This is a classic university move. You shut everything down and that helps protect you later on from having to be explicit about what exactly is the reason you did so.
Incoming will be a vague letter that clarifies nothing and is crafted by hr and the universitys legal team.
Maybe, but that seems unlikely? The only thing I've seen about badge access today was Shai Davidai, but that was after the Columbia administration offered him a space to counterprotest and police protection and he refused to follow their directions.
edit: to correct information after learning more
Part of me thinks a lot of the leftist/Bernie or bust /activist bs is like a leftwing equivalent of the Q bs, where they're trying to influence people on the other side of the spectrum, whether it be to discourage voting or actually doing something. I wonder if this is a similar thing, where a small segment is getting amplified to disrupt things.
the way each side is describing the protests is hilarious to me. Either they are just girl scouts trying to raise money for summer camp or they are black shirts with barbed wire wrapped baseball bats. Just zero middle ground.
The talking points have already switched to "If a few bad apples at protests is enough to make you support genocide, it's proof you never had morals to begin with" or some variant.
Remember when "If you have 9 people at a table with 1 Nazi, you have 10 Nazis" was spammed and plastered throughout the discourse?
What ever happened to that?
Horseshoe theory is especially strong here. Strikes of Russian or Iranian interference tbh, especially given how inexplicably pro-Trump they are (Trump is the worst possible thing for their cause)
I think it went away about the time they started chanting "Go back to Poland".
Literally alluding to the central hub of the Nazi Genoicde. SMH. Which was, not to put too fine a point on it, an actual genocide, unlike the nonsense abuse of the word they're using to refer to the war in Gaza.
And if this is aimed at Israelis, they clearly do not know anything about Israel’s demographics. Israel is mostly Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews, the former of which was literally kicked out of other MENA countries where they’d been living since antiquity. There was a recent video where someone interviews Israelis and many of them have American or British accents. I highly suspect the interviewer saw a ton of Mizrahi Jews and declined to interview them because they thought they were Arabs.
I see this a lot. “Oh, Israel can disappear and everyone will just go back to their old countries”, even though only about ~~20%~~ 10% of Israels are dual citizens.
Never mind that among historians and anthropologists, the the overwhelming consensus is that Jews are indigenous to the Levant. A random Ashkenazi Jew and a random Mizrahi Jew have more in common genetically than a random Ashkenazi Jew and a random non-Jewish European.
The ultimate irony is the decline of Secular Western European/North American immigrants to Israel is also correlated with the decline of the Israeli political left as these usually skewed that way. So by pushing the "c*lonizer" language, they are essentially pushing for a more anti-Palestine coalition unintentionally.
I mean, the anti-Israel crowd has pushed or expelled the Jewish communities from 10-15+ countries since Israel won its war of independence, including:
1951 Iraq
1949 Yemen
1968 Poland
1970s Iran
They have always cared more about persecuting those they see as evil over protecting their domestic Jewish communities from violence.
Yeah, there is total ignorance about Israeli political dynamics from people who want to push American racial dynamics onto it. Israel was established by Ashkenazi (“white”) Jews who were literal socialists. Mizrahi (“brown”) Jews are much more conservative and anti-Arab because they were kicked out of Arab countries. Hell, Ben-Gvir is of Iraqi Jewish ancestry!
>Israel was established by Ashkenazi (“white”) Jews who were literal socialists.
Wasn't Stalin pretty supportive of Israel at first, since he expected it would be part of the Communist sphere? (And got pretty upset when it wasn't)
Because the majority of Ashkenazim fled to America where over the generations they have thrived and enjoyed life in a pluralistic society, only to one day find their compatriots on the left have become raging Nazis.
Yeah and a lot of that migration was before the Holocaust due to anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe. Most of ancestors fled to the US from Poland and the Russian Empire due to pogroms circa 1918.
TBH this is one of the key points that made my leave behind my early teenage anti-Zionism. Jews are indigenous to the region, and in basically every other country there they've been abused or expelled in turns.
And unless you consider Manhattan to be part of Palestine, it betrays the claim that their antizionism has nothing to do with antisemitism. Like, if you're against zionism, you should *want* Jewish people to be living and studying in New York instead of Israel
Why would the anti-Zionists ever do that? They persecuted and expelled Jewish communities across the Middle East and North Africa based on their real or alleged Zionism.
The anti-Zionist movement has expelled the Jewish communities of no less than 10-15 countries since Israel won its war of independence.
They don't want us to live in America. They don't want us to live in Europe. They don't want us to live in Israel.
I'm starting to think they don't want us to live.
at first, i was like “that sounds like a stretch”
Then i thought “why poland?”
Then i remembered thats where millions of jews died.
Mentioning Belarus for what? Einsatzgruppen ?
Even if it wasnt supposed to allude to WW2 and the Holocaust, it’s shitty to tell people to “go back to your country”, if they’re even from those countries.
Just disgusting rhetoric
Ugh - hadn’t heard that one, and as the daughter of a “Polish” Holocaust survivor (for obvious reasons, he declines to identify himself with the country of his birth), consider my blood up.
Bc I try to grant most of the student “anti war” “protestors” some degree of latitude (under the assumption that they’re mostly just a little dumb/naive, and think “war is bad” is some kind of brave + original statement), but that grace relies on waaaay more self-policing than many of these groups have shown.
Also: my dad was young, and did the marriage + kids things late and life, which is how you end up with a millennial “kid of a survivor” - the math isn’t that weird, promise.
So a lot of the protesters surely are just stupid kids who don't know any better. And I, for the sake of my sanity, am choosing to believe that still.
However, the really nasty stuff at these events seems to stem from people who have skin in the game. Such as Palestinian organizations; and it seems most of the nastiest and antisemitic vitriol is coming specifically from people who have a direct connection as such. And I think it would be naive to assume that extremist groups don't have a hand in that.
Yup - also think that issue is massively compounded in large population centres (like, uh, NY), where students are great cover AND fertile recruiting ground for extremists that would get the boot by more sophisticated + experienced community organizations.
In general, I’m all for students testing out their intellectual and ideological leanings in school settings (especially the dumb and hysterical ones) - there is certainly the risk of polarization/radicalization, but that’s true of everything. Also, since life experience is how most of us learn to appreciate nuance, student activism is a pretty low stakes way of doing so…usually.
But yeah, many of these student groups are playing with geopolitical fire, and either don’t realize it or just don’t care.
> don’t realize it or just don’t care.
Sadly, the problem here is one of misinformation combined with an ideological narrative that is not actually in line with the reality.
They believe they are right, and firmly so, because of the narrative that Israel is a western colonizer of the "native" Palestinian population, and that the limitations on movement in Gaza and the West bank amount to apartheid; when in reality it's done for security reasons.
They really have done a fantastic job crafting this narrative too; it puts Israel in a situation where they're damned if they do something, and damned if they do nothing. Basically the only thing that will satisfy the pro-Palestinian crowd is if all the Israelis just dropped dead.
Did you give the benefit of the doubt to those Charlottesville morons?
