Academia

Problem Solved? USC Cancels Graduation to Avoid Pro-Palestinian Protesters

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 That offer was then rescinded after her critics accused her of promoting anti-Israel rhetoric on social media.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.

195 thoughts on “Problem Solved? USC Cancels Graduation to Avoid Pro-Palestinian Protesters”

  1. Time to lighten up.
    Does anyone remember the good ole days when, instead of mob protests, you expressed your opinion on a vehicle bumper sticker????
    People would honk in approval; some would slam into the cars in front of them while reading your bumper sticker (which is likely why we don’t see too many anymore).
    In any event, I didn’t even drive back then, so as a passenger, I could easily read all the stickers. The one that made me laugh (even though I was a young student, I was aware of Chappaquiddick, but I don’t remember the year or the Name of a running mate), but the campaign bumper sticker said, “Vote Kennedy-[John Doe] –You Drink, I Drive.”
    (p.s. must’ve been fun removing those stickers before you sold your car!)

    1. Lin – I’ve also noticed a marked decrease in bumper stickers lately. All those stickers that said “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism” and “Question authority” mysteriously disappeared when Biden was elected.

    2. Does anyone remember the good ole days when….

      In my traditions, culture and good ole days, chanting the Confiteor would cast out most problems. This was when people took responsibility for their errors and would pledge before God and their neighbors to reform their ways.

      Lovely chant too!

      1. Estovir and NotSoOld: Let’s think up some new bumper stickers. (Beautiful as Gregorian chant is), we need simpler slogans; Maybe: “I am a susceptible student. Mea Culpa.”
        Or, “Campus Confiteor Needed. willing to pay equal to BLM/Antifa”
        C’mon, make me laugh, you two.

            1. Estovir,
              Dang it! You nearly made me spew water out of my nose! 🙂

        3. Or how about federal Antisemitism Commissioners for ‘select’ campuses, as a Torries-sponsored bipartisan bill is calling for–?!!?

    3. Lin,
      Ah, Lin, Lin.
      Thank you for your “Time to lighten up,” comment.
      It was well received! 🙂

  2. Dear Prof Turley,

    The student ‘Mob(ocracy)’ is fickle my friend. You’re no hippie flower child from the sixties and I can see by your drab suits .. . ‘you’re from the other side’.

    If you think these student ‘activists’ are violent, you should spend a day or two in Gaza. Put yourself in Gaza shoes. 35,000+ killed ytd, most of them women and children. Or Ukraine, where millions have been killed/wounded and 10s of millions displaced.

    For what?

    These students, bless their hearts, have every right to protest. .. lord knows nobody else is.

    Take Speaker Johnson, e.g., that profile in courage. Johnson was at Columbia yesterday threatening to call in the National Guard.

    *4 dead in Ohio

    1. For what?

      If you really don’t know, then on October 7th you should have been at the Nova concert in Israel or on one of the kibbutzim near Gaza. You should have spent the last 20 years living near the Gaza border in one of the towns that has been subject to incessant rocket attacks against civilians.

      1. Please old man. History didn’t begin on Oct. 7th and ‘Hamas’ probably has more in common with Bibi’s special services than the plight of Palestinians.

        There is no rational justification for what Biden/Bibi are doing in Gaza. No good will come from it.

        *and you don’t need to be in Israel to know Biden lied through his false teeth about babies being burned alive etc. .. all the babies being killed are in Gaza.

        1. There is no rational justification for what Biden/Bibi are doing in Gaza.

          False, at least as to Bibi. The rational justification is the need for survival. Hamas has proven that coexistence with them is impossible, because they will never accept Israel’s existence, and will remain committed to Israel’s annihilation. It will get help for that from Iran, so Hamas isn’t some paper tiger.

            1. Something like that was definitively effective in Japan – something about losing the will to fight, or otherwise invade and terrorize.

              Say, what if America took that concept down to El Paso and Del Rio?

          2. Wrong. Even ‘Hamas’, an ephemeral organization at best, has tacitly accepted a pre-1967 border solution in the past .. . not that Israel has ever, or would ever, offer such a solution.

            Hamas is not a threat to Israel’s ‘existence’. In fact, there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence Bibi&co. helped fund Hamas in the past .. . and had ample warning of the Oct. 7th attack.

            From what I gather, Iran may be a threat to Israel’s existence. Israel may definitely be a threat to Iran’s existence. A broader Biden/Bibi-Iran conflict may be a threat to everyone’s existence.

