I feel like there's been a loss of institutional knowledge among campus police departments, or at least that's the most charitable interpretation. When I was at college in the 90s the way protests like these were dealt with was very straightforward -- cordon off the protesters, let people out but not in, and wait for it to burn itself out in a week or so. But that sort of patient approach seems to be alien to today's college police forces.
(Alternatively it could be that today's campus police have less patience and more raw lust to do harm than those of the past, possibly due to the incentives of media scrutiny.)
"cordon off the protesters, let people out but not in" If the protests were on public streets (most public colleges are on public throughfares) the police were violating the civil rights of protesters.
The hardworking staff at Drezner's world seem to have lost the plot. Yes, there are bad faith actors on both sides. However, there is a ready distinction between shooting jaywalkers (bad!) and failing to enforce any traffic law (also bad!). College administrators also need to prevent violence, not just respond to it. So clearing demonstrators where there is a potential / foreseeable violent confrontation (good!) while not limiting free speech (also good!) is the goal. Demonstrations which force college to be done remotely seems like the kind of campus disruption that the rest of the students should not have to tolerate. This is entirely separate from the specific speech involved.
At Yale, the protesters were violating various established college rules (e.g. no overnight camping / structures without prior permission on university property). And visibly Jewish students were blocked from walking across public spaces. Yale's approach (clear warning ahead of time both in person and by the President via email) followed by non-violent arrests seems like a middle path.
Exactly my impression, bolstered by close eyewitness observation, as someone visiting for the semester at Columbia—and someone who might be viewed by some as potentially “threatened” by this. Inside the campus, I have close encounters with the protesters (many Jewish), other students, and faculty daily: it’s all peaceful, reasonably thoughtful, civilized—even, in a way, bucolic, because the campus is now closed to those without an ID. A few feet from the tent city, students are lounging around, pulling late nights in the library, taking pre-graduation photos, etc. like they always do in late spring. A colleague was invited to Passover seder inside the group of protesters’ tents!) Only outside the campus perimeter do I have to walk home daily through throngs of journalists, photographers, outside protestors, and cops. And then I get emails from around the globe inquiring whether I am still alive, or criticisms of Columbia from people who know someone who knows someone whose parents told them to leave campus because they were worried. Inside the campus, nearly everyone’s biggest complaint is, rather, that outside perceptions of what’s going on are being manipulated in misleading ways for political purposes. Whereas one might criticize the students for not seeming to foresee this and thus not strategizing about how to project an (accurate) image to the broader public (one could start by reading Dr King), I have seen nothing the least bit rowdy, let alone dangerous to anyone. And Dan is surely right: the manipulation is largely about the 2024 election, not Israel or Palestine.
I am not saying that everything that was DONE at these protests was ok and should be tolerated. I do think that the repression of the protests was mainly aimed at what these folks were SAYING. And to be clear, many of those protesters don’t seem to have much respect for free speech themselves. Everybody involved, Jewish students and anti-Zionist students seem to think that « I feel unsafe because of what you think/say » is an argument.
I will only comment about the heavy East Coast bias. The University of Southern California has been innovating in ways to incompetently handle Israel-Palestine issues in ways Columbia would not dream of and it seems to get at least a limited pass due to the media being in New York.
The most obvious position for conservatives is to support the harassment of protesters - I’m not sure if they care if things escalate, seems like more of a bonus.
The big practical problem for universities is not that students are protesting - it’s that they are occupying a public space, which creates a nuisance and a hassle and invites mayhem and chaos. This is the issue!
It’s easy to say that unis should mostly do nothing - that is the safest course. But it’s definitely a no win situation - you can’t just let a bunch of people (some students, some others, who knows) set up a homestead on a public space without putting your campus at some risk.
Certainly some uni presidents are more comfortable with enforcing the rules than others. The ideal is to negotiate them out of there, but that doesn’t always work. That’s why they get the big bucks.
Well let's see, what else did this sorry excuse for a protest leader say (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13352323/Cackling-non-binary-Columbia-palestine-zionist-israel-gaza.html): "Let’s be very clear here, I’m not saying that I’m going to go out and start killing Zionists. What I am saying is that if an individual who identifies as a Zionist threatens my physical safety in person, i.e., puts their hands on me, I am going to defend myself and in that case scenario, it may come to a point where I don’t know when to stop."