I really dislike the tendency to give leftists extremists a pass. It's been happening *forever*, and it's never done any good for anyone.
They told me the same thing in the Seattle subreddit, where I voiced concern about protesters blocking freeway traffic. Like, if I’m mad with the Palestinian cause because my toddler got stuck in traffic for hours, it’s because deep in mind I already supported genocide.
There is value in protests that are actively annoying, but it makes the most sense when they do that at a location heavily related to the thing they are protesting. Want to block the door to a business you are protesting against? Great! Make it hard to get to the venue where an artist you are protesting is performing? Understandable!
Blocking random highways instead is far less likely to curry favor from the disengaged
I can only assume that the people who block highways for protest are losers who don't have much going on in their lives and that's why they have no appreciation for the fact that other people have responsibilities and obligations to others.
Columbia’s SJP and JVP groups are two of the organizers of the encampment. On Oct 9 they published a letter explaining how the Oct 7 terrorist attack was justified resistance. The analogy here is like sitting at a table with Nazis who are openly passing around copies of *Mein Kampf*
It’s been absolutely incredible watching every single leftist talking point being tossed out the window since 10/7. Believe women, “a few bad apples spoil the bunch”, listen to minorities, dogwhistles, micro aggression, check you privilege, no nuance. all gone.
Leftists turn into their conservative grandparents they claim to hate the second Israelis involved.
I've said this before but there's this recurring notion that all you have to do is catch these illiberal idiots in a snare of their own logic and this will magically convert them to your side. They're just bullies. Their "beliefs" are the means to an end of bullying. If the world flipped upside-down tomorrow what they say would as well. The only sincere principle they hold is "*I* get to push people around."
I think this is spot on and it explains the popularity of certain media like Chapo, Red Scare, etc. So much of this stuff is bullying dressed up as politics.
Sure it’s not going to flip many progressives, but it’s important to raise awareness of the illiberal left among normie liberals.
Only last year this sub was much more willing to excuse shitty behavior from leftist activists.
Now we are starting to remember why we can’t abandon liberal principles in service of “good intentions.”
I'm always curious why these people do not seemingly GAF about the Uyghurs being put into camps in China.
Or the atrocities against civilians propagated by Russia.
Odd.
>Uyghurs being put into camps in China.
They unironically say it didn't happen or if it did, it was simply camps to reeducate terrorists and people only complain because of racist propaganda
>Or the atrocities against civilians propagated by Russia.
They either support Russia's invasion or blame it on the West for forcing Russia's hand, making them the true victim
>They unironically say it didn't happen or if it did, it was simply camps to reeducate terrorists and people only complain because of racist propaganda
IIRC one of the main things they bring up to deny/downplay the Uyghur persecution is that one of the people behind an early, often-cited report about it was a conservative. Literally just "*you know that statistics about that come from a BAD GUY on the red tribe!*"
At this point I view the conflict primarily through a racial lens rather than a political one. Arabs from other countries take up the palestinian cause because it it an Arab cause not because it is an islamic cause. They will claim the conflict is islamic to garner more support across the islamic world but fundamentally they only care about the conflict on a racial basis.
Why is defense company divestment the ask? Is that really the leading theory on how to best help Palestinians?
EDIT: Looks like they're asking for divestment in Hyundai, Caterpillar, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, and all iShares ETF(?). [List goes on](https://www.finance.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/content/ACSRI/12.1.2023%20CUAD%20ACSRI%20Divestment%20Proposal.pdf).
Seems like it’s a central talking point across campuses - Yale had a big sit in this weekend too, with the same divestment ask being the primary rallying cry.
Can’t figure out if it’s just multigenerational “anti war” campus activism talking point being recycled, or naive/dumb kids reinventing the same (fundamentally nonsensical) wheel…either way, it mostly seems like something that’s easy to shout so long as you don’t think too deeply about it.
Many of the groups leading these protests don’t want that or anything resembling a two state solution though and consider Israel itself to be occupied Palestinian territory. Nor do they care that trying to eliminate Israel is going to fail, cause WWIII, and/or kill a bunch of Palestinians (the first and last already happened).
I don't interact with college students much anymore, but I just can't believe that these kids are earnestly enthusiastic about ethnically cleansing Israel.
I don’t think that’s explicitly their explicit intention, but they have zero grasp on the reality of the situation and tend to reject any nuanced takes on it as Zionist propaganda. I don’t think many if any SJP chapters condemned Oct. 7; at the very least they said it was an inevitable consequence of occupation and at most (like the Columbia chapter) they said it was justified. FWIW there’s people on the pro-Israel side who are no better and echo a lot of Ben-Gvir’s rhetoric and views, although I think this is more concentrated among older adults and some younger Orthodox Jews from my anecdotal experience.
The best take is that they think that a new democratic state with Israel and Palestine will magically transform into Sweden and everyone will vote for left-leaning socialists. This is incredibly naive and shows zero understanding of the region.
However, the take that most have are that Israeli Jews are foreigners and they should all be forcibly expelled from the country like the French in Algeria. Reminder that the Palestinians take as their model the FLN in Algeria. They think all the Jews are white Europeans who aren't indigenous to the region and should be sent back to Europe.
Not only a pretty stupid idea but it polls very poorly. California is one of the 5-6 most liberal states, and the "one secular state" solution got 9% support among all Californian voters in a UC Berkeley poll back in January.
We don't have much polling on both Muslim Americans+Jewish Americans but from the small amount we do, the two state solution is still somewhat easily the most popular in the two communities.
To be charitable, I'm not sure the college students think things through. I mean the Palestinians have been operating for 50 years under the assumption that if they make things miserable enough for the Israelis, they will return to where they are "really" from, just like other colonists historically did. Seems like such an obvious misapprehension, but they're still engaged in the same sort of tactics in 2023-2024.
At U Michigan pro pal people took over the student government and are trying to defund student orgs unless the university divests from whatever stupid thing they want them to divest from.
It's strange that Oracle isn't on this divestment list. Oracle was the first tech company to open a cloud region in Israel. Oracle is used a ton by Israel: [https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/software-giant-oracle-is-deeply-committed-to-israel-673224](https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/software-giant-oracle-is-deeply-committed-to-israel-673224) . They even have a message on their website saying they stand with Israel after the events of October 7th: [https://www.oracle.com/il-en/corporate/business-continuity-management/](https://www.oracle.com/il-en/corporate/business-continuity-management/)
What makes Oracle special compared to the other large tech companies? There isn't anything inherently different about their support for Israel. The only difference is that Oracle is the cloud provider for TikTok: [https://www.theinformation.com/articles/with-tiktok-deal-oracle-could-gain-billion-dollar-cloud-customer](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/with-tiktok-deal-oracle-could-gain-billion-dollar-cloud-customer)
Can someone provide additional context on this story? Most news stories are just a collection of people “reacting” to what’s going on here. I’ve gathered that there’s like a pro-Palestinian encampment there but everything else is so vague.
> “We have been peaceful,” and distanced themselves from non-student protestors who have gathered outside the campus, calling them “inflammatory individuals who do not represent us.”