            In any case, killing 35,000+ mostly women and children in the Gaza strip is not fighting ‘Hamas’ or terrorism. It is terrorism .. . if not ‘genocide’.

            *’if you cut a man, he will cry out’ ~ Appalachian proverb

            1. “”Wrong. Even ‘Hamas’, an ephemeral organization at best, has tacitly accepted a pre-1967 border solution in the past .. . not that Israel has ever, or would ever, offer such a solution.”

              Dgsnowden, as usual you are wrong. Israel accepted the 1948 borders but was attacked. Since that time Israel agreed multiple times to such an arrangement. Presently Hamas who was voted in by the Gazan people attacked Israel again even though they were given control over Gaza and Israelis were forced by the Israel government to leave their land. Multiple treaties were refused by Hamas and the PLO giving them a two state solution. The only solution Hamas wants is one that leads to the extermination of the Jewish people in the Middle East and one they have expressed feelings of exterminating Jews all over the world.

              Hamas is a terrorist organization that promotes genocide. You are at one with them with your ignorance and hate. Are you not smart enough to read the actual treaties proposed? You aren’t.

              The numbers of Hamas terrorists killed accounts for many of the deaths. Many others that died were killed by Hamas rockets that failed to fly clear of Gaza. Others were killed because they two were terrorists just like the ones that killed and took hostage Israeli’s when there was peace. You continue to prove yourself a moron, All I can say is to repeat Estovir’s bumper sticker: You, out of the gene pool.

        2. Oct 7 was an act of war – that is the justification. Just as 9/11 justified the invasion of Afghanistan.
          And the bombing of Pearl harbor justified the war with Japan, and the invasion of Poland justified England and France going to war with Germany.

          Is Israel perfect ? Nope, neither is the US, UK, or France. Perfect or not you attack a country and murder its citizens and you will have a war on your hands.

          History did not begin on Oct 7. There is a long history of Israel behaving less than perfectly and Palestinians behaving as Terrorists.

          If we are going to weigh the realitive evils of Israel and Hamas – Hamas loses hands down.

          This nonsense is like trying to defend slavery in the south, because Imigrants in the north were not paid well.

          Your free to believe nonsense, your free to speak as you wish.

          The rest of us are free to judge you as excorable for the things you beleive and say.

    2. “Four Dead In Ohio” – May 4, 1970, right?

      I didn’t hear the song or see the TV accounts regarding protests.

      I did speak with a CBS News reporter…on the border before we left.

      I was preoccupied in Cambodia.

      1. That’s right. Kent State May 4, 1970

        *I wasn’t quite old enough for Vietnam .. . but I was rooting for you guys to make it back alive!

    3. A protester got tased during an arrest in San Antonio @ the University of Texas
      Not Oh-High-Oh yet..but how soon

  4. Jonathan: What is happening at Columbia, USC and other university campuses across the nation is also occurring at Yale. There student protestors are demanding Yale’s Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility stop investing in domestic arms manufacturers who are supplying many of the weapons for the IDF. On April 21 Israel struck the Gaza city of Rafah–killing 22 people, including 18 children. Over 34,000 Palestinian have been killed by weapons supplied by US arms manufacturers.

    And what was the response of Yale’s Committee to this carnage? The Committee said in a statement that it “concluded that military weapons manufactured for authorized sales did not meet the threshold of grave social injury, a prerequisite for divestment, because this manufacturing supports socially necessary uses…”.

    So when the IDF drops bombs on innocent civilians that does not amount to “gave social injury” because it “supports socially necessary uses”. It was the same argument made during the Vietnam war. Students demanded that universities disinvest from US arms manufacturers who supplied napalm and defoliants that killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Vietnamese. Then, too, universities defended their investments saying virtually the same thing Yale is now using as a defense. And that is the reason Yale students will continue to protest until Yale comes up with a better definition of what constitutes “grave social injury”!

    1. “Never underestimate the escalation factor of a situation upon the arrival of the Police” (sic)
      Abby Hoffman
      “Never underestimate the de-escalation of intellectual honesty with the arrival of Dennis”
      Fans of this Site with any brains

    2. Remember, too, that weapons manufactured for “socially necessary uses” increase good paying jobs for Americans in 33 states: beaucoup GDP

    3. Students are free to protest. They are not free to prevent those who wise to attend the classes that they are paying nearly $100K a year for from attending. They are not free to disrupt graduations ceremonies for those who have worked hard for 40 years to attain a cegree that hopefully qualifies them to do productive work – such as designing the expensive armaments that mean that we do not have to sacrifice the lives of so many soldiers should a conflict arrise.

