What’s happening at Columbia?
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FAFO:
https://apnews.com/article/student-protest-gaza-war-arrest-amnesty-ae235703d6a9b99114078fca13a530a0
Maryam Alwan figured the worst was over after New York City police in riot gear arrested her and other protesters on the Columbia University campus, loaded them onto buses and held them in custody for hours.
But the next evening, the college junior received an email from the university. Alwan and other students were being suspended after their arrests at the “ Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” a tactic colleges across the country have deployed to calm growing campus protests against the Israel-Hamas war.
The students’ plight has become a central part of protests, with students and a growing number of faculty demanding their amnesty. At issue is whether universities and law enforcement will clear the charges and withhold other consequences, or whether the suspensions and legal records will follow students into their adult lives.
Terms of the suspensions vary from campus to campus. At Columbia and its affiliated Barnard College for women, Alwan and dozens more were arrested April 18 and promptly barred from campus and classes, unable to attend in-person or virtually, and banned from dining halls.
Questions about their academic futures remain. Will they be allowed to take final exams? What about financial aid? Graduation? Columbia says outcomes will be decided at disciplinary hearings, but Alwan says she has not been given a date.
“This feels very dystopian,” said Alwan, a comparative literature and society major.
For international students facing suspension, there is the added fear of losing their visas, said Radhika Sainath, an attorney with Palestine Legal, which helped a group of Columbia students file a federal civil rights complaint against the school Thursday. It accuses Columbia of not doing enough to address discrimination against Palestinian students.
“The level of punishment is not even just draconian, it feels like over-the-top callousness,” Sainath said.
Gee...who would think that breaking the law and ignoring university regulations could have an impact on your academic (and later) career?
@George-K said in What’s happening at Columbia?:
Gee...who would think that breaking the law and ignoring university regulations could have an impact on your academic (and later) career?
There you go making sense again!!
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Why would they think they have amnesty? If there is no potential risk, no possible repercussions, then there is no power to their message. That’s stupid. Getting suspended or expelled makes them brave. Not facing discipline makes them whiny little bitches.
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@George-K said in What’s happening at Columbia?:
Wait until they discover that is not an example of the spirit of ecumenism.
Joking and deserved mockery aside, I can just imagine the visceral reaction of Chris Hitchens to these naive imbeciles if he were still alive.
Elbows up!
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@George-K said in What’s happening at Columbia?:
Wait until they discover that is not an example of the spirit of ecumenism.
Joking and deserved mockery aside, I can just imagine the visceral reaction of Chris Hitchens to these naive imbeciles if he were still alive.
@Renauda said in What’s happening at Columbia?:
the visceral reaction of Chris Hitchens
Mark Levin (whom I can only abide in the smallest of doses) had Douglas Murray on his show. Nothing really new in either of their opinions, but it was Murray, so I watched a bit of it.
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The Return of ‘Mostly Peaceful’
https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/04/the-return-of-mostly-peaceful/
At the Washington Post, campus rallies in which activists daydream aloud about the extermination of Israel are characterized merely as “antiwar demonstrations.”
“At Columbia, the Protests Continued, With Dancing and Pizza,” read the headline of an April 19 New York Times article.
“At a moment when some campuses are aflame with student activism over the Palestinian cause — the kind that has disrupted award ceremonies, student dinners and classes — college administrators are dealing with the questions that Columbia considered this week: Will more stringent tactics quell protests? Or fuel them?” the Times asked.
The report goes on to cite “academic freedom experts” — that’s a fun business card — who believe it sets a dangerous precedent for Columbia University administrators to break up a pro-Hamas encampment that cropped up this month on campus and send the trespassing students packing. Not in a million years would the Times or its “experts” question the wisdom of Columbia or Harvard in deciding to forcibly remove, say, a pro–Ku Klux Klan rally, one replete with slogans cheering for the murder of Jews, Catholics, and blacks, from university grounds. Yet we are asked to consider seriously the notion that it might set a dangerous precedent for academic freedom for campus administrators to ask for the police to remove students cosplaying as Hamas terrorists.
Ah! No more Death-to-the-Jews rallies! Can academic freedom survive this?
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You know, it’s probably about time to spray those lawns with insecticide.
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You know, it’s probably about time to spray those lawns with insecticide.
@LuFins-Dad said in What’s happening at Columbia?:
spray those lawns with insecticide
Will it get rid of the cockroaches?
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Yes I would support having all minors present at these protests put into protective services.
Protesters, especially identifiable ringleaders/organizers and any actively participating university faculty, should have their bank accounts frozen as well.
