplish their purpose.
Many responses to this focus on Trump promising much worse but it just strikes me as incoherent.
Yes, #Biden made a small, late contribution to the moral panic but the crackdowns are coming from college administrators buckling under pressure from GOP demagogues in Congress and are carried out by local cops. #gazaprotests
TFW you cancel the Muslim valedictorian, cancel academic tradition, & shambolically pivot to hold hold a militaristic pep rally in a 2/3rds-empty sports stadium instead. No irony is too great when suppressing student protest of a war supported by the United States
“The administrators keep leaning on ‘safety’ without consulting or sharing their thinking with the Senate or wider faculty,” she said. “We do not necessarily doubt that there were safety concerns, but some question whether this series of decisions to call [#LAPD on nonviolent protesters] harmed & endangered members of campus community while also sending a message to anyone threatening the campus that those threats work.”
What I don't think you'll see in any news story is that my #USC colleagues have been occupying the halls of the administration building for two days now, trying to get disciplinary sanctions of students dropped. They've been met with stonewalling.
It's really awesome that faculty are going to the mat for students & really heartbreaking it's not moving the needle.
Admin censure is so much less than the campus community deserves & also so much less than is visible from inside.
I’m impressed by the intellectual flexibility that’s required to believe that college kids are both afflicted with extreme wokeness and are also prone to rabid expressions of #antisemitism.
These things can only be reconciled by claiming that calls for divestment or a ceasefire are inherently antisemitic. Which is common but nonsensical.
Really highlights how pathetic those college presidents were for getting caught completely flat-footed in the face of the GOP’s entirely predictable demagoguery.
"The real occupation of universities is by the political class, in defiance of autonomy and scientific freedom [..] There's a political harnessing and a disconnection from the facts."
#GazaProtests: The 60 days a Paris university was at the heart of the national political debate
99% of #gazaprotests have been peaceful yet those protesters have been attacked, arrested, ostracized by politicians and punished by administrators. And somehow it’s the protests that are supposed to outrage us.
And they’re protesting a war that’s been conducted consistent with Israel’s stated policy of collective punishment through the use of disproportional force against civilian infrastructure.
I read a Politico piece that referred to students walking out to demand a ceasefire as an “antisemitic incident.”
This stuff tells people that there’s no shame in being called an antisemite and that perhaps reports of real antisemitic incidents are overblown. Just makes the world more dangerous for Jews. #media#gazaprotests#antisemitism
"police raids do not serve a university’s own interests in maintaining peace and civility on campus. The 1960s made that crystal clear. Bringing law enforcement to campus invariably intensifies protests, fuels acrimony, and creates a climate of distrust. Police involvement doesn’t dampen protests; it accelerates them, often with devastating consequences"