The University of Southern California (USC) is under fire this week after announcing that it had a solution to the possible pro-Palestinian protests at the graduation: it cancelled the graduation. It is both enabling and irresponsible. Rather than protect students and their families at this important and well-earned event in their lives, the university is yielding to the mob. It is a feckless and feeble response to what should have been an easy decision for any administrator.
Fox News national correspondent Bill Melugin reported, “USC announces it is cancelling its main stage commencement ceremony. Comments shut off. Brutal for the class of ‘24. Likely didn’t get a high school graduation during COVID in 2020, and now won’t get a traditional college graduation.”
Individual school commencement ceremonies, doctoral hooding ceremonies and other celebrations will still be held.
The cancellation came after USC shut down its campus over anti-Israel protests, including 93 arrests. The campus was the scene of a “Gaza Solidarity Occupation” protest in defiance of demands that the protesters leave the area.
The cancellation came after USC selected valedictorian, Muslim biomedical engineering student Asna Tabassum to give a commencement speech. That offer was then rescinded after her critics accused her of promoting anti-Israel rhetoric on social media. The school then announced that there would be no such student commencement address.
The decision to just cancel the ceremony is reminiscent of the recent decision of Columbia to “deactivate” the university ID of a professor for his own protection because his presence might cause a violent or threatening response from pro-Palestinian protesters on campus.
The problem of violent protests and threats on campus is not solved by removing the potential victims. To yield this ground is to surrender control over not just the campus but the academic operations of the school. Higher education has to aspire to be more than a mere mobocracy where threats not logic prevail.
All of the teenaged high school students in the sunshine state converse among themselves in Spanish, not English. I wonder why this is…
It is likely as simple as this: Create a false flag event (cancel graduation) to draw attention away from incompetent university leadership and or indirect support for Hamas by not confronting agents of that organization. Thus, allowing Hamas to dictate the state of affairs.
Great. Bow down to the mob and end a tradition in the name of wokeness. This will only embolden the mob more so.
“Look at the power we have!”
Of course USC also wants to avoid a possible conflict of the violent kind requiring police intervention, as we have seen how these pro-Hamas protests tend to.
Everything free in America!
it appears that applicants that wish to be hired as a university president must have one essential requirement: be a plagiarist. Columbia University President Nemat Shafik is being accused by a Yale economics professor of just that but worse: intellectual theft
Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak
@mushfiq_econ
Nemat Shafik – @Columbia Prez only has 1 well-cited publication in her life, in Oxford Econ Papers 1994.
This paper is lifted almost entirely from a 1992 report coauthored with consultant not credited in the publication. This is wholesale intellectual theft, not subtle plagiarism
(images of publications shown)
This is not a close call. Table 1s are the same. Fig 1s are the same. Massive overlap in text.
She stole the junior author’s intellectual property and simply removed his name from published version.
If he contributed enough to be an author in 1992, how can she delete him in 94?
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1783713751809527912.html?utm_campaign=topunroll
How far they have fallen. Maybe it was time to show Americans that the so-called elites put their pants on just like the rest of us.
“Maybe it was time to show Americans that the so-called elites put their pants on just like the rest of us.”
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More like pantywaists. Like the Holiday Inn – no ballroom.
Seems silly to celebrate during an active genocide. Good call.
Gutlessness is all the rage in response to outrageous behavior these days.
“The mob”? Oh, you mean the only people in this country who are standing up to genocide and war crimes? Just because you don’t like the campus woke idiocy, shouldn’t blind you to the fact that these students are on the right side of this issue. Israel is committing atrocious war crimes, including starving the Palestinian population (collective punishment), assassinating aid workers, doctors and journalists, and bombing civilians. 34,000 deaths is not “self-defense” — it’s murder, and it’s a war crime. US politicians are in AIPAC’s pocket, and they’re turning on their own citizens rather than stand up for what’s right. The US is making a mockery of its own human rights rhetoric.
Exactly!
Donna Ross / Cardio B, there are 2 things missing from your arguments
1. Unique Genotype
The word Genocide comes from 2 words:
Gene = unique DNA that is heritable e.g. genotype, epigenetics, etc
– cide = kill, e.g. those who oppose the Clintons are Arkancided
The people have Gaza have no unique genes or genotype, anymore than the people of Delaware, Rhode Island, George Soros paid trolls, etc
There is no genocide taking place in Gaza. There is however a genocide taking place by the Chinese Communist Chinese Party of Uyghurs who indeed have a unique genotype
2. Intelligence
you’re trolling with the same email address / avatar but different name.
SMH
One must dot their genotype vs. Phenotype i’s when dealing with Estovir’s mass murder proclivities it looks like.
GCon:
“The mob”? Oh, you mean the only people in this country who are standing up to genocide and war crimes? Just because you don’t like the campus woke idiocy, shouldn’t blind you to the fact that these students are on the right side of this issue. Israel is committing atrocious war crimes, including starving the Palestinian population (collective punishment), assassinating aid workers, doctors and journalists, and bombing civilians. 34,000 deaths is not “self-defense” — it’s murder, and it’s a war crime. US politicians are in AIPAC’s pocket, and they’re turning on their own citizens rather than stand up for what’s right. The US is making a mockery of its own human rights rhetoric.”
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What genocide? Where? The UN got a one-sided presentation from South Africa and even it still said “no genocide” but you in your infinte knowledge of world affairs, international law and just plain ol’ genius know it’s there. Just like the mythical famine or the made-up intentional assasination of aid workers, blah, blah, blah.
