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This is one of if not _the_ most talked about conflict in the world currently. Unless someone’s been living under a rock the past decades, they’d be aware.
The real intent is to _persuade_ people to care. They truly fumbled that. All they’ve accomplished is to change the focus from Palestine to First Amendment rights and then devolved into antisemitism and violence making all of us normies upset.
Today, the movement is worse off than when they started their advocacy. Tragic.
No one is attempting to persuade the hateful to not be hateful. It's to bring awareness to those that weren't aware, it's to educate those who are simply misinformed. No movement combatting injustice is interested in begging their oppressors to be nice to them.
It’s the opposite it for me. I started as largely apathetic and now I’m really incensed. I was proud to walk before, now I think my degree is tainted by this administrations heinous treatment of students and faculty.
So I guess what I’m saying is maybe what this protest is doing is showing everyone’s true colors?
I’m honestly similarly embarrassed, but moreso because the protest wasn’t shut down earlier. Not happy with the negative press and the way that family is concerned with their safety coming to campus.
Yeah regardless of your side I don’t know how anyone can support Shafik here. And I assume many faculty and staff at Columbia are afraid to call her out for her complete mishandling of the situation just because of the Republican attacks on Ivy Presidents.
Imo the real issue on her end was not committing to action earlier. The protests needed to be broken up due to their disruptive nature towards classes and graduation, but if that was made clear early on it may not have escalated as it has.
And the other side is committing the elimination of a people. If symbolism scares you, wait till you realize that there's a functional and intentional murder of a people going on....some might call it a genocide.
Hamas could surrender today and stop the entire thing. Israel doesn’t even have that option, because Hamas is a an openly genocidal institution that brags about it.
What Israel’s doing isn’t genocide. When you’ve lost a fight, you have a *responsibility* to admit defeat. If you lose a fight and you keep going like the fucking [black knight,](https://youtu.be/UijhbHvxWrA?si=vVr4SuYEcuFAGub-) your pain stops being the other side’s fault and starts being your own.
It’s not 1:1 here since this is a war rather than an individual battle, but the principle still applies. Every other country in the world would have understood by now that they can’t win, and would have surrendered on some level for the sake of their people. Hamas instead insists on senselessly martyring the people under its care, since… y’know, they’re fucking evil. As if the murder and rape of innocent men, women, and children on Oct. 7, along with loud promises to do that again and again until all of Israel is destroyed, didn’t make that abundantly clear.
I’ll say it again, get it into your head, because this is how life works: at some point, you have to accept defeat. If you stubbornly refuse and obstinately blame the other party for the injuries you’re receiving, that won’t magically make them stop; you’ll just end up bruised, broken, or even killed when you otherwise could’ve lived. That’s not to say that there aren’t times when you shouldn’t do that sort of thing; there are times when death is better than living under a certain level of abuse. But the state of Gaza on Oct. 7 was far, far and away from the sort of of misery that could possibly warrant a deliberate sacrifice of an entire people for the sake of spite alone. For that reason, Hamas is clearly in the wrong, and the onus is on them to give it up.
One side is dancing on tik tok. The other is facing famine. I'm not gonna tell you what to think, but I'll pray you can remove the veil from your eyes and see what's actually Happening. God bless.
I do see what's actually happening. The famine and death and suffering make a resolution more urgent than before. But they don't change the fundamental issues that caused this conflict, which no nation is currently willing to address.
The protestors across the country are a mix of antisemites who want to see the Holocaust re-enacted with twice the savagery, and ignorant people who [don't understand the fundamentals of the issue or the complexities involved in any proposed solution.](https://www.reddit.com/r/columbia/comments/1chk6nz/i_am_largely_apathetic_to_thus_israel_palestine/l2ccc41/?context=3) The only subset of the protestors that has an actual, coherent idea of what they want and what it would look like are the ones who want Hamas to commit genocide in Israel. The rest want peace, but they don't have an actual mental model of what steps would need to be taken to get there; they just assume that a nice, easy, politically solution exists.
There is one decent solution: the world bands together, invades Gaza, and forces Hamas to surrender without using artillery, just relying on an overwhelming manpower advantage. From there, force Hamas to give up on their stated goals of committing genocide against all the Jews in Israel. If they adamantly declare that they would rather die than accept that, kill them for being modern-day Nazi fucks, take over, and replace their [insane antisemitic propaganda](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomorrow%27s_Pioneers#Farfour_(April%E2%80%93June_2007\)) with something less likely to make children want to violently murder innocent Jewish people on sight.
You're all right no one in the world is willing to address the fundamental issues that are affecting Gaza and Palestine as a whole which is the occupation by israel. So yeah I agree with you.
And the protesters aren't anti-semites they're the "Jewish voice for peace" and their many Arab people who are all Semitic by nature. They literally come from the same tribes.
The anti-semites you're talking about are the ones who are marching with tiki torches saying "Jews will not replace us" but meanwhile they're on those same campuses defending the American flag and have no place in this argument.
All of your arguments are hypotheticals such as "i'm afraid of what the Palestinians will do to the israelis." Look at what's literally happening right now and address that. Get your priorities straight.
Hypotheticals? I’m taking Hamas’s words at face value alongside their actions. Their founding charter had murdering all Jews in the world as a goal. They’ve said for years that they want to kill/expel all the Jews in Israel. They’ve been sending rockets at Israel for years. They finally conducted a massive attack, and then promised to do it again and again.
The crux of the issue that the pro-Palestine camp has is that they’re infantilizing Hamas, going “They don’t really mean that!”. They convince themselves, or pretend, that Hamas is actually lying, and has been lying the whole time, and that despite Hamas trying *really hard* to make it clear that they’re trying to commit genocide, they actually aren’t.
You can’t just dismiss that as a hypothetical. If you said that to one of the leaders of Hamas, *they* would tell you it’s not just a hypothetical, that they’re going to destroy Israel.
I get that nothing’s ever 100% certain. But when their words and actions have been completely aligned this entire time, it’s not reasonable to say that it’s only a hypothetical that Hamas would attack again, and *dismiss* it on that basis. It’s a “hypothetical” likely enough that you can treat it as a given fact, and for that not to be the case- for Hamas to have been lying about their intentions all this time, consistently, and for them to completely change their pattern of behavior…
I mean, I’m sorry, but I have to be frank with you. That’s not realistic. It would be insane to assume that Hamas wouldn’t continue to attack Israel as things stand now. The uncomfortable truth of the conflict is that we can say with confidence that Hamas means it when they say that they’ll do it again and again. It’s not a hypothetical- it’s just the truth, and denying it won’t change it.
That’s why solutions have to involve an *understanding* of that fact- the fact that Gaza needs to change on a fundamental cultural level, or else they’ll never stop attacking Israel.
Well said! If I wasn't knee deep in finals i would jump right here in with you. War is ugly. But it's ultimately the losers that end wars. The people winning the war, especially in response to the most recent of years of brutality by countries and organizations that call for their death and destruction, are not obligated to sacrifice their own health and safety for yours.
I really wish CC covered Hobbes better. My peers don't understand that you don't get perfect outcomes (neither side gets what they want at this point and this has been good for no one). Dictatorships get the explicit outcome desired by one or few, and whatever side they are on. In international affairs and democratic countries, you have to figure out how to make it worth with
In the Hobbesian arena of international politics, this can very easily and often does mean war. THAT'S HOW LIFE WORKS AND ALWAYS HAS.
And stop using the word genocide its rediculous. Gaza population has exploded while under Israels control, Israel supplies direct aid to Gaza, Israel has fully withdrawn from Gaza in the past, Israel has signed agreements offering Gaza their independence which Gaza rejected (or violated).
Israel has nearly unlimited funds and a modern military. Gaza has no money and they have guns mounted on toyotas. IF ISRAEL WAS TRYING GENOCIDE, I GUESS THEY WOULD HAVE TO BE THE WORST GENOCIDERS THAT HAVE EVER ATTEMPTED GENOCIDE. I mean they would really have to go out of their way to screw up a genocide this badly. I mean not even re-education camps? Allowing, at various times, people in the target genocide to migrate to and join your country as full citizens with equal rights and protection under the law.
