Last night, up close, on the barriers on Broadway barring the approaches to Columbia campus, I witnessed riot police crush protestors, driving them out of the way, pinning them against walls.
I've been part of protest encampments like this before, and there's always a debate among the protesters themselves about how confrontational or how law-abiding to be. And there are always people who want to go directly to the most aggressive law-breaking tactics right from the start, and these people generally aren't listened to right at the start.
But when the cops come in with with a heavy use of force, that dynamic changes. Suddenly, the protest leaders who counselled nonviolence, limited cooperation with the authorities and even the police, these people are made to look like fools and those who were for the most confrontational and even violent tactics are now seen as the "realists" who understand what we're up against. These people get a new hearing, and can lead the group wherever they want.
How does a protest escalate from peaceful occupation of a grassy area in the middle of campus to occupying campus buildings? It would be foolish to think that the police and administration crackdown didn't play a role in that decision.
While I appreciate your point of view, I must respectfully disagree. From where I sit, I see students that have hijacked the primary function of a university, which is to educate. If they are truly trying to change the tragic state of affairs in that part of the Middle East, they are going about it in an ineffectual and counterproductive way. Enough is enough...and no, I am not a stereotypical right-wing jerk. I believe you have lost perspective on this issue and are conflating it with other points of contention that are better addressed elsewhere.
Some people need to sit down and read King's Letter From a Birmingham Jail. I'm sick to death of being lectured by people who claim that they, too, are "concerned" about what Israel is doing, may even support some of the goals of the protesters, but then have nothing but criticism for the protesters themselves. And you're absolutely right, NO alternatives offered.
The right to protest has been recognized for decades. Of course, destruction of property has consequences, as does running over protestors with a car....something that recently happened in NY. The offender is an orthodox rabbi. I assume your words apply to him as well...
Actually, in a number of states running over protesters on roads is specifically allowed. Makes sense -- if you lie down on a busy street, the consequences are on you.
Well, the rabbi was arrested, the protestor wasn't lying on the ground, but your absence of logic and abundance of hypocrisy is evident. Breaking windows is an outrage, but running over a human with as multi-ton vehicle is completely acceptable.
Depending on the circumstances, yeah. As I said, if you lie down on a street, getting hit by a car is a logical consequences. You have no -right- to block a road. None, zero, zip, nada.
Do you think that those who protested against the Vietnam War on these exact same campuses were "hijacking the primary function of a university?" Should Socrates have stuck to teaching arithmetic and safe subjects, was he actually guilty of corrupting the youth? Maybe your definition of "primary function of a university" isn't broad enough.
What they were protesting was danger to their own precious pink personal buttocks. I was around then, and it was very notable how the size and temperature of protests nosedived when conscripts weren't being sent there anymore.
I'd say that the University have hijacked the primary purpose of having students - which is to have people in who see things anew, in a fresh light, and without the in-built prejudices of before.
Well, that's a rather odd viewpoint. The purpose of having students is to teach them knowledge and skill -- which is to say, to fill the echoing void between their ears.
I take it you haven't worked in an educational environment. That really is not how it works and if you try that you will fail. Moreover if you even claim to do that you will get kicked out in weeks.
I assume you don't read the comments, but in case you glance over them I wanted to add to the voices commending you for approaching the issue with the moral clarity of what is at stake, and the egregious harms being done to Palestinian people which requires a strong and uncompromising response.
By contrast, at UC Berkeley, Chancellor Carol T. Christ sent the following email:
Dear Cal alumni and friends:
Since Columbia University students protesting the conflict in Gaza were arrested nearly two weeks ago, a wave of protests and encampments have sprung up on campuses across the country, including at UC Berkeley. How each university is handling the demonstrations varies.
Berkeley has long experience with nonviolent political protest. Vitally important are the rules that help ensure that protests do not impinge on students’ ability to access educational resources and services. Our response, which is consistent with long-standing practice and with University of California policy, is to not preemptively request the involvement of law enforcement, and only if necessary to protect the community’s physical safety. So far, the encampment has not disrupted operations, and no students have been arrested. As the academic year draws to a close, we will continue to monitor the situation and stay focused on keeping the campus community safe and on uninterrupted teaching, learning, and research.
Chancellor Christ, informed by history, has responded to the student protests with the policy statement of the University, which policy does not “preemptively request the involvement of law enforcement.”
Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, House Speaker Mike Johnson and other GOP members of congress are calling for Columbia’s president’s resignation, for police crackdowns on student demonstrations, and they have now released an outline of a new congressional investigation into how university leaders have dealt with the protests. House Committee on Education and Workforce Chair Virginia Foxx, joined by GOP leadership and committee chairs at a press conference Tuesday, said she's notified the presidents of Yale, UCLA and the University of Michigan to appear before the Education Committee on May 23.
“American universities are officially put on notice that we have come to take our universities back,” Foxx said.
Who is this “we” of whom Congresswoman Foxx speaks? Having seen this autocratic, authoritarian, <call the law and arrest people> reaction before, I am pretty sanguine about the future of this one.