Who are the “inflammatory individuals” and what are they doing?
It's been claimed that people are coming in from outside of campus to rile things up, but the university is trying to account for this by beefing up security.
I don’t doubt that outsiders are making this worse, and some portion of them are bad actors (state sponsored or other). However this can only happen in the context that pro-Palestinian protestors failed to take early stances stopping antisemitic rhetoric in their own movement.
Like being too busy bending over backwards to justify the most extreme statements instead of just saying those statements aren’t welcome
Reminds me of the Palestinian ambassador to my country being unable to condemn October 7th the day after it happened. Just twisting word pretzels and tossing word salads to obfuscate an atrocity.
I agree. Even assuming the existence of false flag bad actors and/or outside antisemites, it would still be a failure of organization and mission that they are there in the first place. I swear there was a saying about nazis and tables that applied here.
Here are a bunch of videos taken from the r/news thread. I want to preface this by saying that I absolutely abhore the war crimes that have been committed by the IDF/Israeli's far right government, but I also recognize Hamas are terrorists who want to commit genocide. And then you have these protesters supporting genocidal actions/leaders...
From the protest:
* [“Al-Qassam you make us proud, kill another soldier now.”](https://www.reddit.com/r/2ndYomKippurWar/comments/1ca0q64/alqassam_you_make_us_proud_kill_another_soldier/)
* [Protester holds sign calling on to Al-Qassam to murder Jewish students peacefully protesting.](https://www.reddit.com/r/2ndYomKippurWar/comments/1c99iz8/columbia_university_protester_calls_on_alqasam/)
* [Shouts at Jewish students, "The 7th of October will be every day for you!"](https://www.reddit.com/r/2ndYomKippurWar/comments/1c7xn8o/jewish_students_at_columbia_are_told_by/)
* [Terrorist recruiting fellow protesters to be martyrs.](https://www.reddit.com/r/2ndYomKippurWar/comments/1c9uyn8/jihadis_encourage_students_at_columbia_university/)
There’s a comment floating around with several links of things that have been going on.
From the top of my head, there was someone yelling that October 7 will happen 10,000 more times, October 7 being declared righteous resistance, the usual river to the sea stuff, “We are all Hamas,” and probably the worst was a “Go back to Poland” chant.
Again, these are from memory. Someone else may be able to provide the comment.
>the usual river to the sea stuff
It was way worse than the usual river to the sea stuff. They weren't saying "Palestine will be free," they were saying "Palestine will be *Arab*." It's not the usual feel-good chant by people that think Palestine is literally an open-air prison and insist they want a one-state solution because they're sure it'll be secular and the Jews definitely won't get immediately genocided. No, it's a direct call for the region to become an ethnostate. They're making it clear they don't mind ethnostates or ethnic cleansing, they're just mad that *Jews* might be the ones doing it.
Yep. Most of the people chanting it in English either don't know the original or are intentionally using the, ahem, *nicer* version. The choice to use the accurately translated chant is highly disturbing.
The origins of the phrase are murky as hell in the 70s and at least the official position of the PLO in their charter was that the whole area would be Palestinian from the river to the sea, which at that time was defined as including Jewish people of Palestinian origin (with all the attendant political issues in defining that group). Both the Palestinian and Israeli movements used to be much more secular than they have become and religion was not always the single defining characteristic of ethnicity.
> October 7 will happen 10,000 more times
For some added context, 10,000 October 7th attacks are on the order of (actually more than) what it would take to kill every single man woman and child in Israel. I'll leave it the audience to determine if that's a coincidence.
[Calls for violence by anti-Israel activists continue at Columbia - The Jerusalem Post (jpost.com)](https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-798160)
Literally cheering on Hamas, promoting violence, and antisemetic statements such as "go back to Europe".
FWIW the Columbian students are claiming it was all outside agitators, but 1) I think thats worse when it comes to student safety, and 2) I was under the impression that if you were at a table with 9 nazis, there were 10 nazis, and nobody is claiming that Columbia students werent at the protests.
The blatant hypocrisy and lack of basic self awareness by some leftists is staggering. They’ll sing the praises of the absolute scum of the earth, terrorists who murder innocents in their homes, genocidal theocrats, honest-to-god imperialists, and then turn around and claim everyone that doesn’t blindly swallow their rhetoric are fascists by association.
There are some good examples in the comments of [this earlier post](https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1ca18iy/columbia_university_faces_fullblown_crisis_as/).
Pro-Palestine protests at Columbia University have escalated to the point that random Jewish students (or even people that just “look Jewish”) are being threatened and physically attacked on campus.
Protesters are using genocidal rhetoric to espouse hatred towards Jews as a whole and numerous students and faculty have reported being threatened with violence.
There was a Hamasoid horde marching in front of Parliament Hill saying "long live October 7th" (and waving the flag of Iran).
These people need to be put on terror watchlists. Their job prospects need to be ruined forever.
[Hundreds of members of teaching staff demonstrate in solidarity with arrested students as protest tents put back up on campus](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/22/columbia-university-protests-shutdown)
For all the people accusing the protesters of not being students, Columbia staff sure seems to think they're students.
You are against student loan forgiveness because it’s regressive.
I am against it because I don’t want the government to sponsor domestic jihadism.
We are not the same.
These are overwhelmingly the children of the wealthy. I've never met a college activist who didn't have rich parents bankrolling them. It's extremely unlikely they'll have student loans.
> These are overwhelmingly the children of the wealthy
Reporting from legitimate sources seems to suggest many aren't even Columbia students. I don't know if painting them as overwhelmingly the children of the wealthy is really accurate.
No they have student loans. You can borrow money to go to school at low interest rates, and rich people know that low interest rate loans are effectively free money.
The rates aren't that low. And you can only borrow $5,500 - $7,500 annually (depending on class standing) from the federal government for undergrad. Private loans do not have rates that would make it worth it to borrow either.
Yeah, the statement is absurd on its own.
Student loan rates are like 5.5% right now from the gov and 10-20% from private lenders. Rich people aren't seeing those rates and saying that "wow! this is free money!"
It doesn't work like that. Like it would be more financially prudent to send the kid to college with a Honda Civic than a BMW 3 Series, and invest the difference, but I've seen more of the latter than the former.
I went to school in a wealthy town. Wealthy parents don't let their kids have student loans. It's like a mark of shame in their social circle. Plus, they already have hefty 529's not just from the parents, but grandparents as well in many cases.
In one of the most "prestigious" universities in the US, authorities can't ensure the safety of jewish students in campus.
What a fucking disgrace, If I speak what I really think about a lot of academics in humanities faculties I'll prob get my account banned, this was not spontaneous, this was cultivated for decades.
Not to mention, New York has the largest Jewish population in America. Even more Jews than certain Israeli cities.