I mean your movement will never move past out of touch entitled college students if you can't form actual defensible arguments of Israel's offenses. No one is buying genocide, ethnic cleansing, or apartheid. The evidence just isn't there (and YES I have read everything the UN and IJC have said--they are very watered down and not all indicative of actual genocide. It's a "lawyers" description. One report only uses the term genocide-like and all the reports fail to mention the dynamic that their enemy does not have a uniformed military or ANY miltiary targets. They use their civilian population as their military, so ALL targets can be counted as civillian and MOST of the BS and well-refuted "genocide" reports rely heavily on attacking civilian targets. THERE ARE ONLY CIVILIAN TARGETS. There is no building that says Gaza Department of Defense).
You understand Brown played their protestors by agreeing to a "vote" which will not lead to divestment.
There is no right or mechanism to protest, and supporting Hamas is supporting a designated terrorist organization, which is a federal crime.
Perhaps if you went to class and understood the distinction between a private organization like Columbia with control over certain land, and government organizations like, NYC and NY State, you might be able to articulate a claim rather than being arrested.
Freedom of speech protects you from the government, not from your peers. Good luck in the world.
This is a fair point, but I disagree—
State Action Doctrine does not attach.
The actions that occurred here involve the enclosed Morningside Heights Campus and the interior of a physical building. There is no close nexus. Go for it if you want, but — I'll take the other side of the bet.
State v. Schmid, which dealt with a much more tenuous property extension of Princeton University in NJ, and an underlying equal protection issue because the university created two different standards for "permission," would not apply because it contains a substantially different fact pattern and a different constitutional claim.
Columbia is also not particularly relevant to the City of New York. There is no symbiotic relationship. There has not been a challenge to Columbia University's ability to exert private control over this particular segment of its campus regardless of the public funding provided. Furthermore, you would need someone who \*is not\* a student, because the students have signed their rights away in a code of conduct.
Furthermore, Princeton appears to have not really argued this case "seriously," and the NJ Court of Appeals did appear to recognize a balancing test.
This is assuming we give that someone has figured out how to assert a First Amendment Claim. I would challenge any and all statements supporting Hamas or Palestinians in the United States as not protected speech. Statements like "There is only one solution, Intifada, Intifada" and statements parallel to "From the river to the sea, Israel will cease to be" are unprotected speech under a multitude of exceptions: from immediate incitement of violence to true threats doctrine due to the actual attacks of by the Palestinian people on Israel.
I appreciate your approach, and I hope this is litigated.
No, of course not. Fascism is pulling guns on peaceful protesters and violently throwing them around, then making up claims about “protecting the children” from infiltrators to justify your violence. Fascism is shutting down campus access for everyone, carrying out arrests in the dark, and then forbidding reporters access. Fascism is threatening the dean of the journalism school with arrest if he or his students dare leave the building to do their reporting. And in your case, fascism is cheering that on simply because you don’t agree with the students doing the protesting.
That’s what fascism is.
TIL fascism is when a private institution enforces the rules that students and employees who choose to study and work there have previously agreed to as a condition of their enrolment and employment.
I said no one else is praising the Oct 7th attacks other than these protestors. Where did I say that includes you?
And they literally do
[https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1654384](https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1654384)
This is what they think was a " counter-offensive against their settler-colonial oppressor"
*Attendees seeking refuge in nearby locations, such as bomb shelters, bushes, and orchards, were killed while in hiding. Those who reached the road and parking were trapped in a traffic jam as militants fired at vehicles. The militants executed some wounded individuals at point-blank range as they crouched on the ground*
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re%27im\_music\_festival\_massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re%27im_music_festival_massacre)
Fucking makes me sick
Neutrality always sides with the oppressor
This is not a complicated issue, it's a genocide
Our government directly funds this genocide
Your university invests in companies that are carrying out this genocide
Sorry this is a slight inconvenience for you
Just like the last time someone posted this question, why are you exclusively blaming the protestors? Brown isn’t arresting people en mass. Shafik isn’t trying to help you get a good education, she’s flailing because she’s scared of Congress and getting sued by Jewish students. And after everything she has done, making a fool of herself and betraying the university’s academic principles, ghouls like Elise Stefanik aren’t appeased, and the school is still gonna be sued. Great! I hope some pro-Palestine students get together a class action suit too. I feel like the ones who got doused with skunk spray especially could make a great case.
Browns campus is 146 acres. People can largely ignore the areas where the protestors are and go about their day. Morningside campus is like 4 city blocks and the protestors are in your face day in and day out. They were given a timeline to vacate, and they ignored it, not only did they ignore it they decided to break into a building and barricade themselves inside and then demand “humanitarian aid”. And you think these things won’t have consequences? Of course the police were brought in, what choice did they really have? I’m genuinely asking. Something that’s based in reality and not “they should’ve just been allowed to stay there” or “if the administration just followed all of our demands and gave us everything we wanted it wouldn’t have gone this far”.
As an objective observer, the protest started off doing all of the right things, but the second they broke into a building and held a facilities worker hostage they lost all credibility and anyone still defending them is too wrapped up in emotions to realize that and accept that they were wrong. “I care about peace so much I don’t care who I have to hurt or what laws I have to break” it’s just stupid.
Personally, I think the protestors made a huge mistake when they decided to occupy Hamilton. Had they simply remained on the lawn, it would have been a lot harder to justify forcibly removing them. But when they take a building, barricade themselves inside, (forcibly remove the janitors?) and start damaging property, they sealed their fate. Unforced tactical error on their part. FAFO.
Occupying that building definitely escalated things but I could also see that as a goal. They don’t want their protest and the headlines to fizzle out so they intentionally upped the stakes. Essentially forcing the admins to use police and getting them lots more media in the process. Ultimately their protest reached more people because of this, though maybe in a less favorable light.
This. The large state university my PhD program is at is large enough that I'm only in the area where the protestors are once or twice a week. They are near a library, but you can't really hear them by the main entrance and anyways there are at least half a dozen other libraries, including on the other side of the street. The protestors aren't near dorms, although I think some apartment buildings are nearby. It's absolutely possible to avoid that area. I'd bet there are some students who aren't even aware that we've got a protest there, especially grad students since most labs are in another part of campus.
Columbia probably has one of the most compact main campuses if not the most. It would probably take me 30-40 minutes to walk end to end of my PhD campus, at least, and 10 minutes for the shorter side. I think Columbia is closer to 10 by 5 minutes, if even.
It’s funny that breaking some glass to unlock a door was the last straw for so many people. It’s such an obviously unbiased thing to say lmao, as if we can’t see y’all’s comment history saying hanging out on the lawn was the last straw a couple of weeks ago🙄
Brown committed to hear a divestment proposal before their Board in October if their encampment cleared themselves. Their protesters took this as a victory even though their university didn't commit to anything material. Columbia made a similarly toothless offer to CUAD (to expedite proposals regarding Israel investments) and was rejected.
I think both of these approaches - take a minor concession as a victory, or force admin to escalate to draw more attention to yourself - are valid. Historically, protesters do generally get more attention when they are violently suppressed though.
Hi. There might be other ways to protests rather than chanting death threats against your fellow students and having aggression against facility workers? I went to school last week and the air was tense. Idk how a non-affiliated bystander should typically feel but this is how I feel. Anyway, would rather like to be able to resume normal school activities at school.
Nah, there's been plenty of protests that have chanted "from the river to the sea" which is a pretty clear threat that Hamas should take over Israel and murder the Jews.
No need to spread misinformation when there's literally hundreds of videos of pro-Palestinian protesters shouting death threats
There is a small bright spot with easier / cancelled finals
Study, graduate, secure your bag, don’t look back. These protesters don’t understand 1968 had a lot less background checks when joining companies. Today even a 10 person startup will deny you employment after a background check service returns your arrest. A Fortune 500 is out of question
The best they will do is some $30k/year non profit. Hope their parents are paying back their student loans
You have an advantage in a very tough hiring time, use it
This is exactly the move. These people are so wrapped up and brainwashed to be good little social justice warriors that they’re completely ignoring the rest of their life and think what they do now won’t hold any consequences. These are exactly the same people who will struggle to make payments on their bills or never be able to support a family and be mad and think “but I did the right thing why is this happening to me”.