Beyond the silly bravado, the inference I take from this is that escalatory action is a surefire way to incite further violence.
So if you're legitimately interested in reducing anti-Zionist sentiments, by all means broadcast what this person said. If you're interested in inculcating sympathy for his position, send in the National Guard.
He was one of the leaders. He was important enough to have the Campus “leadership” meet with him for over an hour. That’s like saying we can’t blame the Bolsheviks for some dumb thing Lenin said.
He's the Lenin of this movement? Let's get back to reality. Why are protesters never interviewed, other than a handpicked idiot here or there? I'll tell you why. They will give cogent, informed, non-bigoted answers. Something the media wants nothing to do with.
It's NOT many idiots. This is propaganda. The VAST majority are well-informed and ethical. What's my motivation? Honesty. What's yours, to do what you're told?
Well nothing in the first ten minutes shows any of the protesters "celebrating Hamas atrocities and calling for more terrorism" I doubt the rest does either. So quit posting links that help no one, least of all you and your hysterical, name-calling argument.
Are we in end times? 30,000+ civilians are killed and the ensuing protests are condemned by both sides as antisemitic? This would make Orwell breathless.
Says a lot about you that you both take the Hamas run healthy ministry’s numbers as true, and also assume 0 of them are constants. Your mask is clearly off.
You mean by the pro Hamas propagandists at legacy media. That doesn't make it correct, but it does expose how 'journalism' is now cover for anti-Jewish and anti-Israel far left propaganda. Kinda of like your comments.
It may well be a case of cynical advocating of things that cause violence, but I think it just as plausible that the outside politicians (alledgely supporters of free speech) quite simply hate those who think differently to them and so want the more outspoken members of such people to be roughed up and treated harshly.
Even if Susan Neiman had to give some serious thought to why leaving Confederate statues up is bad, the media has been consistent whether the antisemitism is far left or far right that ordinary people should disavow a cause that antisemites are interested in.
I don't know who Susan Neiman is. I don't know what Confederate statues have to do with anything. And your antisemitism statement is so garbled I can't make heads or tails of it. Care to try again?
I was trying to be oblique because the explicit mention of Charlottesville might be a little bit blunt. So showing my work a little bit--
"Unite The Right" was meant to be a rally that united all the different alt-right groups whether openly neo-Nazi or not, so the neo-Nazis were openly welcome. It was centered on stopping the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville. You do not have to be an antisemite to oppose that. At one point Bret Stephens's social media was full of regular conservatives citing Orwell that all the statues that showed things could be different had been removed. The media and the public were then shocked at the openly antisemitic language and actual violence that took place. Trump was not treated with scorn for "very fine people on both sides" only because it was Trump and a president with any regard for norms would have condemned the Nazis but because actual very fine people would have made very clear to the press that they were refusing to participate in a protest that Nazis had taken over. If no actual students assaulted Jews or said antisemitic things in the last week then the antisemitism of this group of protests is less central than in Charlottesville. I also know that the NYT made a point of talking to the Jewish students involved in the Columbia protest and was appalled at the free speech implications of dismantling the encampment because I read all those articles. But the American media are hypersensitive that fascism/widespread antisemitism could happen here although they may worry that the fascism will be used against their specific ideological tribe. If "very fine people" are still interested in a cause that antisemites have adopted the burden to prove the legitimacy of that cause to the general public has gotten much steeper. In this case they also have to prove that their real goal is not the same as that of the protesters who tried to shut down pro-Israel speakers on the West Coast.
Susan Neiman is the head of the Einstein Forum in Berlin and I was lucky enough to have been put in touch with her book "Learning From The Germans" because my Dad read it for his book club. (She also contributed to the "being a Jew after October 7" symposium in the New Statesman where the headline of her article was "The Enlightenment betrayed".) Part of the inspiration for that book was a very thoughtful letter which she got from a Southern conservative asking how far taking down statues might lead if the Confederate ones had to go. She eventually answered that a) it would be unthinkable to leave a statue of a Nazi up in Germany and b) we can make a choice as a society that the monuments in our public spaces are of people we actually admire and not just reminders of abstract "history". I.e. she accepted that the question was worth the argument.