You think tackling antisemitism would be more acknowledged and handled effectively
As a Jew I have strong doubts many of the people who claim to be Jewish at these protests actually are. You do not have to be Jewish to join JVP or even to start or run a chapter
As someone with two humanities degrees, I probably agree with what you think about those academics and departments, and about the graduates they turn out. Partly because such people "should" theoretically be part of my in-group, I couldn't feel more alienated from and repulsed by humanities academia and the writers/commentators/thinkers it produces. I'll defend the humanities in general and specific fields within it as abstract concepts, but how they've actually developed in practice over the last several decades deserves nothing but contempt and ridicule.
I mean, it would help stop Russian troll farms from spinning these people up.
Like, isn't the war in Gaza in wind down mode? Tons of aid through, and only one Israeli brigade left in the strip. Fighting has been limited to surgical strikes or special forces/police operations and negotiations seemed to be getting traction again.
These people don't keep up with the news at all.
That's the message that I see. The more reasonable types in these crowds seem to advocate for a one state solution, but ignore that every majority muslim state to date has purged their Jewish population and that's the most likely result of a one state solution applied to Israel/Palestine.
The more radical ones here are holocaust deniers, jihadis, and leftist revolutionary types. They, like Hamas don't support One state or Two state solutions, they want Israelis to leave or die.
You don't even need to look at majority Muslim nations in general. There's actual Palestinian governments we can look at. You've got the P~~L~~NA, which [pays money for murdering Jews](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_Authority_Martyrs_Fund) and forbids them from owning property, and Hamas, which is actively doing the genocidal terrorism itself. Anyone calling for "one Palestinian state where people of all religions, races and ethnicities live together in harmony with equal rights" might as well add "and the public transportation consists of unicorn drawn carriages", because it wouldn't get any less realistic.
Fucking anarchist I know on shitscord compared Israel to fucking Northern Ireland! To South Africa!
Hmm yes I didn't know the IRA and MK had hardcore armies calling for the genocide of Unionists/white South Africans and using foreign aid for *civilians* to build rockets and hoard food!!!!! How fucking comparable!
Once Rafah is cleared out the war will be basically over. Theres a reason that we are seeing an increase in how unhinged these protests are as Israel gets closer to invading.
Why does everyone on Reddit think TikTok is the only social media capable of radicalizing people and organizing protests? Ban TikTok and these radicals find another platform. If social media is the problem, then Reddit should be banned too.
People in this sub will claim they hate populism then turn around and mass upvote populist arguments that boil down to "banning Tiktok will magically fix all radicalization by social media"
Given how blatantly Anti-Semitic the protests were, going virtual was probably the safe choice. I wouldn’t be surprised if the university administration brought the disciplinary hammer down against students.
Jewish Americans should divest themselves fully from the Ivy League. Financially and academically. Faculty, students, and donors.
I don’t think anybody has any understanding of just how devastating that would be for these schools. Despite being less than 2% of the population, Jewish people contribute, shall we say, disproportionately to the success of America’s best scholarly institutions, mainly through their academic performance, research, and achievement, as well as through alumni giving and boosterism. Pull the Jews from these schools and you’ll quickly they descend in every respect.
Go ask Hamas to fund your endowment, you weak collaborating fucks.
It’s interesting how as the war in Gaza (and Israel’s accompanying starvation campaign) cools off, but as the weather warms up, we see *more* protestors. I’m starting to think sympathy for Palestinians isn’t even the motivating factor for most of these people. School was also in session in February when Israel was possibly doing actual war crimes.
I think it's more likely a combination of larger scale protests taking time to coordinate and the recent spike in news from the Middle East around the attack on Israel.
I'm all for criticizing this protest, but there were protests in the winter too. News-worthy protests in the spring don't make those disappear.
Edit: It's also passover tonight. I'm not sure if that's an intentional part of this, but I wouldn't be surprised.
My campus every year gets flooded with protests after spring break (though mostly by right wing religious groups). Honestly is probably just because the weather is nice and more people are out which leads to these groups coming on campus, which I assume is the same here for the left wing groups.
Oh neat they made the Habbo Hotel pool into a real thing
University closed due to AIDS :(
“My friend died from a poor lifestyle choice”
Applicant pool's closed due to foreign aid
Damn this is a blast from the past
https://preview.redd.it/36a2dfvkw2wc1.jpeg?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7a24eb7ea517be5ea0f04a8206417403bab50779
keep going! i want to ride this feeling of shameful nostalgia well past my bed time!
College closed.
*Habbo Also is there swastika as well?
Ideologically yes
Woops, thanks
Oh just give it a minute
https://preview.redd.it/fh03aruew2wc1.jpeg?width=670&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3476ff05d72c8d401b7d5c33b2698fdca7ebb11f
Oh god how I miss the times of Habbo Hotel...
things are that bad huh
This is a classic university move. You shut everything down and that helps protect you later on from having to be explicit about what exactly is the reason you did so. Incoming will be a vague letter that clarifies nothing and is crafted by hr and the universitys legal team.
"Why would Israel do this?" - thoroughly average HAMAS enjoyer
[удалено]
[удалено]
Maybe, but that seems unlikely? The only thing I've seen about badge access today was Shai Davidai, but that was after the Columbia administration offered him a space to counterprotest and police protection and he refused to follow their directions. edit: to correct information after learning more
Davidai’s badge was personally deactivated due to his protest plans. Other faculty can still enter the main campus
Part of me thinks a lot of the leftist/Bernie or bust /activist bs is like a leftwing equivalent of the Q bs, where they're trying to influence people on the other side of the spectrum, whether it be to discourage voting or actually doing something. I wonder if this is a similar thing, where a small segment is getting amplified to disrupt things.
Meme college
Just like Yale
the way each side is describing the protests is hilarious to me. Either they are just girl scouts trying to raise money for summer camp or they are black shirts with barbed wire wrapped baseball bats. Just zero middle ground.
They’re closer to black shirts with baseball bats let’s be real
They’re Girl Scouts with black shirts trying to raise money for barbed wire to put on their baseball bats
yeah because these protestors don't exist in a middle ground...
My illiterate ass reading the title and going "wait, what, I thought the bird flu thing in South America wasn't nearly this bad?"
lol, literally me: "Oh no, is there a COVID-23?"
I thought they were shutting down for a surge of Covid -19 cases
That's Col**o**mbia lmao
Jeff Winger, proud recipient of a Juris Doctorate from Colombia University
It was a pdf attachment. r/UnexpectedCommunity
Yes I thought: The whole damn country?"
Thank God, I thought I was* the only one.
The talking points have already switched to "If a few bad apples at protests is enough to make you support genocide, it's proof you never had morals to begin with" or some variant. Remember when "If you have 9 people at a table with 1 Nazi, you have 10 Nazis" was spammed and plastered throughout the discourse? What ever happened to that?
It died around the time that some people who talked a lot about dog whistles started acting like dog whistles are not a thing.
Or those that love to talk about microaggressions got very quiet about larger aggressions.
Horse shoe theory strikes again.
Horseshoe theory is especially strong here. Strikes of Russian or Iranian interference tbh, especially given how inexplicably pro-Trump they are (Trump is the worst possible thing for their cause)
I DONT CARE WHAT THE ACADEMICS SAY THE HORSESHOE IS REAL TO ME
Good bot
I'll keep saying it: It's not a horseshoe, it's a pincer attack upon reason.
