Police and private security throng every entrance but one. Steel barriers line the streets. Students pack up belongings in their cars and leave for home - classes are cancelled, and exam plans are up in the air.
Everywhere there is gloom, and uncertainty about what happens next at Columbia University.
Students told the BBC that the university’s decision to call in police to clear a Gaza protest late on Tuesday, leading to a raid on the occupied Hamilton Hall and hundreds of arrests, has left the college community shattered.
The university president, Nemat Shafik, said that it was with great regret that she ordered the police raid against students and others she said had infiltrated the protest. It would “take time to heal”, she added in a message in the operation’s aftermath.
For students of this prestigious school in Manhattan, New York, how long is unclear.
Only authoritarian governments crush student protests
This is a private university crushing student protests.
With police, an apparatus of the state.
You have to work harder to come to that conclusion than just going “hey isn’t the police employed by the government?”
But the state itself is controlled by corporate interests.
This is a corporatocracy.
Its just capitalism in a terminal stage
The word you’re looking for is “Plutocracy,” and it has a long history: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy
Yeah, but the relationship isn’t simply one way.
The apparatus of the state often includes corporations, such as Lockheed Martin, or the IMF/World Bank, or Elbit Systems, or Blackwater, or the Pinkertons.
The state also enshrines the rights of corporations and maintains the capitalistic and/or colonialistic relationships corporations have with people, and protects them from everyone else.
In return, the govt gets a small amount of taxes, and a surprisingly high degree of legitimacy if the line goes up.
I didn’t know that the university had control over the NY police force.
They don’t. That’s why they request police resources.
So you know and understand that the police force is controlled by the government, but still fail to connect the dots between that fact and them crushing the protests?
And why would the police comply with such a ridiculous request when they have more important things to do?
Under capitalism the main police function is to break strikes and to repress other forms of protest against the policies of the ruling class. Any civic usefulness other forms of police activity may have, like controlling traffic and summoning ambulances, is strictly incidental to the primary repressive function. Personal inclinations of individual cops do not alter this basic role of the police. All must comply with ruling-class dictates. As a result, police repression becomes one of the most naked forms through which capitalism subordinates human rights to the demands of private property. If the cops sometimes falter in their antisocial tasks, it is simply because they – like the guns they use – are subject to rust when not engaged in the deadly function for which they are primarily trained.
No police organization is exactly the same day in and day out. Two essential factors determine its character at a given moment: the social climate in which the cops have been operating and the turnover of personnel within the force. An unseasoned cop may tend to be somewhat considerate of others in the performance of duty, especially while class relations are relatively peaceful. Even in such calm times, however, the necessary accommodation must be made to capitalist demands, including readiness to shoot anyone who tampers with private property. Otherwise the aspiring cop, if he is not kicked out of the force, will have little chance of rising beyond a beat in the sticks. By gradually weeding out misfits along these general lines, a police department can keep itself abreast of requirements during a more or less stable period in class relations.– Farrell Dobbs, Teamster Rebellion
For the same reason they will comply with such request from any private party? Try to pitch a couple of tents on your neighbor’s front lawn with your friends to see if the police doesn’t get you moving when they get called.
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Like they do with school shootings.
Now, now, this isn’t Texas.
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Or like they do with right wing thugs, like the ones that attacked protestors at UCLA.
They tear gassed students at my old public university. The way they’re being treated is ridiculous and completely out of line with previous protests.
There’s a fucking sniper at my old university. On the roof of the student union building where my friends and I used to go smoke weed. That’s a head trip.
Cool. Now do universities like UCLA and IU.
Both universities are gonna have a real fun time explaining themselves in court, because I guarantee they’ll see lawsuits over this. Private universities get a lot of leeway over what they allow, but public universities are bound by the First Amendment. Any who are violating the protestors rights are gonna get fucked six ways to Sunday.
Name a government that doesnt do their damndest to crush student protests.
That isn’t the contradiction you imply…
There are plenty in Europe.
