The Presidents of Harvard, MIT, Penn, Columbia should be forced to resign

Columbia University community shattered after police raid

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.

 

What do pro-Palestinian student protesters at US universities want?



Dozens of college campuses across the US have been taken over by students protesting against the war in Gaza.
More than a thousand demonstrators have been arrested, including more than 100 on Tuesday night at Columbia University in New York City.
Where else are students protesting?

The escalating crisis at Columbia inspired similar protests and encampments across the country, including:

• Northeast region: George Washington; Brown; Yale; Harvard; Emerson; NYU; Georgetown; American; University of Maryland; Johns Hopkins; Tufts; Cornell; University of Pennsylvania; Princeton; Temple; Northeastern; MIT; The New School; University of Rochester; University of Pittsburgh
• West Coast: California State Polytechnic, Humboldt; University of Southern California; University of California, Los Angeles; University of California, Berkeley; University of Washington
• Midwest region: University of Wisconsin; Northwestern; Washington University in St Louis; Indiana University; University of Michigan; Ohio State; University of Minnesota; Miami University; University of Ohio; Columbia College Chicago; University of Chicago
• The South: Tulane; Emory; Vanderbilt; University of North Carolina, Charlotte; University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Kennesaw State; Florida State; Virginia Tech; University of Georgia, Athens
• Southwest: University of Texas at Austin; Rice; Arizona State

Pro-Palestinian protesters have also gathered over the past week on university campuses in Australia, Canada, France, Italy and the UK.


Has protesting worked?

Pro-Palestinian campus groups have for years called on their institutions to support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, as a means of pushing back against Israel.

No US university has ever committed to the BDS framework, although some have cut specific financial ties in the past.

While divestment would have a negligible impact, if any, on the war in Gaza, protesters say it would shed light on those who profit from war and help build awareness of their issue.


Many universities are struggling to deal with encampments on college grounds, just days before graduation ceremonies.
Why are students protesting over the war in Gaza?

Since the 7 October attack by Hamas and Israel's retaliatory assault, students have launched rallies, sit-ins, hunger strikes and, most recently, encampments against the war.

They are demanding that their schools, many with massive endowments, financially divest from Israel.
Divestment means to sell off stock in Israeli companies, or to otherwise drop financial ties.

Student activists say that companies doing business in Israel, or with Israeli organisations, are complicit in its ongoing war in Gaza - as are colleges investing in those companies.
University endowments fund everything from research labs to scholarship funds, mostly using returns from millions - and billions - of dollars in investments.

 

Hamilton Nolan wrote a long article about this

Grown ups expecting children to behave responsibly about the "real world" - the world that grown ups control and have built on a mountain of hypocrisy and contradictory incentives - and to buy into our moral compromises in the way we want them to by the time we hit 40 is just too much to expect

You're absolutely right some of these students have unrealistic ideas - elite colleges are literally temples to unreality! You can binge drink and do whatever you want for 4 years in a leafy postcard town - that then churn out (a surplus) of children who we sent there to follow their dreams with full knowledge that late stage capitalism is overwhelmingly going to grind that dream into the toilet.

I don't blame them for the situation - it's the one we/the system built for them and have done nothing to change. But we sent them - particularly the them in the ivy League - to college with a bunch of fanfare and a bear lethal dose of "if you can dream it, you can achieve it! " American can do ism.

It's the natural consequence of that that people think divestment can make a difference.

 

double

 

ceasefire now?

Do people here have reading comprehension issues? Or did they goto the same community college as @ROXRAN

 

Antisemitism nobody here condemns btw. Bless these people

 

First, you are completely incorrect regarding rejection of ceasefire. Bibi just said he's going to push forward in rafah regardless of any hostage release etc. He was also offered it initially, this onslaught has nothing to do with hostages. If it was, they wouldn't be bombing all of their own people. Its pretty unfair and I would say, also short sighted to portray their views as such when you are omitting some major facts. This isn't a "bad vs good"

Where we completely agree is that these kids don't understand that no matter what your cause, the second you impede the ability of others to carry out their own day you have lost your cause completely.

 

nm

 

The IRA was a terrorist organization that supported the Nazi’s in WWII and had a lot of support in Ireland and in the USA. Their actions were justified by many people because they wanted to be independent from the Crown.

So - people and Americans having sympathies for terrorist organizations really isn’t a shock of surprise.

South African Nelson Mandela lead a terrorist organization (ANC) that regularly killed white citizens, planted explosives and kidnapped people. Yet - Mandela was extremely popular with the American people.

 

Again, the second you carpet bomb millions of people indiscriminately you don't care about your own hostages. Let me clarify, of course the Israeli people do...theres a reason tens of thousands of them have been protesting in the streets every day. They don't agree with it either. That should tell you a lot. Hamas is evil, what excuse is there to bomb children to organs and limbs plastered on the wall day after day. The human shields excuse died many months ago.

Again, if you really want to look into the perspective, read Israeli publications like the Times and Haaretz. You'll be surprised that you're advocating probably not even the will of the Israeli people, but a racist and genocidal government AKA likud.

Lastly, every tax paying american has the right to speak out on where his/her taxes are going in this financially thin atmosphere. Under the current views and media propaganda, you probably couldn't even do that. I can't think of anything more unamerican than hindering that right to free speech.

Adults are smart enough to realize that

a.) protesting like this isn't going to do jack

b.) they are absolutely hurting their cause (that person waiting on the transplant didn't do anything wrong (just like 90+% of the people of gaza btw))

Given the above, again, I would hesitate before painting your students as such. I hope they continue respect the rules of your college and you most of all as teachers deserve that from their students.

 

The calling card of rhetoric for many of the adamantly pro Israel side is to immediately equate anyone that supports humane treatment of Palestinian and Palestinians as being pro-Hamas.

I know a lot of people that do not approve of the treatment of Palestinians by Israel - I do not know a single person that supports Hamas… and that includes the Palestinians I know.

It is effective rhetoric with some people.

 

The decision makers in Israel do not give a **** about Palestinian civilians - indeed they loathe them and them dying is viewed as a positive.

The death of the hostages would be the type of event Bibi needed to further justify destroying Gaza and would possibly rally the Israeli people.

There are plenty of Israeli’s that do not want to kill all the Palestinians but not enough… same with the Palestinians, there are some that want to live in peace with Israel as a neighbor, but not enough.

 

To answer his question - first, Israeli’s are colonizers - they are a perfect example of modern colonization.

Second - no, I don’t think they will be embarrassed or ashamed when they are older. No more than kids in the 60’s that protested for the 1964 civil rights act did, or when they did against the Vietnam war, or against capitalism - or any of the other protests… people change as they get older and see things from a different less idealistic vantage point, but they usually don’t regret protests.,

 

Okay, sigh. I had no idea I was advocating for anything. But thanks for informing me. I'll return to staying out of this senseless thread.