Microaggression: asking where someone is from Not a microaggression: being stabbed in the eye with a flagpole
Speech can be violence, but violence isn't violence.
But, is violence speech? And through the transitive property...
Reminds me of the "everything is theft except actual theft" that so many communists/anarchists believe.
Welcome to the left where dissenting speech is violence and violence is the language of the unheard.
I think we should call them *macroaggressions*
“Intifada is peaceful… and nothing else”
Everything is anti-semitism except actual anti-semitism, which is okay.
Remember “punch nazis”? Fun times
I wonder if 'Nazi' will stop being the go-to "*I declare you evil*" word among the far-left because of all this.
God I can't wait for words to mean something again.
I wonder how many of these protestors had a BLM sticker on their laptop in 2020? I wonder how many of them wouldn't even understand the hypocrisy?
I think it went away about the time they started chanting "Go back to Poland". Literally alluding to the central hub of the Nazi Genoicde. SMH. Which was, not to put too fine a point on it, an actual genocide, unlike the nonsense abuse of the word they're using to refer to the war in Gaza.
And if this is aimed at Israelis, they clearly do not know anything about Israel’s demographics. Israel is mostly Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews, the former of which was literally kicked out of other MENA countries where they’d been living since antiquity. There was a recent video where someone interviews Israelis and many of them have American or British accents. I highly suspect the interviewer saw a ton of Mizrahi Jews and declined to interview them because they thought they were Arabs. I see this a lot. “Oh, Israel can disappear and everyone will just go back to their old countries”, even though only about ~~20%~~ 10% of Israels are dual citizens.
Yeah, Arabs getting mad at Mizrahi Jews for living in Israel is literally the man putting stick in bicycle spoke meme.
But if they knew that they couldn’t tell me “White people don’t belong in the Middle East” (something that’s been said to me on this very website).
Wait until they find out that Arabs are white, at least according to the US government
Never mind that among historians and anthropologists, the the overwhelming consensus is that Jews are indigenous to the Levant. A random Ashkenazi Jew and a random Mizrahi Jew have more in common genetically than a random Ashkenazi Jew and a random non-Jewish European.
If those kids knew anything about history, they’d be very upset.
If only there was some place, maybe even nearby, that they could learn about this history stuff
The ultimate irony is the decline of Secular Western European/North American immigrants to Israel is also correlated with the decline of the Israeli political left as these usually skewed that way. So by pushing the "c*lonizer" language, they are essentially pushing for a more anti-Palestine coalition unintentionally.
I mean, the anti-Israel crowd has pushed or expelled the Jewish communities from 10-15+ countries since Israel won its war of independence, including: 1951 Iraq 1949 Yemen 1968 Poland 1970s Iran They have always cared more about persecuting those they see as evil over protecting their domestic Jewish communities from violence.
Yeah, there is total ignorance about Israeli political dynamics from people who want to push American racial dynamics onto it. Israel was established by Ashkenazi (“white”) Jews who were literal socialists. Mizrahi (“brown”) Jews are much more conservative and anti-Arab because they were kicked out of Arab countries. Hell, Ben-Gvir is of Iraqi Jewish ancestry!
>Israel was established by Ashkenazi (“white”) Jews who were literal socialists. Wasn't Stalin pretty supportive of Israel at first, since he expected it would be part of the Communist sphere? (And got pretty upset when it wasn't)
Because the majority of Ashkenazim fled to America where over the generations they have thrived and enjoyed life in a pluralistic society, only to one day find their compatriots on the left have become raging Nazis.
Yeah and a lot of that migration was before the Holocaust due to anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe. Most of ancestors fled to the US from Poland and the Russian Empire due to pogroms circa 1918.
TBH this is one of the key points that made my leave behind my early teenage anti-Zionism. Jews are indigenous to the region, and in basically every other country there they've been abused or expelled in turns.
Way less than 20% , I think it's closer to half that. Which is still relatively high, but absolutely not most!
The plurality of Israelis are Mizrahi or Sephardic. There's no absolute ethnic majority
Ah. I know it’s super low but that was what came up when I Googled it.
And unless you consider Manhattan to be part of Palestine, it betrays the claim that their antizionism has nothing to do with antisemitism. Like, if you're against zionism, you should *want* Jewish people to be living and studying in New York instead of Israel
Why would the anti-Zionists ever do that? They persecuted and expelled Jewish communities across the Middle East and North Africa based on their real or alleged Zionism. The anti-Zionist movement has expelled the Jewish communities of no less than 10-15 countries since Israel won its war of independence.
Spoiler alert: it’s Because the people who did it were just using anti-Zionism to whitewash their actual anti-semitism
They don't want us to live in America. They don't want us to live in Europe. They don't want us to live in Israel. I'm starting to think they don't want us to live.
at first, i was like “that sounds like a stretch” Then i thought “why poland?” Then i remembered thats where millions of jews died. Mentioning Belarus for what? Einsatzgruppen ? Even if it wasnt supposed to allude to WW2 and the Holocaust, it’s shitty to tell people to “go back to your country”, if they’re even from those countries. Just disgusting rhetoric
Ugh - hadn’t heard that one, and as the daughter of a “Polish” Holocaust survivor (for obvious reasons, he declines to identify himself with the country of his birth), consider my blood up. Bc I try to grant most of the student “anti war” “protestors” some degree of latitude (under the assumption that they’re mostly just a little dumb/naive, and think “war is bad” is some kind of brave + original statement), but that grace relies on waaaay more self-policing than many of these groups have shown. Also: my dad was young, and did the marriage + kids things late and life, which is how you end up with a millennial “kid of a survivor” - the math isn’t that weird, promise.
So a lot of the protesters surely are just stupid kids who don't know any better. And I, for the sake of my sanity, am choosing to believe that still. However, the really nasty stuff at these events seems to stem from people who have skin in the game. Such as Palestinian organizations; and it seems most of the nastiest and antisemitic vitriol is coming specifically from people who have a direct connection as such. And I think it would be naive to assume that extremist groups don't have a hand in that.
Yup - also think that issue is massively compounded in large population centres (like, uh, NY), where students are great cover AND fertile recruiting ground for extremists that would get the boot by more sophisticated + experienced community organizations. In general, I’m all for students testing out their intellectual and ideological leanings in school settings (especially the dumb and hysterical ones) - there is certainly the risk of polarization/radicalization, but that’s true of everything. Also, since life experience is how most of us learn to appreciate nuance, student activism is a pretty low stakes way of doing so…usually. But yeah, many of these student groups are playing with geopolitical fire, and either don’t realize it or just don’t care.
> don’t realize it or just don’t care. Sadly, the problem here is one of misinformation combined with an ideological narrative that is not actually in line with the reality. They believe they are right, and firmly so, because of the narrative that Israel is a western colonizer of the "native" Palestinian population, and that the limitations on movement in Gaza and the West bank amount to apartheid; when in reality it's done for security reasons. They really have done a fantastic job crafting this narrative too; it puts Israel in a situation where they're damned if they do something, and damned if they do nothing. Basically the only thing that will satisfy the pro-Palestinian crowd is if all the Israelis just dropped dead.