This is nothing but a tirade so distorted and hysterical it barely makes sense. Our universities are "awash" in antisemitism? Yeah sure. If this your example of accurate thinking good luck to you.
I've said nothing about minimizing the actions of Hamas. You are barely rational. And your indifference to the death toll, which will only increase by many thousands, is ghastly.
That's a great straw man argument "your indifference to the death toll". Question is, why don't you mention who started this war, how it started, and why you believe every single person in the fictional number provided by a _Hamas run ministry_ contains no combatants after 6 months of intense urban and tunnel warfare.
A silly theory. Republicans do not control Boston police. Authority figures are reacting because the protests are excessively chaotic and in support of a bad, unpopular cause.
And why are republicans like Tom Cotton calling for the national guard? Because Tom Cotton would call for the national guard to break up a rowdy house party. Authoritarians like to crack down, especially when it’s their ideological opponents.
In my opinion, no complex electoral strategizing necessary to explain what’s going on.
It’s all LARPing at this point. LARPing protestors who say they believe Israel is committing genocide but don’t do anything that could get them expelled (as though having a college degree trumps stopping genocide). Or Administrators who are so outraged by threats of violence and antisemitism that it takes the fear of a Congressional sitting to make them gently remove the protests. It’s all play-acting.
You're making a category error. What you should want to know is how much of this would be allowed if the speech was ostensibly in protest against, say, the government of Mali that included diatribes against blacks?
And I suspect the answer is that the protest movement itself would likely self-policy veering into racist discourse far better than the current protestors have with protests against Israel's government devolving into anti-Semitism.
Ok. True. But then my category error doesn't really matter when the protests are resulting in a situation where we have a bunch of students spewing threatening and violent speech against a particular ethnic/religious group and in some cases blocking them from going to class. That's just making it out be one step removed from what I initially said. When that (outright racism being shouted out en masse) is where it ends up, I have a feeling the university would have a rough time parsing that out in your example because it would look so bad (for example, students shouting racial slurs, violent threats against blacks who may or may not be related in some way to the country of Mali). The thing a lot of us are seeing here is that the rhetoric is allowed to go much further when it is anti-Semitic.
With all respect Daniel you're mishandling your own media-generated narrative. The protests aren't "devolving" into anti-Semitism. They are anti-Semitism.
Professor, thanks for the column. You make a lot of points about what colleges and universities should not do, but what should they should do? Simple saying “don’t resort to force” doesn’t seem to do enough to ensure that Jewish students don’t feel marginalized and threatened. It’s also the opposite of what universities allegedly strive for with their DEI policies. I’m not advocating for force; I’m only saying that it seems empty to question what’s happening without giving a proposed solution. Thanks for your thoughts.
I feel like there's been a loss of institutional knowledge among campus police departments, or at least that's the most charitable interpretation. When I was at college in the 90s the way protests like these were dealt with was very straightforward -- cordon off the protesters, let people out but not in, and wait for it to burn itself out in a week or so. But that sort of patient approach seems to be alien to today's college police forces.
(Alternatively it could be that today's campus police have less patience and more raw lust to do harm than those of the past, possibly due to the incentives of media scrutiny.)
"cordon off the protesters, let people out but not in" If the protests were on public streets (most public colleges are on public throughfares) the police were violating the civil rights of protesters.
The hardworking staff at Drezner's world seem to have lost the plot. Yes, there are bad faith actors on both sides. However, there is a ready distinction between shooting jaywalkers (bad!) and failing to enforce any traffic law (also bad!). College administrators also need to prevent violence, not just respond to it. So clearing demonstrators where there is a potential / foreseeable violent confrontation (good!) while not limiting free speech (also good!) is the goal. Demonstrations which force college to be done remotely seems like the kind of campus disruption that the rest of the students should not have to tolerate. This is entirely separate from the specific speech involved.
At Yale, the protesters were violating various established college rules (e.g. no overnight camping / structures without prior permission on university property). And visibly Jewish students were blocked from walking across public spaces. Yale's approach (clear warning ahead of time both in person and by the President via email) followed by non-violent arrests seems like a middle path.
