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A university president makes a case against cowardice

newyorker.com

551–560 of 934 posts

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're a guest, act like a guest. Anti-Israel protests are by extension a protest against the US foreign policy, so yeah... You protest your host in a violent and disruptive manner, you probably shouldn't have been allowed in to begin with.

Fuck that! We have this thing called the First Amendment. It applies to all people under the jurisdiction of the United States. There’s no exception for “guests.” Criticizing the government is a time-honored American tradition. Throwing people out for it is absolutely vile.

Americans can criticize their government all they want. Foreigners shouldn’t have no input in the american political system. The first amendment is the exception to the democratic rule, not the other way around.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument is so out of touch I can only assume it’s being made in bad faith. Many of the pro-Palestinian protesters are also Jewish. Equating all Jewish people with Israel and Zionism is insidious and misleading.

What on Earth? How is their argument out of touch or made in bad faith? It's a reasonable and popular line of reasoning that you disagree with strongly. Assuming the best possible interpretation is one of our community guidelines, please follow it.

The punishment needs to be commisserate with the crime, and dealt with through due process; to do otherwise is distinctly un-american (see 1st amendment on freedom of assembly, 4th amendment on freedoms from unreasonable state actions: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons[...] against unreasonable searches and seizures", and especially the 5th amendment: "[no person shall] be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law").

What we are seeing at Colombia University (as well as the country at large) is the continual abridgement of these rights. Note that for the fifth amendendment specifically, the constitution refers to any person, not just citizens. Those here legally are entitled to due process protections under the law.

The following argument relies on the following: (1) Universities historically have been the the catalysts of change through student protest. (2) Peaceful protest is a right of the people that shall not be abridged. (3) Public Universities (being government institutuions themselves; see campus police and jurisdiction) have a duty of care to protect their students.

With the above holding true, the argument against this being a "betrayal" falls facially flat, as it is a severe consequence that the university capitulated to, and had a duty to prevent. The arument boiled down to "they were being disruptive, so we should get rid of them," because the betrayal amounted to the jailing and deportations (or attempted deportations, in some cases) for the "crime" of being nonviolently disruptive in a public place.

Without articulating a legally rationed basis for a criminally sanctionable offense, an equivalent is threatening to jail and deport construction workers when they block a business entryway. In general, you do not have a right to be merely inconvienced by others in a public space.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're a guest, act like a guest. Anti-Israel protests are by extension a protest against the US foreign policy, so yeah... You protest your host in a violent and disruptive manner, you probably shouldn't have been allowed in to begin with.

Fuck that! We have this thing called the First Amendment. It applies to all people under the jurisdiction of the United States. There’s no exception for “guests.” Criticizing the government is a time-honored American tradition. Throwing people out for it is absolutely vile.

>the First Amendment . . . applies to all people under the jurisdiction of the United States.

Not according to the Supreme Court it doesn't.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#554
post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what's going on is a helpful reminder that there's no such thing as "rights" in the way you describe. Everything we have, everything we're permitted to do, is at the pleasure and permission of our governments. Constitutions and laws are only worth anything if the people in charge honor them. Might may not make right, but might does let you impose whatever you want on people who don't have your might. You can…

You’re making useful points but you’re also just choosing convenient definitions that make your point of view “correct”. The parent comment has a definition of “rights” that admits their existence… and I think what you’ve demonstrated is that you have a different definition of “rights”. In other words, you’ve demonstrated that you haven’t really grasped the underlying meaning that the parent comment is getting at, an…

I appreciate your analysis, but another way to consider this discussion is that asserting the existence of "rights" is an unsupported conversational maneuver that frames the debate. The grandparent is defining a concept into existence, which is a questionable move IMO, despite being tradition.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing in that article implies supporting terrorism. They support Palestine. People conflating supporting Palestine with supporting terrorism should be ashamed of themselves, as Israel is the biggest terror state in the world.