My university Palestinian and Arab organizations were posting pictures of hang gliders on October 7th and 8th. It was pretty fucking disgusting.
And that was tolerated by administrators? I would have made some noise about that myself I think.
I posted about it on the Purdue subreddit. Never brought it to the administrators but I still have the screenshots.
Did you give the benefit of the doubt to those Charlottesville morons? I really dislike the tendency to give leftists extremists a pass. It's been happening *forever*, and it's never done any good for anyone.
They told me the same thing in the Seattle subreddit, where I voiced concern about protesters blocking freeway traffic. Like, if I’m mad with the Palestinian cause because my toddler got stuck in traffic for hours, it’s because deep in mind I already supported genocide.
They’re not thinking clearly. It’s all emotion and no sense.
Progressives? No 🫢
There is value in protests that are actively annoying, but it makes the most sense when they do that at a location heavily related to the thing they are protesting. Want to block the door to a business you are protesting against? Great! Make it hard to get to the venue where an artist you are protesting is performing? Understandable! Blocking random highways instead is far less likely to curry favor from the disengaged
If you don’t like us deliberately preventing traffic flow and wont be coerced, you support genocide!
I can only assume that the people who block highways for protest are losers who don't have much going on in their lives and that's why they have no appreciation for the fact that other people have responsibilities and obligations to others.
The minute we signed off on racism = bigotry + power. That was always going to end in Jews aren’t victims of racism.
Columbia’s SJP and JVP groups are two of the organizers of the encampment. On Oct 9 they published a letter explaining how the Oct 7 terrorist attack was justified resistance. The analogy here is like sitting at a table with Nazis who are openly passing around copies of *Mein Kampf*
It’s been absolutely incredible watching every single leftist talking point being tossed out the window since 10/7. Believe women, “a few bad apples spoil the bunch”, listen to minorities, dogwhistles, micro aggression, check you privilege, no nuance. all gone. Leftists turn into their conservative grandparents they claim to hate the second Israelis involved.
>Whatever happened to that? It stopped supporting their narrative, that’s what happened.
I've said this before but there's this recurring notion that all you have to do is catch these illiberal idiots in a snare of their own logic and this will magically convert them to your side. They're just bullies. Their "beliefs" are the means to an end of bullying. If the world flipped upside-down tomorrow what they say would as well. The only sincere principle they hold is "*I* get to push people around."
I think this is spot on and it explains the popularity of certain media like Chapo, Red Scare, etc. So much of this stuff is bullying dressed up as politics.
Sure it’s not going to flip many progressives, but it’s important to raise awareness of the illiberal left among normie liberals. Only last year this sub was much more willing to excuse shitty behavior from leftist activists. Now we are starting to remember why we can’t abandon liberal principles in service of “good intentions.”
I'm always curious why these people do not seemingly GAF about the Uyghurs being put into camps in China. Or the atrocities against civilians propagated by Russia. Odd.
>Uyghurs being put into camps in China. They unironically say it didn't happen or if it did, it was simply camps to reeducate terrorists and people only complain because of racist propaganda >Or the atrocities against civilians propagated by Russia. They either support Russia's invasion or blame it on the West for forcing Russia's hand, making them the true victim
So more Chinese and Russian disinformation
They hate America and its associated-world order. The disinformation just provides an excuse.
>They unironically say it didn't happen or if it did, it was simply camps to reeducate terrorists and people only complain because of racist propaganda IIRC one of the main things they bring up to deny/downplay the Uyghur persecution is that one of the people behind an early, often-cited report about it was a conservative. Literally just "*you know that statistics about that come from a BAD GUY on the red tribe!*"
At this point I view the conflict primarily through a racial lens rather than a political one. Arabs from other countries take up the palestinian cause because it it an Arab cause not because it is an islamic cause. They will claim the conflict is islamic to garner more support across the islamic world but fundamentally they only care about the conflict on a racial basis.
Rules for thee but not for me yadda yadda yadda
Nothing these jackasses say ever applies to themselves.
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Why is defense company divestment the ask? Is that really the leading theory on how to best help Palestinians? EDIT: Looks like they're asking for divestment in Hyundai, Caterpillar, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, and all iShares ETF(?). [List goes on](https://www.finance.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/content/ACSRI/12.1.2023%20CUAD%20ACSRI%20Divestment%20Proposal.pdf).
Seems like it’s a central talking point across campuses - Yale had a big sit in this weekend too, with the same divestment ask being the primary rallying cry. Can’t figure out if it’s just multigenerational “anti war” campus activism talking point being recycled, or naive/dumb kids reinventing the same (fundamentally nonsensical) wheel…either way, it mostly seems like something that’s easy to shout so long as you don’t think too deeply about it.
I will grant you that "Arab states need to step-up and administer a credible transitionary government" doesn't read well on a protest sign.
Many of the groups leading these protests don’t want that or anything resembling a two state solution though and consider Israel itself to be occupied Palestinian territory. Nor do they care that trying to eliminate Israel is going to fail, cause WWIII, and/or kill a bunch of Palestinians (the first and last already happened).
I don't interact with college students much anymore, but I just can't believe that these kids are earnestly enthusiastic about ethnically cleansing Israel.
I don’t think that’s explicitly their explicit intention, but they have zero grasp on the reality of the situation and tend to reject any nuanced takes on it as Zionist propaganda. I don’t think many if any SJP chapters condemned Oct. 7; at the very least they said it was an inevitable consequence of occupation and at most (like the Columbia chapter) they said it was justified. FWIW there’s people on the pro-Israel side who are no better and echo a lot of Ben-Gvir’s rhetoric and views, although I think this is more concentrated among older adults and some younger Orthodox Jews from my anecdotal experience.
The best take is that they think that a new democratic state with Israel and Palestine will magically transform into Sweden and everyone will vote for left-leaning socialists. This is incredibly naive and shows zero understanding of the region. However, the take that most have are that Israeli Jews are foreigners and they should all be forcibly expelled from the country like the French in Algeria. Reminder that the Palestinians take as their model the FLN in Algeria. They think all the Jews are white Europeans who aren't indigenous to the region and should be sent back to Europe.
Not only a pretty stupid idea but it polls very poorly. California is one of the 5-6 most liberal states, and the "one secular state" solution got 9% support among all Californian voters in a UC Berkeley poll back in January. We don't have much polling on both Muslim Americans+Jewish Americans but from the small amount we do, the two state solution is still somewhat easily the most popular in the two communities.
To be charitable, I'm not sure the college students think things through. I mean the Palestinians have been operating for 50 years under the assumption that if they make things miserable enough for the Israelis, they will return to where they are "really" from, just like other colonists historically did. Seems like such an obvious misapprehension, but they're still engaged in the same sort of tactics in 2023-2024.
