Columbia University community 'shattered' after police raid

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.

harmonicPerc,

How to radicalize a lot of smart people in a very short period of time

MakePorkGreatAgain,

are those people registered to vote?

Maggoty,

Yeah actually.

endhits,

If you see people being radicalized and can’t think of anything other than voting, you’re part of the problem.

DragonTypeWyvern,

Do those people own a registered firearm they can bring next time?

Woozythebear,

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…

halcyoncmdr,
@halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world avatar

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.

Ononotagain,

If only they had someone worth voting FOR.

FlyingSquid,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

I’d say preventing a dictatorship is worth voting for, but YMMV.

harmonicPerc,

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

Karyoplasma,

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?

CouncilOfFriends,

https://slrpnk.net/pictrs/image/4cec7db6-0f63-40ef-9f4b-1fbc6446706a.gif

bl_r,

Only authoritarian governments crush student protests

Plastic_Ramses,

Name a government that doesnt do their damndest to crush student protests.

angrystego,

There are plenty in Europe.

raspberriesareyummy,

That isn’t the contradiction you imply…

bl_r,

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.

rambling_lunatic,

There are no universities there for students to protest in :(

bl_r,

:(

Drusas,

This is a private university crushing student protests.

bl_r,

With police, an apparatus of the state.

You have to work harder to come to that conclusion than just going “hey isn’t the police employed by the government?”

Stovetop,

But the state itself is controlled by corporate interests.

Olgratin_Magmatoe,

This is a corporatocracy.

Ultragigagigantic,
@Ultragigagigantic@lemmy.world avatar

Its just capitalism in a terminal stage

blusterydayve26,

The word you’re looking for is “Plutocracy,” and it has a long history: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy

bl_r,

Yeah, but the relationship isn’t simply one way.

The apparatus of the state often includes corporations, such as Lockheed Martin, or the IMF/World Bank, or Elbit Systems, or Blackwater, or the Pinkertons.

The state also enshrines the rights of corporations and maintains the capitalistic and/or colonialistic relationships corporations have with people, and protects them from everyone else.

In return, the govt gets a small amount of taxes, and a surprisingly high degree of legitimacy if the line goes up.

Maggoty,

They tear gassed students at my old public university. The way they’re being treated is ridiculous and completely out of line with previous protests.

FlyingSquid,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

There’s a fucking sniper at my old university. On the roof of the student union building where my friends and I used to go smoke weed. That’s a head trip.

FlyingSquid,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Cool. Now do universities like UCLA and IU.

djsoren19,

Both universities are gonna have a real fun time explaining themselves in court, because I guarantee they’ll see lawsuits over this. Private universities get a lot of leeway over what they allow, but public universities are bound by the First Amendment. Any who are violating the protestors rights are gonna get fucked six ways to Sunday.

runswithjedi,

City police, run by the government, arrested people. They could have ignored the request.

David_Eight,

Like they do with school shootings.

greentreerainfire,

Now, now, this isn’t Texas.

natural_motions,

That would include pissing their pants, which costs extra. Unarmed students are free though.

FakeGreekGirl,

Or like they do with right wing thugs, like the ones that attacked protestors at UCLA.

rockSlayer,

I didn’t know that the university had control over the NY police force.

Drusas,

They don't. That's why they request police resources.

xmunk,

And why would the police comply with such a ridiculous request when they have more important things to do?

Kecessa,

For the same reason they will comply with such request from any private party? Try to pitch a couple of tents on your neighbor’s front lawn with your friends to see if the police doesn’t get you moving when they get called.

Juice,

Under capitalism the main police function is to break strikes and to repress other forms of protest against the policies of the ruling class. Any civic usefulness other forms of police activity may have, like controlling traffic and summoning ambulances, is strictly incidental to the primary repressive function. Personal inclinations of individual cops do not alter this basic role of the police. All must comply with ruling-class dictates. As a result, police repression becomes one of the most naked forms through which capitalism subordinates human rights to the demands of private property. If the cops sometimes falter in their antisocial tasks, it is simply because they – like the guns they use – are subject to rust when not engaged in the deadly function for which they are primarily trained.
No police organization is exactly the same day in and day out. Two essential factors determine its character at a given moment: the social climate in which the cops have been operating and the turnover of personnel within the force. An unseasoned cop may tend to be somewhat considerate of others in the performance of duty, especially while class relations are relatively peaceful. Even in such calm times, however, the necessary accommodation must be made to capitalist demands, including readiness to shoot anyone who tampers with private property. Otherwise the aspiring cop, if he is not kicked out of the force, will have little chance of rising beyond a beat in the sticks. By gradually weeding out misfits along these general lines, a police department can keep itself abreast of requirements during a more or less stable period in class relations.

– Farrell Dobbs, Teamster Rebellion

rockSlayer,

So you know and understand that the police force is controlled by the government, but still fail to connect the dots between that fact and them crushing the protests?

eating3645,

The President needs to resign.

solrize,

I had never heard of her before. Wow:

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.

mortimerkahn,

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."

Crackhappy,
@Crackhappy@lemmy.world avatar

Quotes by yourself that by yourself you will live down.

DarkNightoftheSoul,
@DarkNightoftheSoul@mander.xyz avatar

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.

Ultragigagigantic,
@Ultragigagigantic@lemmy.world avatar

GiGaLuL

BeanGoblin,
@BeanGoblin@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Cool. How about you listen to your fucking students then.

tearsintherain,
@tearsintherain@leminal.space avatar

Columbia University’s Shafik, the Neoliberal salon.com/…/columbia-crisis-another-massive-failu…

“If you wanted to choose one individual as the face of “neoliberalism” for an encyclopedia entry, you could do a lot worse. Shafik holds an economics PhD from Oxford and a résumé of high-ranking positions at the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Bank of England, three institutions that have been instrumental in driving developing nations into unsustainable debt in pursuit of a disastrously failed model of progress. She came to Columbia after six years of pushing fiscal austerity as director of the London School of Economics, where just last spring she helped defeat a student/faculty strike, reportedly by slashing salary payments and lowering graduation requirements to hustle student protesters out the door.”

No_Eponym,
@No_Eponym@lemmy.ca avatar

Nemat Shafik: Strike-breaker, Student-crusher, “Intellectual.”

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