1964, Berkeley, it started when the Dean of Students Katherine Towle released a letter stating that student political organizing was no longer permitted on the campus at the corner of Bancroft and Telegraph Avenues.
Sitting at a table on a state-owned campus to discuss political issues is a constitutional right. So Jack Weinberg, the head of the UC Berkeley chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (aka CORE), set up a table in front of Sproul Hall. The number of people in Sproul Plaza suddenly grew, and grew.
Someone called the police, and a police car drove onto Sproul Plaza, and the officers came out and arrested Weinberg for violating the University's new rules regarding student political activism. The police officers put Weinberg in the cruiser. And before the car could leave the plaza, several hundred students gathered around it, sat down, and blocked the car from leaving. Then some people got up on top of it. And all night long and into the next day, students got up on the police car and gave speeches calling for free speech on campus. There may have been 7,000 people in Sproul Plaza, witnessing.
That was in October 1964. In December, the University proposed to expel Jack Weinberg and other student members of the Free Speech Movement for their involvement in the October demonstrations. Despite student and faculty requests, the University refused to drop charges against student political leaders.
In response, some 1,500 students occupied the campus administrative building, Sproul Hall, on December 2, 1964. Ultimately, 773 students were arrested for their involvement in the occupation.
That was 1964, 60 years ago. Speaker Johnson and his friends could, should they wish, learn what Jack Weinberg learned 60 years ago.
It’s the first amendment to the Constitution.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
How was the university administration more responsible for the disorder than the protesters? It seems obvious that by “occupying” Hamilton Hall the protesters were virtually demanding that the university call in the NYPD; indeed that reaction was not only welcomed by the protesters but served their goal of imvreasing sympathy for their “cause” (whatever that is precisely) among those who have doubts about their tactics.
I am a 68 graduate (I was arrested in Fayetwethet Hall), have great sympathy for student protest generally, detest the current Israeli government generally and because of what they are doing in Gaza, believe that all the settlements in the West Bank violate international law and should be dismantled immediately, and agree that anti Zionism should not NEVESSARILY be conflated with antisemitism. However, as I walked last week to the class in Hamilton that I audited as a (quaintly dubbed) “lifelong learner” and heard the students chanting “from the river to the sea” I could not overlook that the slogan, if it were to be put into action, would mean the extermination or expulsion of the millions of Jews who now live there (anyone who pretends that a unitary state led by any segment of the current Palestinian leadership would be multicultural, pluralistic entity in which the Jews who currently live in Tel Aviv could continue to do so in peace and tranquility is either ignorant or disingenuous). I reached out to one of the undergraduates in the class who was identifiably observant (ie wore a skullcap) who had stopped attending, and he told me he felt he had no choice but to avoid the campus after being accosted and harassed (his word) several times. I myself made the mistake of attempting to engage with one of the protesters (outside the gate so admittedly unlikely to have been a student) and his response was “you people are killing children in Gaza.” While I am a completely secular, non observant person of Jewish extraction, my physical appearance pretty clearly marks my ethnicity, so there was little doubt who the protester meant by “you people.
Anti Zionism is not NECESSARILY antisemitism but the demonstrators on the Columbia campus clearly expressed anti semitic rhetoric - hate speech of a sort that would not be tolerated if it were directed against any other ethnic group. The university has to bring the demonstrations to an end and had no way to do so short of calling in the NYPD.
"have great sympathy for student protest generally, detest the current Israeli government generally and because of what they are doing in Gaza, believe that all the settlements in the West Bank violate international law and should be dismantled immediately..."
So you have all of these points of agreement with the student protesters. And presumably, you'd like to see some change in US policy with regards to Israel (because those settlements aren't going to dismantle themselves, they'd only be dismantled under heavy international pressure, and the US is the key country in bringing that pressure - or insulating Israel from it) And how do you imagine that change is going to come? What alternatives to the protesters tactics do you propose? And why is it that your thoughts about this particular protest are so focused on points of disagreement rather than your obvious points of agreement?
I'm concerned that too much talk about violence between students and Police in US is actually distracting discussion away from blatant genocide backed by US and UK.
Shouldn't we get straight to the point?
Or is the real issue censorship of honest truths about genocide.
Here in UK a ton of column inches have been filled with whether a Police seargeant at a Pro-Gazan demonstration had committed a terrible act in telling someone they were "an obviously looking jew and couldn't approach the demo". Nothing mentioned about the Mass grave dug up in Gaza where Israelis had slaughtered and buried over 100 victims.
Btw this is the third or 4th blog I have read today by people I really respect for straight honest talking who have avoided discussion on the real issue - complicity in Genocide byt our elected governments.
It's always the case that whenever a protest movement arises, the media focuses all of its attention on protest tactics and clashes with the cops, completely ignoring what the protesters have to say. But that's not the protesters fault.
And there you go, rendering the word 'genocide' meaningless.
You don't know much about war, do you? Because any intensive fighting in a populated area produces massive civilian casualties; usually the ratio of combatant to noncombatant deaths is around 1 to 9. In Gaza, it's 1 to 3 or 4.