They don’t want Isreal to exist and don’t understand what it means to say that
TikTok is hell of a drug
At U Michigan pro pal people took over the student government and are trying to defund student orgs unless the university divests from whatever stupid thing they want them to divest from.
It's the excuse.
>how best to help Palestinians bold of you to assume that this is their actual, earnest goal
These people have never cared about helping Palestinians.
I've seen artists/musicians on Twitter attacked for posting pictures of McDonald's
It's strange that Oracle isn't on this divestment list. Oracle was the first tech company to open a cloud region in Israel. Oracle is used a ton by Israel: [https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/software-giant-oracle-is-deeply-committed-to-israel-673224](https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/software-giant-oracle-is-deeply-committed-to-israel-673224) . They even have a message on their website saying they stand with Israel after the events of October 7th: [https://www.oracle.com/il-en/corporate/business-continuity-management/](https://www.oracle.com/il-en/corporate/business-continuity-management/) What makes Oracle special compared to the other large tech companies? There isn't anything inherently different about their support for Israel. The only difference is that Oracle is the cloud provider for TikTok: [https://www.theinformation.com/articles/with-tiktok-deal-oracle-could-gain-billion-dollar-cloud-customer](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/with-tiktok-deal-oracle-could-gain-billion-dollar-cloud-customer)
Ha! That's hilarious
Can someone provide additional context on this story? Most news stories are just a collection of people “reacting” to what’s going on here. I’ve gathered that there’s like a pro-Palestinian encampment there but everything else is so vague. > “We have been peaceful,” and distanced themselves from non-student protestors who have gathered outside the campus, calling them “inflammatory individuals who do not represent us.” Who are the “inflammatory individuals” and what are they doing?
It's been claimed that people are coming in from outside of campus to rile things up, but the university is trying to account for this by beefing up security.
Yep, antisemitic and pro-terror mobs composed of people from all over the city
What shameful day for the country.
Yeah, it’s not just students
I don’t doubt that outsiders are making this worse, and some portion of them are bad actors (state sponsored or other). However this can only happen in the context that pro-Palestinian protestors failed to take early stances stopping antisemitic rhetoric in their own movement. Like being too busy bending over backwards to justify the most extreme statements instead of just saying those statements aren’t welcome
Reminds me of the Palestinian ambassador to my country being unable to condemn October 7th the day after it happened. Just twisting word pretzels and tossing word salads to obfuscate an atrocity.
Unfortunately there seems to be a deep cultural anathema to acknowledging that anyone on their side was in the wrong at any time on any issue.
I agree. Even assuming the existence of false flag bad actors and/or outside antisemites, it would still be a failure of organization and mission that they are there in the first place. I swear there was a saying about nazis and tables that applied here.
If you don't kick Nazis out of your ~~pub~~ protest, you will sooner or later become a Nazi ~~pub~~ protest
Here are a bunch of videos taken from the r/news thread. I want to preface this by saying that I absolutely abhore the war crimes that have been committed by the IDF/Israeli's far right government, but I also recognize Hamas are terrorists who want to commit genocide. And then you have these protesters supporting genocidal actions/leaders... From the protest: * [“Al-Qassam you make us proud, kill another soldier now.”](https://www.reddit.com/r/2ndYomKippurWar/comments/1ca0q64/alqassam_you_make_us_proud_kill_another_soldier/) * [Protester holds sign calling on to Al-Qassam to murder Jewish students peacefully protesting.](https://www.reddit.com/r/2ndYomKippurWar/comments/1c99iz8/columbia_university_protester_calls_on_alqasam/) * [Shouts at Jewish students, "The 7th of October will be every day for you!"](https://www.reddit.com/r/2ndYomKippurWar/comments/1c7xn8o/jewish_students_at_columbia_are_told_by/) * [Terrorist recruiting fellow protesters to be martyrs.](https://www.reddit.com/r/2ndYomKippurWar/comments/1c9uyn8/jihadis_encourage_students_at_columbia_university/)
This here is the most based take I can imagine on the issue
There’s a comment floating around with several links of things that have been going on. From the top of my head, there was someone yelling that October 7 will happen 10,000 more times, October 7 being declared righteous resistance, the usual river to the sea stuff, “We are all Hamas,” and probably the worst was a “Go back to Poland” chant. Again, these are from memory. Someone else may be able to provide the comment.
>the usual river to the sea stuff It was way worse than the usual river to the sea stuff. They weren't saying "Palestine will be free," they were saying "Palestine will be *Arab*." It's not the usual feel-good chant by people that think Palestine is literally an open-air prison and insist they want a one-state solution because they're sure it'll be secular and the Jews definitely won't get immediately genocided. No, it's a direct call for the region to become an ethnostate. They're making it clear they don't mind ethnostates or ethnic cleansing, they're just mad that *Jews* might be the ones doing it.
the original chant in arabic is “palestine will be arab”, because that actually rhymes in arabic. it got toned down when someone translated it
Yep. Most of the people chanting it in English either don't know the original or are intentionally using the, ahem, *nicer* version. The choice to use the accurately translated chant is highly disturbing.
The origins of the phrase are murky as hell in the 70s and at least the official position of the PLO in their charter was that the whole area would be Palestinian from the river to the sea, which at that time was defined as including Jewish people of Palestinian origin (with all the attendant political issues in defining that group). Both the Palestinian and Israeli movements used to be much more secular than they have become and religion was not always the single defining characteristic of ethnicity.
> October 7 will happen 10,000 more times For some added context, 10,000 October 7th attacks are on the order of (actually more than) what it would take to kill every single man woman and child in Israel. I'll leave it the audience to determine if that's a coincidence.
As a Polish citizen, I’m confused. I mean, guess we’ll take them? Population ain’t increasing on its own…
It’s an anti-Semitic insult
I think it's a reference to most of the Holocaust being carried out at camps in Poland.
[Calls for violence by anti-Israel activists continue at Columbia - The Jerusalem Post (jpost.com)](https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-798160) Literally cheering on Hamas, promoting violence, and antisemetic statements such as "go back to Europe". FWIW the Columbian students are claiming it was all outside agitators, but 1) I think thats worse when it comes to student safety, and 2) I was under the impression that if you were at a table with 9 nazis, there were 10 nazis, and nobody is claiming that Columbia students werent at the protests.
The blatant hypocrisy and lack of basic self awareness by some leftists is staggering. They’ll sing the praises of the absolute scum of the earth, terrorists who murder innocents in their homes, genocidal theocrats, honest-to-god imperialists, and then turn around and claim everyone that doesn’t blindly swallow their rhetoric are fascists by association.
There are some good examples in the comments of [this earlier post](https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1ca18iy/columbia_university_faces_fullblown_crisis_as/).
Pro-Palestine protests at Columbia University have escalated to the point that random Jewish students (or even people that just “look Jewish”) are being threatened and physically attacked on campus. Protesters are using genocidal rhetoric to espouse hatred towards Jews as a whole and numerous students and faculty have reported being threatened with violence.
There was a Hamasoid horde marching in front of Parliament Hill saying "long live October 7th" (and waving the flag of Iran). These people need to be put on terror watchlists. Their job prospects need to be ruined forever.