Well, when it comes to conflating, I'll take your calling Israel a terror state as a standard: The democratically elected government of Gaza-Palestine is the Hamas, which is a terrorist organisation. Thus by your conflation regarding Israel to be a terror state, the Gaza strip part of Palestine is as well. Its population chose a known terrorist organisation, everything is run by a terrorist organisation, they did ter…

> Hamas, which is a terrorist organisation.

According to the New York Times, Netanhayu was propping up Hamas in the weeks and months before the current conflict ( https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-q... ). This has been happening since the beginning of Hamas.

The government over there has been supporting Hamas since the beginning, because they don't want to deal with Fatah going to the UN. Everything recently is the result of that. So don't come around talking about Hamas. Especially since Netanyahu and his US counterparts are trying to sideline Fatah, and are persecuting secular Palestinians like Samidoun and the PFLP more than Hamas. The US, Canada, Germany etc. crack down on the seculat, left-leaning Samidoun so that only Hamas is left standing in Gaza.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

all parties are beneficiaries of the institutional structures that allow for a party to do those things so the things you are bothered by and demand everyone to prioritize are actually solved by addressing the underlying mechanisms, as opposed to simply trying to propagate your preferred party's numbers something... both sides... might actually be into. if the other party is afraid of the opposition party doing the s…

I'm making no demands. Only pointing out an absurd false equivalence. Change to the polarizing system would be great. I doubt that will happen by softening protests to obscene injustice. Rather it's likely to reenforce the shifting Overton window further into authoritarianism and kleptocracy. To break the two party system we need things a large portion of the populous has been (falsely) taught are bad for them: same…

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Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, at a minimum, they think they're helping students. Nobody would vote for a politician who just makes things worse, that doesn't make sense. In this case, they're trying to make universities more fair and to reduce government waste in universities by removing DEI programs. There's lots of logic to that.

>Nobody would vote for a politician who just makes things worse Why not? One thing is the campaign, another one is exercising his power. To quote a famous Argentinian President: "If I said what I would do, they wouldn't have voted for me".

I can't find the source of that quote (possibly a misquote?), but if I had to guess, he's saying he sold people on the problem, knowing they wouldn't like the solution. Everyone likes the idea of fixing the budget deficit, and some people like the idea of cutting wasteful government spending, but the act of fixing the budget means people lose jobs, and lives are destroyed. Even though it has to happen, people don't like watching it happen.

I don't think your "quote" says what you think it says.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fuck that! We have this thing called the First Amendment. It applies to all people under the jurisdiction of the United States. There’s no exception for “guests.” Criticizing the government is a time-honored American tradition. Throwing people out for it is absolutely vile.

Americans can criticize their government all they want. Foreigners shouldn’t have no input in the american political system. The first amendment is the exception to the democratic rule, not the other way around.

Foreigners aren't allowed to vote or donate. They should be allowed to voice their opinions on the government, though. In my opinion, anyone who says foreigners in the country shouldn't criticize the government is less American than said foreigners.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#559
post #525
post #475

Columbia has an endowment that stands (pre- Liberation Day) at 15 billion dollars. They kowtowed to some of the militant Zionist interests involved in that endowment in order to attain a fractionally higher return, and betrayed their students. They kowtowed to the fascist administration on the grounds that it was threatening 400 million dollars in grants, and betrayed their students to the point of facilitating a pro…

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There is an ongoing genocide in Gaza and genocidal language is commonplace in Zionist discourse. If there are cases of hate speech on the pro Palestinian side, they pale in comparison to speech from the other side.

Regardless we shouldn’t be rounding up and imprisoning folks if they disagree with your politics. This is what is getting lost in this specific case.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#560

Some personal highlights: "They’re excellent schools, and they have excellent scientists, and if one of Vice-President Vance’s kids is sick, he’s going to want the doctor to have gone to one of these schools; he’s not going to want them to have gone to Viktor Orbán’s university." "People have said to me, “Well, you take all that money from the government, why don’t you listen to them?” The answer is, because the mone…

> The answer is, because the money doesn’t come with a loyalty oath But it does come with some reasonable level of consideration and appreciation.

"you didn't say thank you!!!"
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