I struggle to think of a more authoritarian structure than the hierarchic state.
Stateless areas, such as Rojava and the Zapatistas are a good example of a “government” that doesn’t crush student protests, but they really don’t have them in the first place, since their bottom up structure makes it such that the students can directly use political power to prevent shit like supporting genocidal ethnic states.
There are no universities there for students to protest in :(
:(
How to radicalize a lot of smart people in a very short period of time
are those people registered to vote?
If not, it doesn’t take very long to do so. When people feel they have a personal and vested interest in voting, they do so reliably and vocally.
It’s apathy that makes people not bother. That’s not the case when someone is willing to put out even minimal effort protesting.
If only they had someone worth voting FOR.
I’d say preventing a dictatorship is worth voting for, but YMMV.
If someone is politically engaged enough to get arrested at a political protest, it seems like a reasonable assumption that they would be registered to vote
Do those people own a registered firearm they can bring next time?
You actually have to register to be eligible to vote in the US? Aren’t you automatically getting your voting cards when there is an election and you are over the age of 18?
If you see people being radicalized and can’t think of anything other than voting, you’re part of the problem.
Yeah actually.
What’s it matter? You think they are going to be lining up to vote for Biden who condemned the protests on campus and called the students (many of whom are jewish) antisemitic…
It would “take time to heal”, she added
That’s some big “I’m sorry you made me do this to you” abuser energy there
It is with great regret that she [did something nobody was forcing her to do].
I can make some educated guesses on who forced her to do it.
Edit: upon learning more about her, no, it seems like she’s just like that
Most of what she said are pretty typical non-exuses in British politics and upper class circles, which is were she made her whole career up to this.
The President needs to resign.
I had never heard of her before. Wow:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minouche_Shafik
Nemat Talaat Shafik, Baroness Shafik, (Arabic: نعمت طلعت شفيق) DBE, HonFBA (born 13 August 1962), commonly known as Minouche Shafik (Arabic: مينوش شفيق), is a British-American academic and economist.[2] She has been serving as the 20th president of Columbia University since July 2023. She previously served as president and vice chancellor of the London School of Economics from 2017 to 2023.
From 2014 to 2017, Shafik served as deputy governor of the Bank of England and also previously as permanent secretary of the United Kingdom Department for International Development from 2008 to 2011.[3] She has also served as a vice president at the World Bank[4] and as deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund.[5] She was created a life peeress by Elizabeth II in 2020.
She’s taking a “World Bank” approach to this situation, that’s for sure. This quote by her is hilarious:
“The point of university is to be intellectually challenged and confronted with difference.” She argued that universities needed to ‘teach people to have difficult conversations’, adding: “It’s through that process of listening that you learn, you build consensus, and you move forward as a community."
Cool. How about you listen to your fucking students then.
Columbia University’s Shafik, the Neoliberal https://www.salon.com/2024/04/28/columbia-crisis-another-massive-failure-of-liberalism/
“If you wanted to choose one individual as the face of “neoliberalism” for an encyclopedia entry, you could do a lot worse. Shafik holds an economics PhD from Oxford and a résumé of high-ranking positions at the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Bank of England, three institutions that have been instrumental in driving developing nations into unsustainable debt in pursuit of a disastrously failed model of progress. She came to Columbia after six years of pushing fiscal austerity as director of the London School of Economics, where just last spring she helped defeat a student/faculty strike, reportedly by slashing salary payments and lowering graduation requirements to hustle student protesters out the door.”
Nemat Shafik: Strike-breaker, Student-crusher, “Intellectual.”
Quotes by yourself that by yourself you will live down.
No, see, the students listen to their superiors, the ones in charge. That’s how you build consensus and everyone who agrees gets to move forward as a community.
GiGaLuL
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Imagine if the Columbia administration decided they could swim in regular water instead of a moneybin like Scrooge McDuck and divested the university from Israel. Maybe all of this could have been avoided.