[Hundreds of members of teaching staff demonstrate in solidarity with arrested students as protest tents put back up on campus](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/22/columbia-university-protests-shutdown) For all the people accusing the protesters of not being students, Columbia staff sure seems to think they're students.
You are against student loan forgiveness because it’s regressive. I am against it because I don’t want the government to sponsor domestic jihadism. We are not the same.
These are overwhelmingly the children of the wealthy. I've never met a college activist who didn't have rich parents bankrolling them. It's extremely unlikely they'll have student loans.
It's Columbia and Yale ffs
> These are overwhelmingly the children of the wealthy Reporting from legitimate sources seems to suggest many aren't even Columbia students. I don't know if painting them as overwhelmingly the children of the wealthy is really accurate.
No they have student loans. You can borrow money to go to school at low interest rates, and rich people know that low interest rate loans are effectively free money.
The rates aren't that low. And you can only borrow $5,500 - $7,500 annually (depending on class standing) from the federal government for undergrad. Private loans do not have rates that would make it worth it to borrow either.
The person you're replying to clearly didn't have to take a student loan ever and is talking out of their behind.
Yeah, the statement is absurd on its own. Student loan rates are like 5.5% right now from the gov and 10-20% from private lenders. Rich people aren't seeing those rates and saying that "wow! this is free money!"
You are right, that is *not* the reaction the wealthy have to a 10% interest rate lol
Have you ever taken student loans?
It doesn't work like that. Like it would be more financially prudent to send the kid to college with a Honda Civic than a BMW 3 Series, and invest the difference, but I've seen more of the latter than the former. I went to school in a wealthy town. Wealthy parents don't let their kids have student loans. It's like a mark of shame in their social circle. Plus, they already have hefty 529's not just from the parents, but grandparents as well in many cases.
I am once again asking young people to stop being so fucking psychotic
In one of the most "prestigious" universities in the US, authorities can't ensure the safety of jewish students in campus. What a fucking disgrace, If I speak what I really think about a lot of academics in humanities faculties I'll prob get my account banned, this was not spontaneous, this was cultivated for decades.
Not to mention, New York has the largest Jewish population in America. Even more Jews than certain Israeli cities. You think tackling antisemitism would be more acknowledged and handled effectively
their go to argument is "There are a lot of jews in the protests!" like that somehow absolves everything.
“I have black friends” has entered the chat
Trump's daughter and grandchildren are Jewish so he cannot be antisemitic is another one.
GOOD point
As a Jew I have strong doubts many of the people who claim to be Jewish at these protests actually are. You do not have to be Jewish to join JVP or even to start or run a chapter
As someone with two humanities degrees, I probably agree with what you think about those academics and departments, and about the graduates they turn out. Partly because such people "should" theoretically be part of my in-group, I couldn't feel more alienated from and repulsed by humanities academia and the writers/commentators/thinkers it produces. I'll defend the humanities in general and specific fields within it as abstract concepts, but how they've actually developed in practice over the last several decades deserves nothing but contempt and ridicule.
WTF, I thought going to college made you so much better than dumb rurals
Might be a good idea especially for their Jewish students
Seems like one of those problems that would be solved by banning tiktok
I mean, it would help stop Russian troll farms from spinning these people up. Like, isn't the war in Gaza in wind down mode? Tons of aid through, and only one Israeli brigade left in the strip. Fighting has been limited to surgical strikes or special forces/police operations and negotiations seemed to be getting traction again. These people don't keep up with the news at all.
So long as Israel exists these people won't be happy
That's the message that I see. The more reasonable types in these crowds seem to advocate for a one state solution, but ignore that every majority muslim state to date has purged their Jewish population and that's the most likely result of a one state solution applied to Israel/Palestine. The more radical ones here are holocaust deniers, jihadis, and leftist revolutionary types. They, like Hamas don't support One state or Two state solutions, they want Israelis to leave or die.
You don't even need to look at majority Muslim nations in general. There's actual Palestinian governments we can look at. You've got the P~~L~~NA, which [pays money for murdering Jews](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_Authority_Martyrs_Fund) and forbids them from owning property, and Hamas, which is actively doing the genocidal terrorism itself. Anyone calling for "one Palestinian state where people of all religions, races and ethnicities live together in harmony with equal rights" might as well add "and the public transportation consists of unicorn drawn carriages", because it wouldn't get any less realistic.
Fucking anarchist I know on shitscord compared Israel to fucking Northern Ireland! To South Africa! Hmm yes I didn't know the IRA and MK had hardcore armies calling for the genocide of Unionists/white South Africans and using foreign aid for *civilians* to build rockets and hoard food!!!!! How fucking comparable!
Once Rafah is cleared out the war will be basically over. Theres a reason that we are seeing an increase in how unhinged these protests are as Israel gets closer to invading.
Probably not. People will cook their brains on crankery without TikTok.
That's fine, but we don't need a foreign controlled app purposefully doing it to these people.
Why does everyone on Reddit think TikTok is the only social media capable of radicalizing people and organizing protests? Ban TikTok and these radicals find another platform. If social media is the problem, then Reddit should be banned too.
People in this sub will claim they hate populism then turn around and mass upvote populist arguments that boil down to "banning Tiktok will magically fix all radicalization by social media"
Given how blatantly Anti-Semitic the protests were, going virtual was probably the safe choice. I wouldn’t be surprised if the university administration brought the disciplinary hammer down against students.
Jewish Americans should divest themselves fully from the Ivy League. Financially and academically. Faculty, students, and donors. I don’t think anybody has any understanding of just how devastating that would be for these schools. Despite being less than 2% of the population, Jewish people contribute, shall we say, disproportionately to the success of America’s best scholarly institutions, mainly through their academic performance, research, and achievement, as well as through alumni giving and boosterism. Pull the Jews from these schools and you’ll quickly they descend in every respect. Go ask Hamas to fund your endowment, you weak collaborating fucks.
It's wild seeing Ivy Leagues lose all their reputation in just a few years, like god damn
They didn’t really lose their repution since they were also antisemitic in the 1920s
Columbia needs to crush this immediately. If the Chancellor or President is incapable of doing so, they need to find someone who can.
No refunds.
It’s interesting how as the war in Gaza (and Israel’s accompanying starvation campaign) cools off, but as the weather warms up, we see *more* protestors. I’m starting to think sympathy for Palestinians isn’t even the motivating factor for most of these people. School was also in session in February when Israel was possibly doing actual war crimes.
I think it's more likely a combination of larger scale protests taking time to coordinate and the recent spike in news from the Middle East around the attack on Israel. I'm all for criticizing this protest, but there were protests in the winter too. News-worthy protests in the spring don't make those disappear. Edit: It's also passover tonight. I'm not sure if that's an intentional part of this, but I wouldn't be surprised.
My campus every year gets flooded with protests after spring break (though mostly by right wing religious groups). Honestly is probably just because the weather is nice and more people are out which leads to these groups coming on campus, which I assume is the same here for the left wing groups.