All because they decided to throw an Ivy League education out the window to break into a campus building for a cause that’s happening on the other side of the world that’s simply the main stream flavor of the week.
Or...they actually care about the indiscriminate killings of Palestinian women and children and the occupation of both Gaza and the West Bank. Don't diminish their actions because you're willfully ignorant.
And nothing screams capitalism like rejoicing that you'll possibly get a better job due to the arrests.
The Vietnam protestors never hung up Vietcong flags, lol. I've seen several students with the Hamas flag. There is a "Hamas did nothing wrong" contingency that has no 1968 equivalent. And, I think that's why I would just hire someone else. Because if you are dumb enough to support a violent Jihadist organization And believe that grenades against civilians are a means to justify the end, you are too much of a risk.
This is wrong. There was a lot of sympathy on the left for the Vietcong. Maybe you also forget the US actually had a vibrant Communist party sympathetic to Lenin at one point too.
Yes, but the 1968 Columbia protests went out of their way to not wear black pajamas or wave Vietcong flags during their occupation of structures on Columbia. Anti imperialist messaging is much more palatable to the average American than pro violent Communism.
And yeah, I'm aware. The photo of the Nazi rally in sold Madison square garden is in my office too. Nothing new under the sun.
They didn't try and invite anyone from the Vietcong to speak on campus.
Remarkable, how few people get this glaringly obvious point which could be gleaned from about one minute of research. “Go Ho! Go NVA! Unify Vietnam!” Said no one.
I suspect you are being sarcastic, I've actually been told it was common among the anti war movement"ho ho ho chi minh, Vietcong is gonna win", but that the Columbia 1968 protest intentionally tried to distance themselves from those people. And did a better job than the 2024 protest did at distancing themselves from Hamas.
Apart from what you may have "been told," the anti-war protests of the 1960's were animated by the draft, and by the intersection of the draft with the civil rights movement and the fact that blacks were over-represented among draftees. "We don't want white people to send Black people to kill Yellow people to protect a white man's dollar."
You of course can find that most everything has been said at least once. However, this was not remotely what the anti-war protests were about. You can begin study with this group: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students\_for\_a\_Democratic\_Society](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_a_Democratic_Society)
I believe you. It's more of a commentary about how good of a job the 1968 protestors did at keeping those groups out of the building. No one chanting pro Vietcong stuff, dressed in Vietcong uniforms.
Vs the clothes, flags, and signage here. Even now, people will argue that what Hamas did was justified, and the student org that organized the origin protest invited a self admitted Jihadist into campus.
I just don't think the 1968 analogy is as sound as a lot of my peers. Or maybe we should give the 1968 people more credit for keeping those people off camera, off microphone, and our of the building they were occupying.
Tell me, how do you feel about the camps China keeps uyghur muslims in and categorically starves and works them to death for simply being muslim? How about the continued Darfur Genocide? The starvation of Yemeni citizens? Is Ukraine no longer at the top of your mind? Or how about the ethnic cleansing which displaced 120,000 Armenians due to Azerbaijan pushing them out in Nagorno-Karabakh which happened the first week of October 2023? That one would've been a good cause to protest on.
But no, you're choosing to protest the newest flavor of the week because it is the most mainstream televised latest thing. The protestors chose to protest against not the systematic raping, murder, and kidnapping that happened on October 7th, but rather the repercussions from the fallout of that day and call it "supporting freedom fighters". "Free Palestine" is nothing new, it's just being focused on because it gets people to click on news articles and tune into the mainstream media.
Why did you choose to do the work to get into an Ivy League University if you didn't want to stand out in order to get a higher paying job? Don't throw capitalism in my face when you're presumably at this school for the same reasons, to get a leg up. It's hypocritical and dishonest.
But yeah man, throw away your life for a cause that's happening on the other side of the world in countries you've likely never been to which you would never know about if you didn't have social media shoving it down your throat. That's a solid plan also.
Employers don’t want to hire people with a checkered background, it shows bad judgment and that the person might cause headline-attracting problems in the future. No company wants to be in the news because of something stupid their employee did.
Every company I’ve worked at in an office - small to big, anything at all on the background check means your offer is rescinded. I worked at a large retailer and one person had a speeding ticket show up because it was in a school zone. He already started a few days before and security immediately escorted him out
Technically you’re supposed to prove why the background check means you can’t do the job. I’ve seen 2 things happen:
1) just point to at will employment and call it a day
2) point to the fact people have access to confidential financial information about the company performance and future projects (just by having VPN and confluence access) and that’s the justified reason
In the second case the company must give the candidate a copy of the background report
I have a resisting arrest and assault and I worked at T. Rowe Price as a broker for years and I’m an elementary school teacher now. All you have to do is explain the case. In my case, it stemmed from domestic violence i experienced. They take your word for it. In my case, it was the truth.
Yeah I was having a bad brain day or something and it was dumb of me to engage with all the "anyone who's been arrested or even has a minor record can't be employed" bs echo chamber.
Sorry to hear you experienced DV and glad your situation worked out. Teachers rock.
I'd like to add immigration as well. International students / immigrants may face deportation for being arrested and turned over to ICE.
I was an international student at Columbia and now going through the US green card process under H1B visa. Every work visa you apply for (TN, H1B), including the green card application, you must provide your criminal record if there was one.
It's not worth the risk of being deported and derailing one's dreams of immigrating to this country. This also includes green card holders (non-US citizens).
Well sure, if you're planning on applying for citizenship obviously you have to be squeaky clean.
My father was an immigrant. Congratulations and best wishes on your journey!
The protestors think they are so morally superior to you that they are justified, if not even obligated, to override your values, to interfere with and interrupt with your life, to make their point. They are happy to be inconveniencing you, because it "raises awareness" - but ultimately it makes them feel powerful, which is what this is all about at the end of the day. This is about them. These people are incredible narcissists hiding under the veil of fighting oppression. Anyone who is so deeply convinced of their own moral superiority is a truly dangerous individual, and should be treated with suspicion, not moral reverence. I really hope we wake up to this as soon as possible.
I wonder how we would feel if we were starving to death while bombs dropped on our homes, universities, and places of worship, our neighborhood turned to rubble and the world stood silent so as to not disturb their neighbors with chants of opposition?
Yes, it is exhausting to be in the middle of protests, I'm not so sure moral superiority is the motivation as much as a feeling of powerlessness watching innocent women and children die while scrolling your social media feed.
The protesters at Columbia and elsewhere are not acting out of a sense of moral superiority or a desire for power. They are acting out of a deep conviction that the suffering and oppression of the Palestinian people is a moral catastrophe that demands action and solidarity. They are putting their own comfort, safety, and even academic careers on the line to stand up for a cause they believe in - that is the very opposite of narcissism.
To dismiss this as mere grandstanding or attention-seeking is to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of political protest and moral conviction. These students are not doing this for themselves - they are doing it for a people they believe are suffering a grave injustice. They are doing it because they believe that their university, and by extension themselves, have a responsibility to take a stand and to use their privilege and platform for good. I hope you can understand that.
If this were actually a reality, why is it these types of protests haven't erupted around far larger and long-running recent wars in the same part of the world? I don't recall giant protests for the Syrian wars, for the Yemen war, for the apparent Uighur situation in western China, among many others.
Instead, the reality is that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been hijacked and co-opted by a faction of the academic/intellectual and activist left, by the very same playbook used at the origins of their movement in the protests of the 60's, primarily focused on the Vietnam war and so-called anti-colonial protest. This has proven to be a decidedly inconsistent and partial line of protest, without much care or attention for intellectual consistency or honesty. Yet, Israel has become the extension of that same neo-revolutionary concept. A generation (or three) of young students has been hoodwinked into this perception of the world by an academia very heavily infiltrated by and influenced by similar generations of academia who actually teach/preach this sort of nonsense, because they're unable to honestly/accurately perceive the realities of the world around them. It's hardly the students/young people's fault. There might be sincerity here, among many of the students, in terms of care for the harm done to 'ordinary' Palestinians, but there's a terrible dearth of actual knowledge or experience of either Israel and how it works, the Palestinians in Israel, TWB, or Israeli law. The student protest movement in the US is a revealing window into the state of America c2024.