"For the sake of order, we are constrained and accept that we are constrained, policed, not just abstractly but physically, guarded, bounded, out-muscled."
This is a truism that verges on banality. For most people, the question of "what kind of safety we want" is a settled one. *Of course* people prefer order to disorder. Skepticism of the utopian abolition movement is not evidence of "authoritarian attitudes", it's a common-sense response to lived experience.
"For most people, the question of 'what kind of safety we want' is a settled one. "
Are you including African-Americans in your definition of "most people"? Because there's a healthy debate within that community about what kind and how much policing they need or want, it's hardly a "settled question."
To his credit, Adam concedes that defunding/abolishing the police polls badly - and that very much includes the African American community. Whatever the '68 LARPers would have you believe, the desire for order is not false consciousness.
Is that the debate? Whether we should ABOLISH the police? Because the debate I see is how to get the cops under control, how to make sure there are consequences for cops who kill, how police resources in crime-ridden neighborhoods could be redirected into investigating crimes instead of just roaming the streets looking for people to pick up on relatively minor violations. Do you know what the clearance (solved) rate is on murders in Chicago? Could the cops do a better job of investigating murders? Rather than stopping and searching cars on shaky pretexts? And how about redirecting some of the money spent on cops into preventing crime? All things that intelligent people are discussing, whatever someone might have shouted at a protest.
Yes, the police should try harder to solve murders. Stopping and searching cars is one good way to prevent murders in the first place, because it takes illegal guns off of the street. That the presence of police prevents crime in the first place is a well-established fact.
I don't know if ever occurs to the geniuses who make these decisions that if they had just left the original encampment alone, most of the students would have walked away once the semester was over. "Wait 'em out" is always the smarter strategy, when the encampment itself is not preventing the normal operation of the university, and this one, as originally conceived, before administration and police escalation, was not impeding any student or faculty access to university facilities.
Right, highly concerned about the "out of control" people armed with tents and candles and folk songs, not at all concerned about an out-of-control military armed with 2000 pound bunker buster bombs.
You reported what you saw. It took me aback to read the comments of those for whom the protests are quite a simple matter. The protesters, even if unruly, even if sometimes aggressive, are to be put back in their place by police, whom a lot of video evidence shows being often unruly or aggressive, and from time to time brutal. Who are these people are for whom it is so obvious that this is what needs to be done? It is chilly to think they would stand on the sidelines encouraging the police, when one day I found that naked force under our social structures directed at me or others like me, who think a great wrong is being done. At that level, we are all vulnerable bodies. Your piece is important for lifting the veil on what we cannot do without, power and force: the question being, how to use it. I think I want my last word here to be, that chill: it is a cold cold world the reaction against the protests opens into, an indifference on which humans make their holocausts, or murders here and there.
i have been struggling on how to respond to this article. i certainly understand the frustration but find the students incredibly naive. i have seen comments harking back to the vietnam demonstrations which to me fail to close the loop-- what this lead to was a long conservative counter-surge which lead to reagan and ultimately trump. the columbia kids could seal
the deal for trump by generating ant biden sentiment which would mean the palestinian/student cause is toast--and no i do not mean of the avocado kind.
my final comment is that while i like tooze he is part of an incredible insulated elite--i was surprised he could find his way from berlin to columbia. he talked in his final paragraph about recovering from this shattering, brutalizing experience. From my perspective, the us in the last 10 years has been a shattering brutalizing experience which tooze seems to have missed by jetting around the world
"i have seen comments harking back to the vietnam demonstrations which to me fail to close the loop-- what this lead to was a long conservative counter-surge which lead to reagan and ultimately trump."
Sorry, but this is just silly. Remember the Arab Oil Boycott and the gas crisis? Or the Iranian hostage crisis? Or Jimmy Carter's "malaise" speech? And yet. somehow, Reagan's election is due to student protests that happened A DECADE BEFORE.
It's simply the case that there are liberals who assume that ANY leftist protest movement is a disaster for the Democrats. Back in 2022, I remember hearing all the warnings that the George Floyd protests were going to deliver a HUGE win to the Republicans in the midterms. And then that didn't happen, but this zombie idea shambles on, regardless of what the facts say.
This started as an encampment on the quad. How was that denying any students access to the campus? What denies students access to education are the actions of the administration, not the actions of the protesters.
Police officers have been shot and killed while the public, commuters, innocent bystanders, children, retail store workers are threatened day and night by a criminal element in U.S. cities. Let's not even talk about what the Arab states have done to Israel since 1948. Your priorities, your anxiety show the protected privilege of the life you have lived.
Arabs states have done nothing meaningful to Israel since 1948. The question what Israel has done to the Arab states and arabs in general since 1948. Israel has blocked the formation of a Palestinian state, despite the UN resolution from 1948 that voted not only for the formation of Israel but also of a Palestinian state. Israel occupied for some good years Sinai peninsula. Israel has taken a big chunk of territory from Syria and some land from Lebanon. Look at what Israel has been doing to the "stateless" Arabs in Palestine (Gaza & West Bank) and within Israel (second class citizens due to article 19 of the Basic Law).