Exactly my impression, bolstered by close eyewitness observation, as someone visiting for the semester at Columbia—and someone who might be viewed by some as potentially “threatened” by this. Inside the campus, I have close encounters with the protesters (many Jewish), other students, and faculty daily: it’s all peaceful, reasonably thoughtful, civilized—even, in a way, bucolic, because the campus is now closed to those without an ID. A few feet from the tent city, students are lounging around, pulling late nights in the library, taking pre-graduation photos, etc. like they always do in late spring. A colleague was invited to Passover seder inside the group of protesters’ tents!) Only outside the campus perimeter do I have to walk home daily through throngs of journalists, photographers, outside protestors, and cops. And then I get emails from around the globe inquiring whether I am still alive, or criticisms of Columbia from people who know someone who knows someone whose parents told them to leave campus because they were worried. Inside the campus, nearly everyone’s biggest complaint is, rather, that outside perceptions of what’s going on are being manipulated in misleading ways for political purposes. Whereas one might criticize the students for not seeming to foresee this and thus not strategizing about how to project an (accurate) image to the broader public (one could start by reading Dr King), I have seen nothing the least bit rowdy, let alone dangerous to anyone. And Dan is surely right: the manipulation is largely about the 2024 election, not Israel or Palestine.
It’s refreshing to get a first hand impression like yours, Andrew. It’s been my experience as well in similar situations elsewhere in years past.
The most disturbing fact is that nobody stands up for free speech and tolerating opinions one disagrees with.
Assault isn’t free speech, neither is vandalism, trespassing and so on.
I am not saying that everything that was DONE at these protests was ok and should be tolerated. I do think that the repression of the protests was mainly aimed at what these folks were SAYING. And to be clear, many of those protesters don’t seem to have much respect for free speech themselves. Everybody involved, Jewish students and anti-Zionist students seem to think that « I feel unsafe because of what you think/say » is an argument.
I will only comment about the heavy East Coast bias. The University of Southern California has been innovating in ways to incompetently handle Israel-Palestine issues in ways Columbia would not dream of and it seems to get at least a limited pass due to the media being in New York.
The most obvious position for conservatives is to support the harassment of protesters - I’m not sure if they care if things escalate, seems like more of a bonus.
The big practical problem for universities is not that students are protesting - it’s that they are occupying a public space, which creates a nuisance and a hassle and invites mayhem and chaos. This is the issue!
It’s easy to say that unis should mostly do nothing - that is the safest course. But it’s definitely a no win situation - you can’t just let a bunch of people (some students, some others, who knows) set up a homestead on a public space without putting your campus at some risk.
Certainly some uni presidents are more comfortable with enforcing the rules than others. The ideal is to negotiate them out of there, but that doesn’t always work. That’s why they get the big bucks.
"The most obvious position for conservatives" What is the difference between Conservatives and Liberals concerning this issue?
Is saying, “Zionists do not deserve to live,” enough to get you to take action?
Well let's see, what else did this sorry excuse for a protest leader say (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13352323/Cackling-non-binary-Columbia-palestine-zionist-israel-gaza.html): "Let’s be very clear here, I’m not saying that I’m going to go out and start killing Zionists. What I am saying is that if an individual who identifies as a Zionist threatens my physical safety in person, i.e., puts their hands on me, I am going to defend myself and in that case scenario, it may come to a point where I don’t know when to stop."
Beyond the silly bravado, the inference I take from this is that escalatory action is a surefire way to incite further violence.
So if you're legitimately interested in reducing anti-Zionist sentiments, by all means broadcast what this person said. If you're interested in inculcating sympathy for his position, send in the National Guard.
One idiot does not define a movement.
He was one of the leaders. He was important enough to have the Campus “leadership” meet with him for over an hour. That’s like saying we can’t blame the Bolsheviks for some dumb thing Lenin said.
He's the Lenin of this movement? Let's get back to reality. Why are protesters never interviewed, other than a handpicked idiot here or there? I'll tell you why. They will give cogent, informed, non-bigoted answers. Something the media wants nothing to do with.
Who did they send to speak to the “leadership?”
Don't understand your question. Who's they? What leadership?