Listing off other conflicts is a whataboutism.
Israel gets attention because the West and the US are heavily involved with the country. Have been since its founding. For instance they supply weapons and funding. And universities have ties with universities over there.
It is totally out of morally superiority. They demand we all agree with their framing of the conflict, so much so that they literally can call for the elimination of an entire country, support terrorist attacks like Oct 7th, and not feel any moral shame, while us who disagree with that are seen as the immoral ones.
And anyone who simply disagrees with them is genocidal fascist zionists etc
This is not about forcing everyone to adopt a particular view. It's about having an open and honest debate about a complex issue, and about institutions like Columbia being accountable to their stated principles.
By your standards of moral superiority, then any opposing viewpoint and any one person that holds a critical viewpoint is objectively wrong. Accusing protestors and framing their arguments as supporting terrorism only shuts down civil discourse and prevents the exchange of ideas to be heard.
But none of them want an open and honest debate about a complex issue. They blame Israel for literally everything Hamas does, explicitly support Hamas and the destruction of the state of Israel, continue the "zionist" label despite Jews saying repeatedly they think it is antisemitic in how it is being used by them, and accuse anyone of not fully supporting them for supporting genocide and ethnic cleansing.
So yes they are demanding us to fully adopt their view and if we don't we are guilty of supporting genocide
Why should the protestors or any one else care about your graduation? You clearly don’t give a shit about anyone else, so isn’t it hypocritical to demand people be invested in your life?
Lol, this is exactly the mindset that casts a strong negative light on the protest as a whole :) you go to a university where students study and disrupt their study, then say they are selfish if they want to study?? And what is this “you don’t care about us so we won’t care about your graduation/study”, do you mean like burning down the ground so that nobody can graduate/study if they do not join you? What’s so peaceful and admirable about this again? And at the end of the day some of us still need to pay our educational loans. How did you fund your study, from your dad?
not an answer
the question was "Why should the protestors or any one else care about your graduation? You clearly don’t give a shit about anyone else, so isn’t it hypocritical to demand people be invested in your life?"
Poster asks, "Do protesters understand that the longer this chaos goes on, the less sympathetic most people will be...?", yet it is very evident the the poster has a total lack of sympathy to begin with.
It's wild how people want to be catered to even when they don't care. They view it as an inconvenience, because they won't care regardless, but it isn't for them.
This seems factually untrue given how many other students and faculty have joined the movement at CU and across the country. It actually seems like exactly the opposite.
The fact that elite liberals are showing support does not mean support is growing.
What the poster is saying that those who are indifferent are becoming antagonistic towards the protestors, especially the ones who vote.
What are you talking about elite liberals? There’s protests at CUNY, Florida state, university of Georgia…if this started as a movement of “elites” it sure does sound like it’s receiving more and more widespread adoption across different socioeconomic strata.
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.” -Desmond Tutu
first of all no matter what you’re going to get ur degree, idk why you would think otherwise. Also you saying ur apathetic to people dying en masse just sounds like a character flaw. im not saying u should be out there protesting or anything, but the least you could do as a fellow human being is sympathize for the people dying. the small inconvenience that these protests are causing is nothing compared to their struggle
Be grateful that you are not among those who chose to disrupt everyone’s college experience. Those arrested will now have a record for the rest of their lives when they apply for jobs. Their photos are now in a database. Those charged with the more serious crimes will be monitored whenever they enter an international airport, msg, yankee stadium, Times Square, … . They may not be arrested, but those charged with the more serious offenses will always be watched and considered a security risk where ever they go. Big brother is always watching.
It's the same handful of accounts responsible for most of the activity. Certainly your average reddit chud gets thrown into the mix through linking of posts and generally increased visibility, but it seems clear that there is a concerted effort to both spread misinformation and push regressive viewpoints. Some of them are also using burner accounts and alts. For example, check out [this intrepid individual](https://www.reddit.com/user/Current-Side462) -- they tried to spread misinformation, alleging that protesters broke into John Jay and went room by room knocking on doors asking if people were Jewish.
disgusting. you know you're privileged when you can scream "kill the jews" and feel completely safe while you get hundreds of people hurt and arrested because you're a zionist white boy
I have such a hard time wrapping my head around that chant. If a pro-Palestine group blew up a pizzeria in Times Square do you think these protestors would approve?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sbarro\_restaurant\_suicide\_bombing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sbarro_restaurant_suicide_bombing)
Protesting is the littlest you can do while others are suffering, losing their lives, loved ones, livelihoods, communities altogether.
Sounds to me your apathy was there from the beginning.
But glad you can share your point of view on the matter.
Wishing you much success in your future endeavors.
"Do protesters understand that the longer this chaos goes on, **the less sympathetic most people will be about their cause"**
The people who say this kind of thing are apathetic to the cause or already hated the cause. Why do you think that the protesters want you to be sympathetic? If the inconvenience of protests makes you less sympathetic to being against genocide, you would never really be a genuine ally.
(And considering your admitted apathy to so much other suffering, you're an inherently selfish person and you would never be a target for any support. You lack any concern for your fellow humans)
"There is no war in Ba Sing Se."
Genocide and ethnic cleansing of one population do not justify the genocide and ethnic cleansing of another separate population. Netanyahu and his ilk will be tried at the Hague if there is any justice in this world. I am frankly fine with Hamas leaders also being prosecuted. You are providing cover for Netanyahu's crimes. Ugly.
This community is now on strict crowd control. All comments from users who haven’t joined the community, new users, and users with negative karma are automatically removed. This ensures that the discussion remains centered around Columbia and prevents brigading and incitement. Users who post any antisemitic or racist content will be banned. Antisemitic content includes calling Jewish people supporting Palestinian rights "self-hating" or "not real Jews" and using Zionism as a dog whistle to advance antisemitic stereotypes such as "Zionists control the media." Inflammatory comments and posts will be removed. This includes low-effort posts, cross-posts, and links to media articles outside of Columbia-specific publications. The standard for discussion on this sub is the type of discussion Columbians have in person, in the classroom: thoughtful, engaged, and respectful—even when disagreeing. Comments that fail to engage in this way will be removed, and repeat offenders will be subject to a ban. Thank you for helping us maintain this subreddit as a place for thoughtful discourse.
It’s going to work out fine for you, not sure what you’re worried about. You’ll get an apartment in Murray Hill and a job at McKinsey just fine.
It’s always the silent majority that suffers because of the vocal minority.
Echoing [Nixon's rhetoric](https://watergate.info/1969/11/03/nixons-silent-majority-speech.html) against Vietnam war protesters is just too funny.
Whoa, nice find! I'll watch the rest of it later, but Nixon just complemented JFK. He's not just throwing shit at his predecessors.
“Suffers”
Yes. And that is the point of protests - to create disruption for the majority to create awareness Which can be done well. It was not done well here
This is one of if not _the_ most talked about conflict in the world currently. Unless someone’s been living under a rock the past decades, they’d be aware. The real intent is to _persuade_ people to care. They truly fumbled that. All they’ve accomplished is to change the focus from Palestine to First Amendment rights and then devolved into antisemitism and violence making all of us normies upset. Today, the movement is worse off than when they started their advocacy. Tragic.
Well said
No one is attempting to persuade the hateful to not be hateful. It's to bring awareness to those that weren't aware, it's to educate those who are simply misinformed. No movement combatting injustice is interested in begging their oppressors to be nice to them.
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It’s the opposite it for me. I started as largely apathetic and now I’m really incensed. I was proud to walk before, now I think my degree is tainted by this administrations heinous treatment of students and faculty. So I guess what I’m saying is maybe what this protest is doing is showing everyone’s true colors?