Here are some Jewish Americans/Canadians describing what Israel has been doing to Arabs. Two of them are converted from Zionism:
The Mufti likely apealed to the Brits for quite some time with no result other than the crushing of Arb protests against the reception of masses of Jewish population from Europe in the Palestinian Mandate. And at one point there was only one force in Europe that could have provided support against the dispossession of the Arabs, and that was Hitler. Fins allied themselves with Hitler to recover lands taken by USSr in 1939, Romanians allied themselves to Hitler to recover lands taken by the Soviets in 1940. From their time, and lacking hindsight, that was the best option available.
But nowadays, Israeli officials promote both genocide and ethnic clensing of Palestinians. And it is happening in Gaza as well as in the West Bank, where there is no Hamas. When you are in a hole, stop digging.
"But nowadays, Israeli officials promote both genocide"
-- again with rendering the word "genocide" meaningless. If the Israelis wanted to kill everyone in Gaza, they could. And once they were dead, no amount of yelling and hand-wringing would bring them back.
What's happening in Gaza is what's known as "war". Which, in a densely populated area, always involves lots of civilian casualties.
The ICJ didn't find the word meaningless when they declared Israel as probably commiting genocide, given their legal definitions.
~35K dead, countless burried under all those collapsed buildings, over 70K injured, starvation rearing its head. All universities demolished with cheers, almost all hospitals destroyed, allmost all schools destroyed, same with mosques, and churches and public infrastructure (water, electricity), with the clear intention of making the area uninhabitable and force the people to leave. Ethnic cleansing at minimum, genocide in earnest.
And no, this is not a war, it is a massacre, shooting fish in a barrel. Look at the war in Ukraine, that is a war. Also, by the international laws of war, Israel is commiting war crimes. It has been shown by Israeli media that IOF is using algorithms that in fact maximize the number of casualties.
As a matter of fact, the British severely restricted authorized immigration of Jews into the Mandate in the 1930's. After 1945, they tried to close it down completely -- hence the "Exodus" incident.
you really are an asshole. probably love Donald Trump. His deranged lying ammoral mind would appeal to nonthinking types like you who have one liners to offer, statements that show no original thought passes through your head. You're online just to argue and vent precious reaentments. Don't contact me again
I guess we'll just never know why someone would choose "Run, Freedom, Run" as a screen name while cheering on the cops who crush free expression. Nope, just one of life's eternal mysteries, I guess.
Counter-protesters attacked the student encampment in LA, then the headlines read "Protesters clash" or "Violence breaks out at protest" as if this "violence" thing just blew in on the wind.
No, the student at the encampment didn't go wandering about in search of Zionists to fight, instead they were attacked while the cops stood by and watched, because the cops are happy to ally with vigilantes when they hate the people doing the protesting.
Tell me, do you do your financial planning based on visits from the Tooth Fairy?
Or do you expect everyone to be "equal before the law"? Which is about the same level of fatuity, legitimizing myths to the contrary.
Y'know, DNA analysis has shown that 8% of the population of the former Mongol Empire are descended from Genghis Khan (Temujin) and his sons and grandsons.
Do you think that this was because they were so charming women threw themselves on their backs whenever they showed up?
Any other basic facts of human existence you need to be enlightened on? Oh, and babies are not brought by storks...
It's like back in the days of Jim Crow, when the Klan would murder some voting-rights worker and the cops would look the other way because they were pals with the Klan and hated voting-rights workers. And lots of people said, "Hey, that's not right!" Morons. I mean the people who said it wasn't right. Obviously the big problem, the one we should have focused our energy and anger on, is that those people weren't sufficiently cynical about the role of the police.
I've been part of protest encampments like this before, and there's always a debate among the protesters themselves about how confrontational or how law-abiding to be. And there are always people who want to go directly to the most aggressive law-breaking tactics right from the start, and these people generally aren't listened to right at the start.
But when the cops come in with with a heavy use of force, that dynamic changes. Suddenly, the protest leaders who counselled nonviolence, limited cooperation with the authorities and even the police, these people are made to look like fools and those who were for the most confrontational and even violent tactics are now seen as the "realists" who understand what we're up against. These people get a new hearing, and can lead the group wherever they want.
How does a protest escalate from peaceful occupation of a grassy area in the middle of campus to occupying campus buildings? It would be foolish to think that the police and administration crackdown didn't play a role in that decision.
2 bloody marks.
Fantastic column.
Excellent reporting.
While I appreciate your point of view, I must respectfully disagree. From where I sit, I see students that have hijacked the primary function of a university, which is to educate. If they are truly trying to change the tragic state of affairs in that part of the Middle East, they are going about it in an ineffectual and counterproductive way. Enough is enough...and no, I am not a stereotypical right-wing jerk. I believe you have lost perspective on this issue and are conflating it with other points of contention that are better addressed elsewhere.