Aren’t there laws that prevent Universities from doing so?
Are there? I’ve not heard of such a thing.
Yes, anti-BDS laws. These were passed years ago (not reactionary to now). There are state and federal rules but in general, a university can’t boycott or divest from Israeli (or many other nations) in political protest or it loses funding.
I think this is why we see most universities have their hands tied.
A private university? I would like to see that law.
I still believe the university benefits from government funding since NSF, NIST, DoD etc are all agencies funding university research. I don’t think it’s possible to un-fund yourself completely from the government given that it spurs research everywhere.
But you can make an effort. Which they are not doing.
I can understand that people hold their college as some part of their soul and want their universities actions to reflect their political beliefs. But, I don’t think universities (as an entity) should be involved politically or have political opinions.
Anti-BDS laws exist (you can look them up on Wikipedia). Are they constitutional? Certainly not. Is our legal system going to fight them? Doubt it.
Columbia’s dean was on NPR and said that political investments and divestments are illegal.
What the protestors aren’t saying is that by divestment they are asking the school to divest from the S&P 500. If Columbia agrees, they need a non politically motivated reason to do so.
S&P 500? That’s an interesting ask considering teachers pension/tenure funds and administrative 401ks are all probably in there.
Yeah, in my mind it makes more sense to take the protest to wall street.
In the case of Columbia students, they are already in New York. Catching a bus shouldn’t be too hard .
Other than “wrong thought” what was it that the protesters were doing that required such a heavy handed response?
By contrast, in a country with actual freedom Student protesters at McGill encampment determined to stay after judge rejects injunction
Not free for long if we get our own Trump Jr (aka Bitcoin Milhouse, aka Pierre Pollievre) elected. This would likely be ’ too woke’ for them.
Anti-trans Pierre Pollievre? The same Pierre Pollievre who opposed a tax change only affecting the richest 0.13% of Canadians each year?
Not a big fan oir conservative but pretty sure comparing Pollievre with Trump is laughable at best. You’re thinking of something like the PPC.
Keep fighting! We’re starting to win
First they ignore you…
Then they laugh at you…
Then they fight you… (I think we’re in this vicinity now)
Then you win.
Ahhhh, the good old land of the free…
and others she say had infiltrated the protest
What’s this about?
It’s about the narrative that there are outside agitators rallying the protest, but virtually all of the arrests are of students 🧐
we have always been at war with Eurasia!
They’ve arrested people who weren’t students, not sure why you’re saying they haven’t
The second wave of arrests was almost entirely students, because Columbia has been on lockdown and it’s been increasingly difficult for non-students to get in in the first place. The “outside agitators were at fault” narrative that Columbia is pushing is at odds with this.
Then don’t give them your money or time and transfer to another school?
Try not giving boomer ass platitudes that you have clearly put about 20 seconds of thought into.
Do you tell struggling minorities in southern states to ‘just move to a blue state’? I’m sure no one has forgotten this is an option, and I expect that future enrollment to the school is going to be way less, but this is an immediate problem and transferring is a semester-scale solution. Some of the students may be ready to graduate as well.
Actually, a national student strike would be incredibly effective. Just like it was after Kent State.
You cannot fund weapons development on donations alone.
Harvard makes more money from it’s investments than from tuition. I can’t even imagine what their land holdings are netting them.
I totally agree! That will probably take some time to get up to speed but I would support that in any way I could
I was with them (because one SHOULD be able to exercise their constitutional rights) until they started breaking shit.
We have a right to peacefully assemble, not act like idiots.
Now, I still wish this was handled differently. They really should have tried to just go after the idiots and not everyone.
No one listens to peaceful protesters
But won’t somebody think of the property!
/s
Yes, they do.
The majority of sustained peaceful protests in US history have led to changes.
These protests are probably more “peaceful” than the protests you have in mind. History books and media leave a lot of stuff out.