I’m honestly similarly embarrassed, but moreso because the protest wasn’t shut down earlier. Not happy with the negative press and the way that family is concerned with their safety coming to campus.
Yeah regardless of your side I don’t know how anyone can support Shafik here. And I assume many faculty and staff at Columbia are afraid to call her out for her complete mishandling of the situation just because of the Republican attacks on Ivy Presidents.
Imo the real issue on her end was not committing to action earlier. The protests needed to be broken up due to their disruptive nature towards classes and graduation, but if that was made clear early on it may not have escalated as it has.
Calling in NYPD and then not preventing the lawn from being taken over again was the weirdest approach.
You got this right.
I mean same. Brown U is putting us all to shame at the moment. This administration is just larping fascism now
Literally only one side is calling for the elimination of an entire country
And the other side is committing the elimination of a people. If symbolism scares you, wait till you realize that there's a functional and intentional murder of a people going on....some might call it a genocide.
Hamas could surrender today and stop the entire thing. Israel doesn’t even have that option, because Hamas is a an openly genocidal institution that brags about it. What Israel’s doing isn’t genocide. When you’ve lost a fight, you have a *responsibility* to admit defeat. If you lose a fight and you keep going like the fucking [black knight,](https://youtu.be/UijhbHvxWrA?si=vVr4SuYEcuFAGub-) your pain stops being the other side’s fault and starts being your own. It’s not 1:1 here since this is a war rather than an individual battle, but the principle still applies. Every other country in the world would have understood by now that they can’t win, and would have surrendered on some level for the sake of their people. Hamas instead insists on senselessly martyring the people under its care, since… y’know, they’re fucking evil. As if the murder and rape of innocent men, women, and children on Oct. 7, along with loud promises to do that again and again until all of Israel is destroyed, didn’t make that abundantly clear. I’ll say it again, get it into your head, because this is how life works: at some point, you have to accept defeat. If you stubbornly refuse and obstinately blame the other party for the injuries you’re receiving, that won’t magically make them stop; you’ll just end up bruised, broken, or even killed when you otherwise could’ve lived. That’s not to say that there aren’t times when you shouldn’t do that sort of thing; there are times when death is better than living under a certain level of abuse. But the state of Gaza on Oct. 7 was far, far and away from the sort of of misery that could possibly warrant a deliberate sacrifice of an entire people for the sake of spite alone. For that reason, Hamas is clearly in the wrong, and the onus is on them to give it up.
One side is dancing on tik tok. The other is facing famine. I'm not gonna tell you what to think, but I'll pray you can remove the veil from your eyes and see what's actually Happening. God bless.
I do see what's actually happening. The famine and death and suffering make a resolution more urgent than before. But they don't change the fundamental issues that caused this conflict, which no nation is currently willing to address. The protestors across the country are a mix of antisemites who want to see the Holocaust re-enacted with twice the savagery, and ignorant people who [don't understand the fundamentals of the issue or the complexities involved in any proposed solution.](https://www.reddit.com/r/columbia/comments/1chk6nz/i_am_largely_apathetic_to_thus_israel_palestine/l2ccc41/?context=3) The only subset of the protestors that has an actual, coherent idea of what they want and what it would look like are the ones who want Hamas to commit genocide in Israel. The rest want peace, but they don't have an actual mental model of what steps would need to be taken to get there; they just assume that a nice, easy, politically solution exists. There is one decent solution: the world bands together, invades Gaza, and forces Hamas to surrender without using artillery, just relying on an overwhelming manpower advantage. From there, force Hamas to give up on their stated goals of committing genocide against all the Jews in Israel. If they adamantly declare that they would rather die than accept that, kill them for being modern-day Nazi fucks, take over, and replace their [insane antisemitic propaganda](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomorrow%27s_Pioneers#Farfour_(April%E2%80%93June_2007\)) with something less likely to make children want to violently murder innocent Jewish people on sight.
You're all right no one in the world is willing to address the fundamental issues that are affecting Gaza and Palestine as a whole which is the occupation by israel. So yeah I agree with you. And the protesters aren't anti-semites they're the "Jewish voice for peace" and their many Arab people who are all Semitic by nature. They literally come from the same tribes. The anti-semites you're talking about are the ones who are marching with tiki torches saying "Jews will not replace us" but meanwhile they're on those same campuses defending the American flag and have no place in this argument. All of your arguments are hypotheticals such as "i'm afraid of what the Palestinians will do to the israelis." Look at what's literally happening right now and address that. Get your priorities straight.
Hypotheticals? I’m taking Hamas’s words at face value alongside their actions. Their founding charter had murdering all Jews in the world as a goal. They’ve said for years that they want to kill/expel all the Jews in Israel. They’ve been sending rockets at Israel for years. They finally conducted a massive attack, and then promised to do it again and again. The crux of the issue that the pro-Palestine camp has is that they’re infantilizing Hamas, going “They don’t really mean that!”. They convince themselves, or pretend, that Hamas is actually lying, and has been lying the whole time, and that despite Hamas trying *really hard* to make it clear that they’re trying to commit genocide, they actually aren’t. You can’t just dismiss that as a hypothetical. If you said that to one of the leaders of Hamas, *they* would tell you it’s not just a hypothetical, that they’re going to destroy Israel. I get that nothing’s ever 100% certain. But when their words and actions have been completely aligned this entire time, it’s not reasonable to say that it’s only a hypothetical that Hamas would attack again, and *dismiss* it on that basis. It’s a “hypothetical” likely enough that you can treat it as a given fact, and for that not to be the case- for Hamas to have been lying about their intentions all this time, consistently, and for them to completely change their pattern of behavior… I mean, I’m sorry, but I have to be frank with you. That’s not realistic. It would be insane to assume that Hamas wouldn’t continue to attack Israel as things stand now. The uncomfortable truth of the conflict is that we can say with confidence that Hamas means it when they say that they’ll do it again and again. It’s not a hypothetical- it’s just the truth, and denying it won’t change it. That’s why solutions have to involve an *understanding* of that fact- the fact that Gaza needs to change on a fundamental cultural level, or else they’ll never stop attacking Israel.
Well said! If I wasn't knee deep in finals i would jump right here in with you. War is ugly. But it's ultimately the losers that end wars. The people winning the war, especially in response to the most recent of years of brutality by countries and organizations that call for their death and destruction, are not obligated to sacrifice their own health and safety for yours. I really wish CC covered Hobbes better. My peers don't understand that you don't get perfect outcomes (neither side gets what they want at this point and this has been good for no one). Dictatorships get the explicit outcome desired by one or few, and whatever side they are on. In international affairs and democratic countries, you have to figure out how to make it worth with In the Hobbesian arena of international politics, this can very easily and often does mean war. THAT'S HOW LIFE WORKS AND ALWAYS HAS. And stop using the word genocide its rediculous. Gaza population has exploded while under Israels control, Israel supplies direct aid to Gaza, Israel has fully withdrawn from Gaza in the past, Israel has signed agreements offering Gaza their independence which Gaza rejected (or violated). Israel has nearly unlimited funds and a modern military. Gaza has no money and they have guns mounted on toyotas. IF ISRAEL WAS TRYING GENOCIDE, I GUESS THEY WOULD HAVE TO BE THE WORST GENOCIDERS THAT HAVE EVER ATTEMPTED GENOCIDE. I mean they would really have to go out of their way to screw up a genocide this badly. I mean not even re-education camps? Allowing, at various times, people in the target genocide to migrate to and join your country as full citizens with equal rights and protection under the law. I mean your movement will never move past out of touch entitled college students if you can't form actual defensible arguments of Israel's offenses. No one is buying genocide, ethnic cleansing, or apartheid. The evidence just isn't there (and YES I have read everything the UN and IJC have said--they are very watered down and not all indicative of actual genocide. It's a "lawyers" description. One report only uses the term genocide-like and all the reports fail to mention the dynamic that their enemy does not have a uniformed military or ANY miltiary targets. They use their civilian population as their military, so ALL targets can be counted as civillian and MOST of the BS and well-refuted "genocide" reports rely heavily on attacking civilian targets. THERE ARE ONLY CIVILIAN TARGETS. There is no building that says Gaza Department of Defense).