Exactly what options remain if non-violent protests are taken off the table?
It's stomach-churning to read oblivious posts that lecture students for exercising 1st Amendment rights, but provide no alternatives.
Some people need to sit down and read King's Letter From a Birmingham Jail. I'm sick to death of being lectured by people who claim that they, too, are "concerned" about what Israel is doing, may even support some of the goals of the protesters, but then have nothing but criticism for the protesters themselves. And you're absolutely right, NO alternatives offered.
You have a right to speak. And no right whatsoever to trespass or obstruct. Or to force people to look at or listen to you.
The right to protest has been recognized for decades. Of course, destruction of property has consequences, as does running over protestors with a car....something that recently happened in NY. The offender is an orthodox rabbi. I assume your words apply to him as well...
Actually, in a number of states running over protesters on roads is specifically allowed. Makes sense -- if you lie down on a busy street, the consequences are on you.
Well, the rabbi was arrested, the protestor wasn't lying on the ground, but your absence of logic and abundance of hypocrisy is evident. Breaking windows is an outrage, but running over a human with as multi-ton vehicle is completely acceptable.
Depending on the circumstances, yeah. As I said, if you lie down on a street, getting hit by a car is a logical consequences. You have no -right- to block a road. None, zero, zip, nada.
"If I was paying $67,000 a year to attend a university and a cop told me to get off the grass I would stand there even harder."
You'd change your mind when a nightstick slammed into your head.
Do you think that those who protested against the Vietnam War on these exact same campuses were "hijacking the primary function of a university?" Should Socrates have stuck to teaching arithmetic and safe subjects, was he actually guilty of corrupting the youth? Maybe your definition of "primary function of a university" isn't broad enough.
What they were protesting was danger to their own precious pink personal buttocks. I was around then, and it was very notable how the size and temperature of protests nosedived when conscripts weren't being sent there anymore.
Concern troll is concerned.
I'd say that the University have hijacked the primary purpose of having students - which is to have people in who see things anew, in a fresh light, and without the in-built prejudices of before.
Well, that's a rather odd viewpoint. The purpose of having students is to teach them knowledge and skill -- which is to say, to fill the echoing void between their ears.
I take it you haven't worked in an educational environment. That really is not how it works and if you try that you will fail. Moreover if you even claim to do that you will get kicked out in weeks.
I assume you don't read the comments, but in case you glance over them I wanted to add to the voices commending you for approaching the issue with the moral clarity of what is at stake, and the egregious harms being done to Palestinian people which requires a strong and uncompromising response.
Heartened by both your humanity and your willingness to see and give voice to such an egregious, systematized power imbalance within the metropole
By contrast, at UC Berkeley, Chancellor Carol T. Christ sent the following email:
Dear Cal alumni and friends:
Since Columbia University students protesting the conflict in Gaza were arrested nearly two weeks ago, a wave of protests and encampments have sprung up on campuses across the country, including at UC Berkeley. How each university is handling the demonstrations varies.
Berkeley has long experience with nonviolent political protest. Vitally important are the rules that help ensure that protests do not impinge on students’ ability to access educational resources and services. Our response, which is consistent with long-standing practice and with University of California policy, is to not preemptively request the involvement of law enforcement, and only if necessary to protect the community’s physical safety. So far, the encampment has not disrupted operations, and no students have been arrested. As the academic year draws to a close, we will continue to monitor the situation and stay focused on keeping the campus community safe and on uninterrupted teaching, learning, and research.
Chancellor Christ, informed by history, has responded to the student protests with the policy statement of the University, which policy does not “preemptively request the involvement of law enforcement.”
Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, House Speaker Mike Johnson and other GOP members of congress are calling for Columbia’s president’s resignation, for police crackdowns on student demonstrations, and they have now released an outline of a new congressional investigation into how university leaders have dealt with the protests. House Committee on Education and Workforce Chair Virginia Foxx, joined by GOP leadership and committee chairs at a press conference Tuesday, said she's notified the presidents of Yale, UCLA and the University of Michigan to appear before the Education Committee on May 23.
“American universities are officially put on notice that we have come to take our universities back,” Foxx said.
Who is this “we” of whom Congresswoman Foxx speaks? Having seen this autocratic, authoritarian, <call the law and arrest people> reaction before, I am pretty sanguine about the future of this one.
1964, Berkeley, it started when the Dean of Students Katherine Towle released a letter stating that student political organizing was no longer permitted on the campus at the corner of Bancroft and Telegraph Avenues.
Sitting at a table on a state-owned campus to discuss political issues is a constitutional right. So Jack Weinberg, the head of the UC Berkeley chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (aka CORE), set up a table in front of Sproul Hall. The number of people in Sproul Plaza suddenly grew, and grew.
Someone called the police, and a police car drove onto Sproul Plaza, and the officers came out and arrested Weinberg for violating the University's new rules regarding student political activism. The police officers put Weinberg in the cruiser. And before the car could leave the plaza, several hundred students gathered around it, sat down, and blocked the car from leaving. Then some people got up on top of it. And all night long and into the next day, students got up on the police car and gave speeches calling for free speech on campus. There may have been 7,000 people in Sproul Plaza, witnessing.