I would add the media is supposed to interview the ordinary protester. They never do. That's fishy.
It’s many idiots, and you’re one of their apologists. Makes one wonder about your motivations. Examples here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/graboyes/p/columbia-delenda-est
It's NOT many idiots. This is propaganda. The VAST majority are well-informed and ethical. What's my motivation? Honesty. What's yours, to do what you're told?
Well, your mask is off, so it's clear why you think people celebrating Hamas atrocities and calling for more terrorism are "ethical".
Also, "well-informed" is a laughable claim. https://www.konstantinkisin.com/p/public-interviews-from-massive-pro
Well nothing in the first ten minutes shows any of the protesters "celebrating Hamas atrocities and calling for more terrorism" I doubt the rest does either. So quit posting links that help no one, least of all you and your hysterical, name-calling argument.
Sorry for cherry picking, but saying, “do not deserve to live, but I’m not doing the killing,” seems like a reason to call in the Guard.
Are we in end times? 30,000+ civilians are killed and the ensuing protests are condemned by both sides as antisemitic? This would make Orwell breathless.
It’s easy to spot a pro Hamas kook with numbers alone. https://substack.com/@arrrbee/note/c-54758783
Says a lot about you that you both take the Hamas run healthy ministry’s numbers as true, and also assume 0 of them are constants. Your mask is clearly off.
The number is generally accepted, even by your spoon-feeding media.
You mean by the pro Hamas propagandists at legacy media. That doesn't make it correct, but it does expose how 'journalism' is now cover for anti-Jewish and anti-Israel far left propaganda. Kinda of like your comments.
It may well be a case of cynical advocating of things that cause violence, but I think it just as plausible that the outside politicians (alledgely supporters of free speech) quite simply hate those who think differently to them and so want the more outspoken members of such people to be roughed up and treated harshly.
"multiple examples of explicitly pro-Hamas, pro-terrorist signage. Other protestors have shouted anti-Semitic slogans." Propaganda. Utterly, completely untrue.
Noah Smith seemed to have examples of it caught on video and you can read his post for the links.
I don't care what he's "caught". Again, cherry-picked outliers do not define the protests. Although the media, all of them, would have you believe so.
Even if Susan Neiman had to give some serious thought to why leaving Confederate statues up is bad, the media has been consistent whether the antisemitism is far left or far right that ordinary people should disavow a cause that antisemites are interested in.
I don't know who Susan Neiman is. I don't know what Confederate statues have to do with anything. And your antisemitism statement is so garbled I can't make heads or tails of it. Care to try again?
I was trying to be oblique because the explicit mention of Charlottesville might be a little bit blunt. So showing my work a little bit--
"Unite The Right" was meant to be a rally that united all the different alt-right groups whether openly neo-Nazi or not, so the neo-Nazis were openly welcome. It was centered on stopping the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville. You do not have to be an antisemite to oppose that. At one point Bret Stephens's social media was full of regular conservatives citing Orwell that all the statues that showed things could be different had been removed. The media and the public were then shocked at the openly antisemitic language and actual violence that took place. Trump was not treated with scorn for "very fine people on both sides" only because it was Trump and a president with any regard for norms would have condemned the Nazis but because actual very fine people would have made very clear to the press that they were refusing to participate in a protest that Nazis had taken over. If no actual students assaulted Jews or said antisemitic things in the last week then the antisemitism of this group of protests is less central than in Charlottesville. I also know that the NYT made a point of talking to the Jewish students involved in the Columbia protest and was appalled at the free speech implications of dismantling the encampment because I read all those articles. But the American media are hypersensitive that fascism/widespread antisemitism could happen here although they may worry that the fascism will be used against their specific ideological tribe. If "very fine people" are still interested in a cause that antisemites have adopted the burden to prove the legitimacy of that cause to the general public has gotten much steeper. In this case they also have to prove that their real goal is not the same as that of the protesters who tried to shut down pro-Israel speakers on the West Coast.