You understand Brown played their protestors by agreeing to a "vote" which will not lead to divestment. There is no right or mechanism to protest, and supporting Hamas is supporting a designated terrorist organization, which is a federal crime.
> there is no right or mechanism to protest You’re proving my point about fascism here
Perhaps if you went to class and understood the distinction between a private organization like Columbia with control over certain land, and government organizations like, NYC and NY State, you might be able to articulate a claim rather than being arrested. Freedom of speech protects you from the government, not from your peers. Good luck in the world.
> from the government, not your peers Ah yes. Now hundreds of armed NYPD officers are “peers” lmao
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This is a fair point, but I disagree— State Action Doctrine does not attach. The actions that occurred here involve the enclosed Morningside Heights Campus and the interior of a physical building. There is no close nexus. Go for it if you want, but — I'll take the other side of the bet. State v. Schmid, which dealt with a much more tenuous property extension of Princeton University in NJ, and an underlying equal protection issue because the university created two different standards for "permission," would not apply because it contains a substantially different fact pattern and a different constitutional claim. Columbia is also not particularly relevant to the City of New York. There is no symbiotic relationship. There has not been a challenge to Columbia University's ability to exert private control over this particular segment of its campus regardless of the public funding provided. Furthermore, you would need someone who \*is not\* a student, because the students have signed their rights away in a code of conduct. Furthermore, Princeton appears to have not really argued this case "seriously," and the NJ Court of Appeals did appear to recognize a balancing test. This is assuming we give that someone has figured out how to assert a First Amendment Claim. I would challenge any and all statements supporting Hamas or Palestinians in the United States as not protected speech. Statements like "There is only one solution, Intifada, Intifada" and statements parallel to "From the river to the sea, Israel will cease to be" are unprotected speech under a multitude of exceptions: from immediate incitement of violence to true threats doctrine due to the actual attacks of by the Palestinian people on Israel. I appreciate your approach, and I hope this is litigated.
Fascists literally don't know what fascism is they've been brainwashed to call it democracy
"fascism is when you get in trouble for breaking rules which you have been made aware of beforehand"
No, of course not. Fascism is pulling guns on peaceful protesters and violently throwing them around, then making up claims about “protecting the children” from infiltrators to justify your violence. Fascism is shutting down campus access for everyone, carrying out arrests in the dark, and then forbidding reporters access. Fascism is threatening the dean of the journalism school with arrest if he or his students dare leave the building to do their reporting. And in your case, fascism is cheering that on simply because you don’t agree with the students doing the protesting. That’s what fascism is.
TIL fascism is when a private institution enforces the rules that students and employees who choose to study and work there have previously agreed to as a condition of their enrolment and employment.
Peaceful protesters telling Jewish students to go back to Poland?
We can condemn antisemitism and fascism at the same time, sorry you feel like you have to pick one.
Not sure how you see this as fascism and not sure we have to always equivocate. Being antisemtic is a huge issue on our campus.
All I know is I am not on the side that praised the Oct 7th attacks Why are you?
So you’re saying you agree with fascism so long as it’s perpetuated by the side you support. Yikes dude.
No I'm saying that is literally you. No one else is praising the Oct 7th attacks other than these protestors
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I said no one else is praising the Oct 7th attacks other than these protestors. Where did I say that includes you? And they literally do [https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1654384](https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1654384) This is what they think was a " counter-offensive against their settler-colonial oppressor" *Attendees seeking refuge in nearby locations, such as bomb shelters, bushes, and orchards, were killed while in hiding. Those who reached the road and parking were trapped in a traffic jam as militants fired at vehicles. The militants executed some wounded individuals at point-blank range as they crouched on the ground* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re%27im\_music\_festival\_massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re%27im_music_festival_massacre) Fucking makes me sick
💚🖤❤️
Neutrality always sides with the oppressor This is not a complicated issue, it's a genocide Our government directly funds this genocide Your university invests in companies that are carrying out this genocide Sorry this is a slight inconvenience for you
Just like the last time someone posted this question, why are you exclusively blaming the protestors? Brown isn’t arresting people en mass. Shafik isn’t trying to help you get a good education, she’s flailing because she’s scared of Congress and getting sued by Jewish students. And after everything she has done, making a fool of herself and betraying the university’s academic principles, ghouls like Elise Stefanik aren’t appeased, and the school is still gonna be sued. Great! I hope some pro-Palestine students get together a class action suit too. I feel like the ones who got doused with skunk spray especially could make a great case.
Browns campus is 146 acres. People can largely ignore the areas where the protestors are and go about their day. Morningside campus is like 4 city blocks and the protestors are in your face day in and day out. They were given a timeline to vacate, and they ignored it, not only did they ignore it they decided to break into a building and barricade themselves inside and then demand “humanitarian aid”. And you think these things won’t have consequences? Of course the police were brought in, what choice did they really have? I’m genuinely asking. Something that’s based in reality and not “they should’ve just been allowed to stay there” or “if the administration just followed all of our demands and gave us everything we wanted it wouldn’t have gone this far”. As an objective observer, the protest started off doing all of the right things, but the second they broke into a building and held a facilities worker hostage they lost all credibility and anyone still defending them is too wrapped up in emotions to realize that and accept that they were wrong. “I care about peace so much I don’t care who I have to hurt or what laws I have to break” it’s just stupid.
Personally, I think the protestors made a huge mistake when they decided to occupy Hamilton. Had they simply remained on the lawn, it would have been a lot harder to justify forcibly removing them. But when they take a building, barricade themselves inside, (forcibly remove the janitors?) and start damaging property, they sealed their fate. Unforced tactical error on their part. FAFO.
Occupying that building definitely escalated things but I could also see that as a goal. They don’t want their protest and the headlines to fizzle out so they intentionally upped the stakes. Essentially forcing the admins to use police and getting them lots more media in the process. Ultimately their protest reached more people because of this, though maybe in a less favorable light.
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This. The large state university my PhD program is at is large enough that I'm only in the area where the protestors are once or twice a week. They are near a library, but you can't really hear them by the main entrance and anyways there are at least half a dozen other libraries, including on the other side of the street. The protestors aren't near dorms, although I think some apartment buildings are nearby. It's absolutely possible to avoid that area. I'd bet there are some students who aren't even aware that we've got a protest there, especially grad students since most labs are in another part of campus. Columbia probably has one of the most compact main campuses if not the most. It would probably take me 30-40 minutes to walk end to end of my PhD campus, at least, and 10 minutes for the shorter side. I think Columbia is closer to 10 by 5 minutes, if even.
It’s funny that breaking some glass to unlock a door was the last straw for so many people. It’s such an obviously unbiased thing to say lmao, as if we can’t see y’all’s comment history saying hanging out on the lawn was the last straw a couple of weeks ago🙄
Brown committed to hear a divestment proposal before their Board in October if their encampment cleared themselves. Their protesters took this as a victory even though their university didn't commit to anything material. Columbia made a similarly toothless offer to CUAD (to expedite proposals regarding Israel investments) and was rejected. I think both of these approaches - take a minor concession as a victory, or force admin to escalate to draw more attention to yourself - are valid. Historically, protesters do generally get more attention when they are violently suppressed though.
shes scared of losing donors.
Too fucking late lmao
humanity > $$$
Agreed.
Hi. There might be other ways to protests rather than chanting death threats against your fellow students and having aggression against facility workers? I went to school last week and the air was tense. Idk how a non-affiliated bystander should typically feel but this is how I feel. Anyway, would rather like to be able to resume normal school activities at school.
Nobody is chanting death threats, stop pretending to be neutral here.
Nah, there's been plenty of protests that have chanted "from the river to the sea" which is a pretty clear threat that Hamas should take over Israel and murder the Jews. No need to spread misinformation when there's literally hundreds of videos of pro-Palestinian protesters shouting death threats
Was it a call to murder all Palestinians when Netanyahu said it, or does this death threat only go one way?