That was in October 1964. In December, the University proposed to expel Jack Weinberg and other student members of the Free Speech Movement for their involvement in the October demonstrations. Despite student and faculty requests, the University refused to drop charges against student political leaders.
In response, some 1,500 students occupied the campus administrative building, Sproul Hall, on December 2, 1964. Ultimately, 773 students were arrested for their involvement in the occupation.
That was 1964, 60 years ago. Speaker Johnson and his friends could, should they wish, learn what Jack Weinberg learned 60 years ago.
It’s the first amendment to the Constitution.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
How was the university administration more responsible for the disorder than the protesters? It seems obvious that by “occupying” Hamilton Hall the protesters were virtually demanding that the university call in the NYPD; indeed that reaction was not only welcomed by the protesters but served their goal of imvreasing sympathy for their “cause” (whatever that is precisely) among those who have doubts about their tactics.
I am a 68 graduate (I was arrested in Fayetwethet Hall), have great sympathy for student protest generally, detest the current Israeli government generally and because of what they are doing in Gaza, believe that all the settlements in the West Bank violate international law and should be dismantled immediately, and agree that anti Zionism should not NEVESSARILY be conflated with antisemitism. However, as I walked last week to the class in Hamilton that I audited as a (quaintly dubbed) “lifelong learner” and heard the students chanting “from the river to the sea” I could not overlook that the slogan, if it were to be put into action, would mean the extermination or expulsion of the millions of Jews who now live there (anyone who pretends that a unitary state led by any segment of the current Palestinian leadership would be multicultural, pluralistic entity in which the Jews who currently live in Tel Aviv could continue to do so in peace and tranquility is either ignorant or disingenuous). I reached out to one of the undergraduates in the class who was identifiably observant (ie wore a skullcap) who had stopped attending, and he told me he felt he had no choice but to avoid the campus after being accosted and harassed (his word) several times. I myself made the mistake of attempting to engage with one of the protesters (outside the gate so admittedly unlikely to have been a student) and his response was “you people are killing children in Gaza.” While I am a completely secular, non observant person of Jewish extraction, my physical appearance pretty clearly marks my ethnicity, so there was little doubt who the protester meant by “you people.
Anti Zionism is not NECESSARILY antisemitism but the demonstrators on the Columbia campus clearly expressed anti semitic rhetoric - hate speech of a sort that would not be tolerated if it were directed against any other ethnic group. The university has to bring the demonstrations to an end and had no way to do so short of calling in the NYPD.
"have great sympathy for student protest generally, detest the current Israeli government generally and because of what they are doing in Gaza, believe that all the settlements in the West Bank violate international law and should be dismantled immediately..."
So you have all of these points of agreement with the student protesters. And presumably, you'd like to see some change in US policy with regards to Israel (because those settlements aren't going to dismantle themselves, they'd only be dismantled under heavy international pressure, and the US is the key country in bringing that pressure - or insulating Israel from it) And how do you imagine that change is going to come? What alternatives to the protesters tactics do you propose? And why is it that your thoughts about this particular protest are so focused on points of disagreement rather than your obvious points of agreement?
I'm concerned that too much talk about violence between students and Police in US is actually distracting discussion away from blatant genocide backed by US and UK.
Shouldn't we get straight to the point?
Or is the real issue censorship of honest truths about genocide.
Here in UK a ton of column inches have been filled with whether a Police seargeant at a Pro-Gazan demonstration had committed a terrible act in telling someone they were "an obviously looking jew and couldn't approach the demo". Nothing mentioned about the Mass grave dug up in Gaza where Israelis had slaughtered and buried over 100 victims.
Btw this is the third or 4th blog I have read today by people I really respect for straight honest talking who have avoided discussion on the real issue - complicity in Genocide byt our elected governments.
It's always the case that whenever a protest movement arises, the media focuses all of its attention on protest tactics and clashes with the cops, completely ignoring what the protesters have to say. But that's not the protesters fault.
If that is _always_ the case, then surely at some point it does become the protestors' fault?
How so?
And there you go, rendering the word 'genocide' meaningless.
You don't know much about war, do you? Because any intensive fighting in a populated area produces massive civilian casualties; usually the ratio of combatant to noncombatant deaths is around 1 to 9. In Gaza, it's 1 to 3 or 4.
In Ukraine it is 50 to 1. 10k civilians (UN), 500k Ukrainian military (any competent observer) but that must be the most pro-civilian war in history.
But I take it you know better.
In Gaza there is no evidence of more than 1,000 combatant deaths.
Combatants against combatants and the IDF is taking a beating.
And 35k official deaths notified via hospitals but as the uncovered death pits indicate more likely to be at least 50k deaths.
So unless you refuse to look at Gaza objectively it is something like 1 to 25, perhaps as much as double that.
And you dare to imply this is not genocide.