Also, one thing I’ve noticed during BLM, is the protests usually start off very peaceful, then police come in and escalate things. After getting gassed, pepper sprayed, beaten, and shot with rubber bullets, people don’t tend to be as peaceful anymore.
During the BLM protests there were stories all over the country of police intentionally riling up crowds and destroying property as an excuse to use violence in protesters.
I didn’t say these protests haven’t been overwhelmingly peaceful, nor did I say that previous protests didn’t have violent aspects.
I said sustained peaceful protests do in fact lead to change.
Like it or not that’s the only right you’re entitled to.
Like it or not if people get mad enough they’re gonna stop being peaceful and fight for the change they want
I’d put a #IthoughtthiswasAmerica here
nothing can screw up a kids future quite like college
Those “peaceful protestors” were smashing windows and camping in tents on the lawn of the Universities. And that’s not even the worst part, where they are actively supporting Hamas. Sounds like they’re just angry about facing consequences, to me.
Joined 2 days ago. Yep.
get fucking bent you propagandist piece of shit
Actively supporting Hamas? Explain.
Found the nazi
Found the person who can’t make an independent coherent argument for their case, so they resort to overused name-calling.
Says the guy with a norse name two day old account. Whatever you Nazi.
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Found the person who can’t make an independent coherent argument for their case, so they resort to overused name-calling.
You’re not helping your case that you’re not a Nazi with that one, you know.
I don’t debate Nazi’s, you can fuck off and that’s all you get.
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You’re not defending Jews, you’re defending Israel. More specifically, you’re defending Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people. And you’re using ableist slurs to do it, so nice job.
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Ok nazi
The guy who lied about smashing windows is mad about name-calling lol… Name calling is the kindest thing you could ask for, national zionist
I mean they did literally break windows so they could get into Hamilton Hall
So the solution was cops who broke a ton of windows and doors then beat a bunch of college students all with your tax money?
Is that what I said? If I reiterate my exact words would that be enough for you or are you gonna read into that too?
You were implying it and are now acting dumb and innocent.
Camping sounds pretty peaceful.
They RUINED the lawn! Years of tending down the drain!
OH LOOK A
ONETWO DAY OLD ACCOUNTThat has a dog whistle norse name.
You’ve just admitted that you’re a racist. Nice.
Why does that matter, exactly? New accounts aren’t allowed to have an opinion? Or state facts?
You claim “facts” yet have no evidence. Provide evidence.
Could you respond to the people asking for facts instead of responding to these comments, then? Someone was asking in what ways the protesters are pro-Hamas, you could start there.
Israel has left Palestine alone since 2005. They allowed Palestine to use their power and water, because Hamas (who Palestinians overwhelmingly support AND voted in) refused to build those resources in Gaza. Instead they chose to build tunnels for terror. Palestinians cheered when Israeli’s were murdered, and the protesters literally changed “from the Mountains to the sea” which leaves no room for the legal state of Israel.
If you’re pro Palestine you are pro Hamas. They happily started a fight, and they play victim when they lose, rounding up the simple minded as supporters.
Lmao, I stopped reading after “Israel has left Palestine alone since 2005”
“Israel has left Palestine alone since 2005.” ummm, that’s quite the fiction/delusion: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/06/israel-occupation-50-years-of-dispossession/
“If you’re pro Palestine you are pro Hamas.” aka, let us proceed with our blood thirst, with the mass slaughter, and indiscriminate killing of women and children. Because Palestinians are less than human and we are the chosen.
If you’re pro Palestine you are pro Hamas.
There it is. Fuck you to hell.
Oh, the position is that because some Palestinians cheered, it is okay genocide all of them and starve their children.
Sick genocide apologia bro
Oh no they camped in tents outside! How awful!
Also no they specifically said they were against genocide and calling for a ceasefire. Hamad didn’t come into it til a bunch of genocidal psychotic Zionists started saying it was anti semitism because apparently everything anyone does is anti Semitic now
More broken windows. More. More.
People with six months of training arresting people getting 4-year degrees.