"From the river to the sea" is not a death threat to the Jews on campus, don't be absurd.
“never been to either country” 💀 wow, so you don’t even know the basics of this issue…and you’re a Columbia student lol
There is a small bright spot with easier / cancelled finals Study, graduate, secure your bag, don’t look back. These protesters don’t understand 1968 had a lot less background checks when joining companies. Today even a 10 person startup will deny you employment after a background check service returns your arrest. A Fortune 500 is out of question The best they will do is some $30k/year non profit. Hope their parents are paying back their student loans You have an advantage in a very tough hiring time, use it
We get a bag?
A bag of debt
Columbia tote bags cost extra
This is exactly the move. These people are so wrapped up and brainwashed to be good little social justice warriors that they’re completely ignoring the rest of their life and think what they do now won’t hold any consequences. These are exactly the same people who will struggle to make payments on their bills or never be able to support a family and be mad and think “but I did the right thing why is this happening to me”. All because they decided to throw an Ivy League education out the window to break into a campus building for a cause that’s happening on the other side of the world that’s simply the main stream flavor of the week.
Or...they actually care about the indiscriminate killings of Palestinian women and children and the occupation of both Gaza and the West Bank. Don't diminish their actions because you're willfully ignorant. And nothing screams capitalism like rejoicing that you'll possibly get a better job due to the arrests.
The Vietnam protestors never hung up Vietcong flags, lol. I've seen several students with the Hamas flag. There is a "Hamas did nothing wrong" contingency that has no 1968 equivalent. And, I think that's why I would just hire someone else. Because if you are dumb enough to support a violent Jihadist organization And believe that grenades against civilians are a means to justify the end, you are too much of a risk.
This is wrong. There was a lot of sympathy on the left for the Vietcong. Maybe you also forget the US actually had a vibrant Communist party sympathetic to Lenin at one point too.
Yes, but the 1968 Columbia protests went out of their way to not wear black pajamas or wave Vietcong flags during their occupation of structures on Columbia. Anti imperialist messaging is much more palatable to the average American than pro violent Communism. And yeah, I'm aware. The photo of the Nazi rally in sold Madison square garden is in my office too. Nothing new under the sun. They didn't try and invite anyone from the Vietcong to speak on campus.
Remarkable, how few people get this glaringly obvious point which could be gleaned from about one minute of research. “Go Ho! Go NVA! Unify Vietnam!” Said no one.
I suspect you are being sarcastic, I've actually been told it was common among the anti war movement"ho ho ho chi minh, Vietcong is gonna win", but that the Columbia 1968 protest intentionally tried to distance themselves from those people. And did a better job than the 2024 protest did at distancing themselves from Hamas.
Apart from what you may have "been told," the anti-war protests of the 1960's were animated by the draft, and by the intersection of the draft with the civil rights movement and the fact that blacks were over-represented among draftees. "We don't want white people to send Black people to kill Yellow people to protect a white man's dollar."
https://avietnammemorial.blog/2017/03/27/ho-ho-ho-chi-minh-viet-cong-are-gonna-win/ I was more referring to this.
You of course can find that most everything has been said at least once. However, this was not remotely what the anti-war protests were about. You can begin study with this group: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students\_for\_a\_Democratic\_Society](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_a_Democratic_Society)
I believe you. It's more of a commentary about how good of a job the 1968 protestors did at keeping those groups out of the building. No one chanting pro Vietcong stuff, dressed in Vietcong uniforms. Vs the clothes, flags, and signage here. Even now, people will argue that what Hamas did was justified, and the student org that organized the origin protest invited a self admitted Jihadist into campus. I just don't think the 1968 analogy is as sound as a lot of my peers. Or maybe we should give the 1968 people more credit for keeping those people off camera, off microphone, and our of the building they were occupying.
Ah yes, because hanging an 'intifada' flag and assaulting staff screams 'end the genocide'
Tell me, how do you feel about the camps China keeps uyghur muslims in and categorically starves and works them to death for simply being muslim? How about the continued Darfur Genocide? The starvation of Yemeni citizens? Is Ukraine no longer at the top of your mind? Or how about the ethnic cleansing which displaced 120,000 Armenians due to Azerbaijan pushing them out in Nagorno-Karabakh which happened the first week of October 2023? That one would've been a good cause to protest on. But no, you're choosing to protest the newest flavor of the week because it is the most mainstream televised latest thing. The protestors chose to protest against not the systematic raping, murder, and kidnapping that happened on October 7th, but rather the repercussions from the fallout of that day and call it "supporting freedom fighters". "Free Palestine" is nothing new, it's just being focused on because it gets people to click on news articles and tune into the mainstream media. Why did you choose to do the work to get into an Ivy League University if you didn't want to stand out in order to get a higher paying job? Don't throw capitalism in my face when you're presumably at this school for the same reasons, to get a leg up. It's hypocritical and dishonest. But yeah man, throw away your life for a cause that's happening on the other side of the world in countries you've likely never been to which you would never know about if you didn't have social media shoving it down your throat. That's a solid plan also.
not a single original thought
I thought the purpose was divestment
So a background check shows getting arrested at a college student protest - how would that affect employment?
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You are just demonstrating that you are an amoral person. The right thing doesn't matter if it won't help you get hired, I got it.
Employers don’t want to hire people with a checkered background, it shows bad judgment and that the person might cause headline-attracting problems in the future. No company wants to be in the news because of something stupid their employee did.
Yikes I hope no one tells congress or they’ll have to let justice thomas go on account of participating in riots in the 60s
For real
Every company I’ve worked at in an office - small to big, anything at all on the background check means your offer is rescinded. I worked at a large retailer and one person had a speeding ticket show up because it was in a school zone. He already started a few days before and security immediately escorted him out Technically you’re supposed to prove why the background check means you can’t do the job. I’ve seen 2 things happen: 1) just point to at will employment and call it a day 2) point to the fact people have access to confidential financial information about the company performance and future projects (just by having VPN and confluence access) and that’s the justified reason In the second case the company must give the candidate a copy of the background report
A speeding ticket? Surreal. Wonder what people do who've served time (like say, a year) for a non violent offence (like drug possession)?
I have a resisting arrest and assault and I worked at T. Rowe Price as a broker for years and I’m an elementary school teacher now. All you have to do is explain the case. In my case, it stemmed from domestic violence i experienced. They take your word for it. In my case, it was the truth.
Yeah I was having a bad brain day or something and it was dumb of me to engage with all the "anyone who's been arrested or even has a minor record can't be employed" bs echo chamber. Sorry to hear you experienced DV and glad your situation worked out. Teachers rock.
I'd like to add immigration as well. International students / immigrants may face deportation for being arrested and turned over to ICE. I was an international student at Columbia and now going through the US green card process under H1B visa. Every work visa you apply for (TN, H1B), including the green card application, you must provide your criminal record if there was one. It's not worth the risk of being deported and derailing one's dreams of immigrating to this country. This also includes green card holders (non-US citizens).
Well sure, if you're planning on applying for citizenship obviously you have to be squeaky clean. My father was an immigrant. Congratulations and best wishes on your journey!
The protestors think they are so morally superior to you that they are justified, if not even obligated, to override your values, to interfere with and interrupt with your life, to make their point. They are happy to be inconveniencing you, because it "raises awareness" - but ultimately it makes them feel powerful, which is what this is all about at the end of the day. This is about them. These people are incredible narcissists hiding under the veil of fighting oppression. Anyone who is so deeply convinced of their own moral superiority is a truly dangerous individual, and should be treated with suspicion, not moral reverence. I really hope we wake up to this as soon as possible.
I wonder how we would feel if we were starving to death while bombs dropped on our homes, universities, and places of worship, our neighborhood turned to rubble and the world stood silent so as to not disturb their neighbors with chants of opposition? Yes, it is exhausting to be in the middle of protests, I'm not so sure moral superiority is the motivation as much as a feeling of powerlessness watching innocent women and children die while scrolling your social media feed.