"For the sake of order, we are constrained and accept that we are constrained, policed, not just abstractly but physically, guarded, bounded, out-muscled."
This is a truism that verges on banality. For most people, the question of "what kind of safety we want" is a settled one. *Of course* people prefer order to disorder. Skepticism of the utopian abolition movement is not evidence of "authoritarian attitudes", it's a common-sense response to lived experience.
"For most people, the question of 'what kind of safety we want' is a settled one. "
Are you including African-Americans in your definition of "most people"? Because there's a healthy debate within that community about what kind and how much policing they need or want, it's hardly a "settled question."
To his credit, Adam concedes that defunding/abolishing the police polls badly - and that very much includes the African American community. Whatever the '68 LARPers would have you believe, the desire for order is not false consciousness.
Is that the debate? Whether we should ABOLISH the police? Because the debate I see is how to get the cops under control, how to make sure there are consequences for cops who kill, how police resources in crime-ridden neighborhoods could be redirected into investigating crimes instead of just roaming the streets looking for people to pick up on relatively minor violations. Do you know what the clearance (solved) rate is on murders in Chicago? Could the cops do a better job of investigating murders? Rather than stopping and searching cars on shaky pretexts? And how about redirecting some of the money spent on cops into preventing crime? All things that intelligent people are discussing, whatever someone might have shouted at a protest.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abolish-defund-police.html
Yes, the police should try harder to solve murders. Stopping and searching cars is one good way to prevent murders in the first place, because it takes illegal guns off of the street. That the presence of police prevents crime in the first place is a well-established fact.
In case it's helpful https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047235224000357
•Most Black Americans want to maintain or increase police patrols.
•Most Black Americans want to maintain or increase police spending.
•Even if crime declines, most Black Americans want police patrols and spending.
•Even absent new reforms, most Black Americans want police patrols and spending.
•Black Americans’ policing preferences may be firmer than those of other groups.
Good it is not you who makes decisions regarding restoring order on campuses
I don't know if ever occurs to the geniuses who make these decisions that if they had just left the original encampment alone, most of the students would have walked away once the semester was over. "Wait 'em out" is always the smarter strategy, when the encampment itself is not preventing the normal operation of the university, and this one, as originally conceived, before administration and police escalation, was not impeding any student or faculty access to university facilities.
People who have no self control behave as bad as they are allowed
Yes, but enough about the Israeli military. What about the protesters?
I was talking about protesters
Right, highly concerned about the "out of control" people armed with tents and candles and folk songs, not at all concerned about an out-of-control military armed with 2000 pound bunker buster bombs.
You reported what you saw. It took me aback to read the comments of those for whom the protests are quite a simple matter. The protesters, even if unruly, even if sometimes aggressive, are to be put back in their place by police, whom a lot of video evidence shows being often unruly or aggressive, and from time to time brutal. Who are these people are for whom it is so obvious that this is what needs to be done? It is chilly to think they would stand on the sidelines encouraging the police, when one day I found that naked force under our social structures directed at me or others like me, who think a great wrong is being done. At that level, we are all vulnerable bodies. Your piece is important for lifting the veil on what we cannot do without, power and force: the question being, how to use it. I think I want my last word here to be, that chill: it is a cold cold world the reaction against the protests opens into, an indifference on which humans make their holocausts, or murders here and there.
i have been struggling on how to respond to this article. i certainly understand the frustration but find the students incredibly naive. i have seen comments harking back to the vietnam demonstrations which to me fail to close the loop-- what this lead to was a long conservative counter-surge which lead to reagan and ultimately trump. the columbia kids could seal
the deal for trump by generating ant biden sentiment which would mean the palestinian/student cause is toast--and no i do not mean of the avocado kind.
my final comment is that while i like tooze he is part of an incredible insulated elite--i was surprised he could find his way from berlin to columbia. he talked in his final paragraph about recovering from this shattering, brutalizing experience. From my perspective, the us in the last 10 years has been a shattering brutalizing experience which tooze seems to have missed by jetting around the world
"i have seen comments harking back to the vietnam demonstrations which to me fail to close the loop-- what this lead to was a long conservative counter-surge which lead to reagan and ultimately trump."
Sorry, but this is just silly. Remember the Arab Oil Boycott and the gas crisis? Or the Iranian hostage crisis? Or Jimmy Carter's "malaise" speech? And yet. somehow, Reagan's election is due to student protests that happened A DECADE BEFORE.
It's simply the case that there are liberals who assume that ANY leftist protest movement is a disaster for the Democrats. Back in 2022, I remember hearing all the warnings that the George Floyd protests were going to deliver a HUGE win to the Republicans in the midterms. And then that didn't happen, but this zombie idea shambles on, regardless of what the facts say.
Seems that a minority of students wanted to bar the campus to the majority of them.
This is not acceptable.
The freedom to express opinions must not violate the freedom of other to study.