Susan Neiman is the head of the Einstein Forum in Berlin and I was lucky enough to have been put in touch with her book "Learning From The Germans" because my Dad read it for his book club. (She also contributed to the "being a Jew after October 7" symposium in the New Statesman where the headline of her article was "The Enlightenment betrayed".) Part of the inspiration for that book was a very thoughtful letter which she got from a Southern conservative asking how far taking down statues might lead if the Confederate ones had to go. She eventually answered that a) it would be unthinkable to leave a statue of a Nazi up in Germany and b) we can make a choice as a society that the monuments in our public spaces are of people we actually admire and not just reminders of abstract "history". I.e. she accepted that the question was worth the argument.
If there's a point here make it in one non-compound sentence. Otherwise I'm done. Respectfully.
Multiple example, so stop lying: https://open.substack.com/pub/graboyes/p/columbia-delenda-est
This is nothing but a tirade so distorted and hysterical it barely makes sense. Our universities are "awash" in antisemitism? Yeah sure. If this your example of accurate thinking good luck to you.
No, good luck to you with your amoral attempts to minimize the actions of Hamas and of the pro Hamas academic left.
https://imightbewrong.substack.com/p/the-groups-protesting-on-college
I've said nothing about minimizing the actions of Hamas. You are barely rational. And your indifference to the death toll, which will only increase by many thousands, is ghastly.
That's a great straw man argument "your indifference to the death toll". Question is, why don't you mention who started this war, how it started, and why you believe every single person in the fictional number provided by a _Hamas run ministry_ contains no combatants after 6 months of intense urban and tunnel warfare.
It does not matter who "started" anything. Are we back in grade school? The issue is the ongoing humanitarian crisis.
Just clean them all out!
Just like Texas did!
A silly theory. Republicans do not control Boston police. Authority figures are reacting because the protests are excessively chaotic and in support of a bad, unpopular cause.
And why are republicans like Tom Cotton calling for the national guard? Because Tom Cotton would call for the national guard to break up a rowdy house party. Authoritarians like to crack down, especially when it’s their ideological opponents.
In my opinion, no complex electoral strategizing necessary to explain what’s going on.
It’s all LARPing at this point. LARPing protestors who say they believe Israel is committing genocide but don’t do anything that could get them expelled (as though having a college degree trumps stopping genocide). Or Administrators who are so outraged by threats of violence and antisemitism that it takes the fear of a Congressional sitting to make them gently remove the protests. It’s all play-acting.
It's high time we examine the psyche of the student protestors. Many of them are motivated by the delayed adolescent rebellion they are experiencing
https://davidgottfried.substack.com/p/snowflakes-and-divas-railing-against
Paul Berman partly agrees. But frames stakes here as more fraught. Good chaser.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/04/26/columbia-protest-students-faculty-gaza-unrest/
What I want to know is, how much of this would be allowed if the speech was against blacks? Against trans students?
You're making a category error. What you should want to know is how much of this would be allowed if the speech was ostensibly in protest against, say, the government of Mali that included diatribes against blacks?
And I suspect the answer is that the protest movement itself would likely self-policy veering into racist discourse far better than the current protestors have with protests against Israel's government devolving into anti-Semitism.
Ok. True. But then my category error doesn't really matter when the protests are resulting in a situation where we have a bunch of students spewing threatening and violent speech against a particular ethnic/religious group and in some cases blocking them from going to class. That's just making it out be one step removed from what I initially said. When that (outright racism being shouted out en masse) is where it ends up, I have a feeling the university would have a rough time parsing that out in your example because it would look so bad (for example, students shouting racial slurs, violent threats against blacks who may or may not be related in some way to the country of Mali). The thing a lot of us are seeing here is that the rhetoric is allowed to go much further when it is anti-Semitic.
But it hasn't happened, nothing antisemitic has happened, and there's no indication anything like that will happen.
With all respect Daniel you're mishandling your own media-generated narrative. The protests aren't "devolving" into anti-Semitism. They are anti-Semitism.
Professor, thanks for the column. You make a lot of points about what colleges and universities should not do, but what should they should do? Simple saying “don’t resort to force” doesn’t seem to do enough to ensure that Jewish students don’t feel marginalized and threatened. It’s also the opposite of what universities allegedly strive for with their DEI policies. I’m not advocating for force; I’m only saying that it seems empty to question what’s happening without giving a proposed solution. Thanks for your thoughts.