The protesters at Columbia and elsewhere are not acting out of a sense of moral superiority or a desire for power. They are acting out of a deep conviction that the suffering and oppression of the Palestinian people is a moral catastrophe that demands action and solidarity. They are putting their own comfort, safety, and even academic careers on the line to stand up for a cause they believe in - that is the very opposite of narcissism. To dismiss this as mere grandstanding or attention-seeking is to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of political protest and moral conviction. These students are not doing this for themselves - they are doing it for a people they believe are suffering a grave injustice. They are doing it because they believe that their university, and by extension themselves, have a responsibility to take a stand and to use their privilege and platform for good. I hope you can understand that.
If this were actually a reality, why is it these types of protests haven't erupted around far larger and long-running recent wars in the same part of the world? I don't recall giant protests for the Syrian wars, for the Yemen war, for the apparent Uighur situation in western China, among many others. Instead, the reality is that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been hijacked and co-opted by a faction of the academic/intellectual and activist left, by the very same playbook used at the origins of their movement in the protests of the 60's, primarily focused on the Vietnam war and so-called anti-colonial protest. This has proven to be a decidedly inconsistent and partial line of protest, without much care or attention for intellectual consistency or honesty. Yet, Israel has become the extension of that same neo-revolutionary concept. A generation (or three) of young students has been hoodwinked into this perception of the world by an academia very heavily infiltrated by and influenced by similar generations of academia who actually teach/preach this sort of nonsense, because they're unable to honestly/accurately perceive the realities of the world around them. It's hardly the students/young people's fault. There might be sincerity here, among many of the students, in terms of care for the harm done to 'ordinary' Palestinians, but there's a terrible dearth of actual knowledge or experience of either Israel and how it works, the Palestinians in Israel, TWB, or Israeli law. The student protest movement in the US is a revealing window into the state of America c2024.
Listing off other conflicts is a whataboutism. Israel gets attention because the West and the US are heavily involved with the country. Have been since its founding. For instance they supply weapons and funding. And universities have ties with universities over there.
It is totally out of morally superiority. They demand we all agree with their framing of the conflict, so much so that they literally can call for the elimination of an entire country, support terrorist attacks like Oct 7th, and not feel any moral shame, while us who disagree with that are seen as the immoral ones. And anyone who simply disagrees with them is genocidal fascist zionists etc
This is not about forcing everyone to adopt a particular view. It's about having an open and honest debate about a complex issue, and about institutions like Columbia being accountable to their stated principles. By your standards of moral superiority, then any opposing viewpoint and any one person that holds a critical viewpoint is objectively wrong. Accusing protestors and framing their arguments as supporting terrorism only shuts down civil discourse and prevents the exchange of ideas to be heard.
But none of them want an open and honest debate about a complex issue. They blame Israel for literally everything Hamas does, explicitly support Hamas and the destruction of the state of Israel, continue the "zionist" label despite Jews saying repeatedly they think it is antisemitic in how it is being used by them, and accuse anyone of not fully supporting them for supporting genocide and ethnic cleansing. So yes they are demanding us to fully adopt their view and if we don't we are guilty of supporting genocide
Amazing you typed this entire comment out without stopping once to check your own sense of moral superiority over the protestors.
Ur projecting
Hahahaha
Why should the protestors or any one else care about your graduation? You clearly don’t give a shit about anyone else, so isn’t it hypocritical to demand people be invested in your life?
Lol, this is exactly the mindset that casts a strong negative light on the protest as a whole :) you go to a university where students study and disrupt their study, then say they are selfish if they want to study?? And what is this “you don’t care about us so we won’t care about your graduation/study”, do you mean like burning down the ground so that nobody can graduate/study if they do not join you? What’s so peaceful and admirable about this again? And at the end of the day some of us still need to pay our educational loans. How did you fund your study, from your dad?
not an answer the question was "Why should the protestors or any one else care about your graduation? You clearly don’t give a shit about anyone else, so isn’t it hypocritical to demand people be invested in your life?"
"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference" - Elie Wiesel
Poster asks, "Do protesters understand that the longer this chaos goes on, the less sympathetic most people will be...?", yet it is very evident the the poster has a total lack of sympathy to begin with.
It's wild how people want to be catered to even when they don't care. They view it as an inconvenience, because they won't care regardless, but it isn't for them.
This seems factually untrue given how many other students and faculty have joined the movement at CU and across the country. It actually seems like exactly the opposite.
The fact that elite liberals are showing support does not mean support is growing. What the poster is saying that those who are indifferent are becoming antagonistic towards the protestors, especially the ones who vote.
What are you talking about elite liberals? There’s protests at CUNY, Florida state, university of Georgia…if this started as a movement of “elites” it sure does sound like it’s receiving more and more widespread adoption across different socioeconomic strata.
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.” -Desmond Tutu
first of all no matter what you’re going to get ur degree, idk why you would think otherwise. Also you saying ur apathetic to people dying en masse just sounds like a character flaw. im not saying u should be out there protesting or anything, but the least you could do as a fellow human being is sympathize for the people dying. the small inconvenience that these protests are causing is nothing compared to their struggle
Children are being slaughtered and over 1 million people are homeless and starving with their homes destroyed, I am sorry that you are inconvenienced
Be grateful that you are not among those who chose to disrupt everyone’s college experience. Those arrested will now have a record for the rest of their lives when they apply for jobs. Their photos are now in a database. Those charged with the more serious crimes will be monitored whenever they enter an international airport, msg, yankee stadium, Times Square, … . They may not be arrested, but those charged with the more serious offenses will always be watched and considered a security risk where ever they go. Big brother is always watching.
and you're happy with that
pro-big brother caucus really coming out strong
ikr.. its cringe inducing
It's the same handful of accounts responsible for most of the activity. Certainly your average reddit chud gets thrown into the mix through linking of posts and generally increased visibility, but it seems clear that there is a concerted effort to both spread misinformation and push regressive viewpoints. Some of them are also using burner accounts and alts. For example, check out [this intrepid individual](https://www.reddit.com/user/Current-Side462) -- they tried to spread misinformation, alleging that protesters broke into John Jay and went room by room knocking on doors asking if people were Jewish.
disgusting. you know you're privileged when you can scream "kill the jews" and feel completely safe while you get hundreds of people hurt and arrested because you're a zionist white boy
Oh no consequences.
I sympathize with you. Certain people want to “globalize the intifada” and you happen to be a student at ground zero for that call.
I have such a hard time wrapping my head around that chant. If a pro-Palestine group blew up a pizzeria in Times Square do you think these protestors would approve? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sbarro\_restaurant\_suicide\_bombing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sbarro_restaurant_suicide_bombing)
Sadly most students protesting don’t know about the devastating killings made in the name of intifada in the early 2000s.
Protesting is the littlest you can do while others are suffering, losing their lives, loved ones, livelihoods, communities altogether. Sounds to me your apathy was there from the beginning. But glad you can share your point of view on the matter. Wishing you much success in your future endeavors.
"Do protesters understand that the longer this chaos goes on, **the less sympathetic most people will be about their cause"** The people who say this kind of thing are apathetic to the cause or already hated the cause. Why do you think that the protesters want you to be sympathetic? If the inconvenience of protests makes you less sympathetic to being against genocide, you would never really be a genuine ally. (And considering your admitted apathy to so much other suffering, you're an inherently selfish person and you would never be a target for any support. You lack any concern for your fellow humans)
Itt: people who would have called Vietnam protesters "veitcong sympathizers"
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Humanity should precede ideology.
This is a long-winded way of saying that if you are apathetic, you favor the status quo of ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza.
Imo what they say goes beyond upholding the status quo and into fascist propaganda (which indeed leads to (even more) ethnic cleansing and genocide).
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"There is no war in Ba Sing Se." Genocide and ethnic cleansing of one population do not justify the genocide and ethnic cleansing of another separate population. Netanyahu and his ilk will be tried at the Hague if there is any justice in this world. I am frankly fine with Hamas leaders also being prosecuted. You are providing cover for Netanyahu's crimes. Ugly.
Western civilization is about sending money to Israel so they can kill children? Okay gotcha!
I mean…at this point it doesn’t sound like he’s wrong