This started as an encampment on the quad. How was that denying any students access to the campus? What denies students access to education are the actions of the administration, not the actions of the protesters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Wq54dK0aBs
Police officers have been shot and killed while the public, commuters, innocent bystanders, children, retail store workers are threatened day and night by a criminal element in U.S. cities. Let's not even talk about what the Arab states have done to Israel since 1948. Your priorities, your anxiety show the protected privilege of the life you have lived.
Arabs states have done nothing meaningful to Israel since 1948. The question what Israel has done to the Arab states and arabs in general since 1948. Israel has blocked the formation of a Palestinian state, despite the UN resolution from 1948 that voted not only for the formation of Israel but also of a Palestinian state. Israel occupied for some good years Sinai peninsula. Israel has taken a big chunk of territory from Syria and some land from Lebanon. Look at what Israel has been doing to the "stateless" Arabs in Palestine (Gaza & West Bank) and within Israel (second class citizens due to article 19 of the Basic Law).
Here are some Jewish Americans/Canadians describing what Israel has been doing to Arabs. Two of them are converted from Zionism:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMOOZ8RjQgc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TphWlTQFkWE&t=3196s
Tell me how you justify the Mufti appealing to Hitler, in person History is a much bigger picture than your tunnel vision
The Mufti likely apealed to the Brits for quite some time with no result other than the crushing of Arb protests against the reception of masses of Jewish population from Europe in the Palestinian Mandate. And at one point there was only one force in Europe that could have provided support against the dispossession of the Arabs, and that was Hitler. Fins allied themselves with Hitler to recover lands taken by USSr in 1939, Romanians allied themselves to Hitler to recover lands taken by the Soviets in 1940. From their time, and lacking hindsight, that was the best option available.
But nowadays, Israeli officials promote both genocide and ethnic clensing of Palestinians. And it is happening in Gaza as well as in the West Bank, where there is no Hamas. When you are in a hole, stop digging.
"But nowadays, Israeli officials promote both genocide"
-- again with rendering the word "genocide" meaningless. If the Israelis wanted to kill everyone in Gaza, they could. And once they were dead, no amount of yelling and hand-wringing would bring them back.
What's happening in Gaza is what's known as "war". Which, in a densely populated area, always involves lots of civilian casualties.
The ICJ didn't find the word meaningless when they declared Israel as probably commiting genocide, given their legal definitions.
~35K dead, countless burried under all those collapsed buildings, over 70K injured, starvation rearing its head. All universities demolished with cheers, almost all hospitals destroyed, allmost all schools destroyed, same with mosques, and churches and public infrastructure (water, electricity), with the clear intention of making the area uninhabitable and force the people to leave. Ethnic cleansing at minimum, genocide in earnest.
And no, this is not a war, it is a massacre, shooting fish in a barrel. Look at the war in Ukraine, that is a war. Also, by the international laws of war, Israel is commiting war crimes. It has been shown by Israeli media that IOF is using algorithms that in fact maximize the number of casualties.
As a matter of fact, the British severely restricted authorized immigration of Jews into the Mandate in the 1930's. After 1945, they tried to close it down completely -- hence the "Exodus" incident.
Ha ha, what an ironic screen name you have. Yes, run, Freedom, away from the cops before you're murdered.
you really are an asshole. probably love Donald Trump. His deranged lying ammoral mind would appeal to nonthinking types like you who have one liners to offer, statements that show no original thought passes through your head. You're online just to argue and vent precious reaentments. Don't contact me again
I guess we'll just never know why someone would choose "Run, Freedom, Run" as a screen name while cheering on the cops who crush free expression. Nope, just one of life's eternal mysteries, I guess.
Counter-protesters attacked the student encampment in LA, then the headlines read "Protesters clash" or "Violence breaks out at protest" as if this "violence" thing just blew in on the wind.
No, the student at the encampment didn't go wandering about in search of Zionists to fight, instead they were attacked while the cops stood by and watched, because the cops are happy to ally with vigilantes when they hate the people doing the protesting.
Well, what on earth do you expect? Robotic neutrality? Nobody is neutral.
What I expect is accurate reporting and for cops to protect people who are being assaulted even if they like the person doing the assaulting more.
Tell me, do you do your financial planning based on visits from the Tooth Fairy?
Or do you expect everyone to be "equal before the law"? Which is about the same level of fatuity, legitimizing myths to the contrary.
Y'know, DNA analysis has shown that 8% of the population of the former Mongol Empire are descended from Genghis Khan (Temujin) and his sons and grandsons.
Do you think that this was because they were so charming women threw themselves on their backs whenever they showed up?
Any other basic facts of human existence you need to be enlightened on? Oh, and babies are not brought by storks...
It's like back in the days of Jim Crow, when the Klan would murder some voting-rights worker and the cops would look the other way because they were pals with the Klan and hated voting-rights workers. And lots of people said, "Hey, that's not right!" Morons. I mean the people who said it wasn't right. Obviously the big problem, the one we should have focused our energy and anger on, is that those people weren't sufficiently cynical about the role of the police.
If all you want is a little badge that says "most cynical commenter" I'll see what I can do.
Cynicism is realism.
How are things over at aol.com?