It’s a war — a war — declared by Hamas and its barbarism (including putting babies in overn as their abused parents were forced to watch. Note the vicious irony) which is supported by the overwhelming majority of the Palestinian people who elected them. I feel sorry for the helpless arab kids. As for the rest, enjoy the rape bed you made for yourselves.
Damn right!! Everyone knows the best remedy for completely falling down in guarding your own border is to go into another country and kill 15 thousand children. That’ll go a long way towards ending a 75 year old war.
If USC saved one Life or Individual from a Major Injury by doing this,
Then it was worth it.
The Protestor’s and the and University’s actions are both meaning to Save Lives.
LIVES before POLITICS
USC made a ‘Morally Correct Decision’.
-TRA
“If USC saved one Life or Individual from a Major Injury by doing this,
Then it was worth it.”
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Yep, and that’s why we ban cars and all ride horses and buggys! Whoa, Nelly!
So IF the killing of hamas supporters and their enablers saves one life, is that worth it, too?
Is a Great Dane is larger than a Mini Cooper automobile?
Ridiculous, just a wink and a nod, we’re with you Hamas.
I was incredibly pleased but shocked when I read that Emory University had called in the campus police, Atlanta Police and state police to remove protestors encamped on the Quadrangle there at Emory. The Quadrangle is a large common area surrounded by the administration building and several large buildings for classes. Having graduated from Emory in 1970, I can say it was purportedly a liberal bastion even then but often some actions were more practical and not as liberal as they claimed to be. I never returned to the campus. Even then it was paternalistic, flagrantly elitist, and not very welcoming to us lower classes that managed to get in. Also very expensive. But it had excellent faculty in the sciences.
I thought this action on the protesters was nice because they even tasered some. I expect that will elicit some squeals from the north Atlanta elite. Sort of brings them down to the earth with the rest of us.
The current state of affairs is the end result of the infiltration of counter-cultural Islamist theology, thought, philosophy and culture into the United State’s government, its educational establishments, and other threads of the fabric of its society. Bipartisan feckless neglect in many areas of endeavor across several decades and administrations, and the failure of the citizenry to appreciate the depth of its presence, its potential impact, and to address it aggressively, have brought the nation to this moment in time.
No, we’ve come to this point by allowing the Israel Lobby to occupy Washington, DC, and, for 75 years, to allow only the Zionist narrative of the brutal founding of the state of Israel and its ongoing ethnic cleaning of Palestine to be broadcast in the media. Now, the Internet and our cell phones allow those who are willing to learn, to see the awful truth.
Cardio B:
“No, we’ve come to this point by allowing the Israel Lobby to occupy Washington, DC, and, for 75 years, to allow only the Zionist narrative of the brutal founding of the state of Israel and its ongoing ethnic cleaning of Palestine ….”
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Was the ethnic cleaning when the Israelis left Gaza forcing its own citizens off their land and allowed elections or when they permitted the arab population in Gaza to grow by 50% in 10 years? Just asking.
Don’t ask a snowflake Leftist a logical question….their bony skulls may explode. On second thought…..go ahead….justified population control.
Oops my bad. Funny, they never answer?
“Studies of children show that victims easily acquiesce to bullies’ demands, handing over bikes, toys, [and college campuses]. They cry and assume a defensive posture; their highly visible displays of pain and suffering are rewarding to bullies and serve as an important signal of the bully’s dominance.” (psychologytoday.com/us/basics/bullying)
Those craven university “leaders” have learned nothing from the psychology or sordid history of appeasing bullies.
What do you expect when you select the present cadre of college presidents.
They have learned the Obama school of leadership, lead from behind.
Napoleon said there is always the possibility of a Marshal’s Baton in a corporal’s backpack.
Of course corporals are kind of the first step on the road to command.
The converse is also true. Most of the time a private is still just a private. It appears to me that a large number of university CEO’s will never even make it to the rank of corporal.
GEB,
When I was in the Marines, I was complimented as “leading from the rear.”
I was a Corporal at the time.
Well my dad was army and led from the front, even as a captain. Of course he was knocked out of action by a german 88 for 6 months in the Battle of the Bulge. Another med school classmate was a marine corporal in Viet Nam and he went out of the helicopter in contested LZ’s along with the privates.
Neville Chamberlain comes to mind.
But the Elite educators exhibit every single day their historical reference is non existent.
These collage administrators are barely functional idiots.
ALL the left is capable of doing is leading by terrorism. The threat of violence gets the the outcomes the terrorists seek.
Correct. Leftists are but disgruntled, violent fascists, which is another term for terrorists.
I’m sick of people in America violating our right to enjoy freedom and peace! Go protest over there!
Sick of violent protestors causing mayhem and violence in our United States! Get away from us and go there to protest!!!
You see the coming path. Cancellation using the threat of “violence” is the November Plan taking shape. If they can cancel events with fear (COVID was the experiment), they can control the population.
Yep. Martial law coming….
Vote as early as possible do not wait until election day.
They say they are just like us, that has been the big selling pitch, but they are not just likes and we are seeing first hand just how different they really are.
Let’s put it to a vote, our democracy depends on it. BAHA
I vote let the students says what ever they want for as long as they won’t. Anybody with me?
No.
You are not just like us, never were and never will be, get it thru your thick skull.
Left eats Left.
Good. Let them.