      Universities have the responsibility to manage the funds entrusted to them by donors and alumni to fund universities to the greatest benefit of the university.

      While I welcome and encourage peaceful student protests.
      I even welcome the antisemetic and terrorist supporting protests we see right now – Best to KNOW who is either so vile or so stupid as to think that 10,000 October 7ths is a reasonable thing to support.

      I want people – right left, to own their views and beliefs. To be visible on the news, to post their activities and values all over social media for the world to see. For the rest of us. Prospective employers, co-workers, neighbors. So that we can chose whether to hire, work with associate with people are anti-semetic and or promoters of terrorism, or actual racists.

      I want to be able to make my choices about other people based on whether they are trump sup-porters or Biden supporters,
      Whether they advocate for terrorism, or racism.

      I want all ideas and viewpoints out there – the good and the bad.

    4. In the 60’s we protested for peace. Experience has taught most of us that was pretty naive, that peace comes when no one is willing to use violence to get their way. Not when those protesting for peace stop using violence.

      But the current protests are dramatically different.

      In the 60’s no one protested desiring North Vietnam to slaughter all the south Vietnamese.
      No one protested FOR the killing fields.
      Student protestors in the 60’s were not chosing sides in conflicts accross the world.
      They merely naively beleived that an end to US involvement would mean and end to war and violence.
      Or they were protesting for the end of the sacrifice of american youth for other peoples causes that
      did not seem to be relevant to the US.

      A substantial portion of the students protesting today are not protesting for peace. They are protesting For Hamas,
      They are protesting for the destruction of Israel and the extermination of jews.

      I would further note that SOME protests in the 60’s were disruptive of colleges – though the overwhelming majority were not.
      Campuses did not close. Students were able to go to classes, There were some colorful demonstrations are graduation – but even the protestors wanted graduation to occur – just with a bit of their voices heard.

      Protestors today do not want their voice to be heard. They want control.

      They are free to seek that. The correct response is arrests and expulsions.

      You are free to seek to have your voice heard – so long as you are not seeking to silence others.
      Or to thwart others from going about their lives as THEY chose, From seeking the education to allow them to be more productive, better off, and to make society better.

      The students who go to classes actually learn something that enables them to build things produce things this is what actually makes the world a better place – for themselves and others.

      Disrupt that and you will get pushback in some form and you should be held accountable.

    5. It is interesting, you are all in for disrupting classes, preventing graduation ceremonies, using violence if necessary and to support a cause that is openly violent – murderous.

      But you think that people who protested a corrupt election are felons ? That merely being present in the capitol – the preeminent public forum in the entire world deserves jail time ?

      Should we treat these protestors like you treat those at J6 ?

      These protestors are supporting a group that is openly racist, openly antidsemetic, openly terrorist, openly violent.
      These are people who launch 1000’s or rockets a year at civilians. That stage an attack on a music festival and murder over a thousand people taking over 100 hostages, Behading people, killing people, burning people, old women, children and babies.

      This is OK with you ?

      But protesting a rigged election is not ?

      Disrupting students education, disrupting their graduation is OK with you,
      But delaying what YOU claim is a pro forma cerimonial act is not ?

      Plotting and conspiring to do disrupt a campus – with billionaires funding that disruption from the outside and often bringing in outsiders is OK with you.

      But citizens petitioning government because they justifiably beleive an election was stolen – that is not ?

      You have very warped values.

  5. There is a very odd, delightful, FAFO, report coming out of Emory University of their philosophy dept chair/ professor Noëlle McAfee, being arrested by police for trespassing and disregarding police warning. The odd part is that she fails to embrace her pedigree

    Her Emory bio page states Noëlle McAfee is a critical theorist working in the tradition of the Frankfurt School, drawing on feminist philosophy, psychoanalysis, and political theory

    The delightful is watching her get arrested by a BIPOC police officer.

    The FAFO is seeing her “credentials” as a Frankfurt School Marxist being betrayed by her true self- a complete fraud. Typical Marxist.

    Police chief confirms 28 protestors arrested at morning protest

    In a public statement this afternoon, Gov. Brian Kemp (R-Ga.) thanked law enforcement for their response.

    “Just as we have always done in the past, we will respect the right to peacefully protest, but those who choose to make the unwise decision to use our college campuses to intimidate, make threats, promote violence, or in any other way break the law will be met with the full force of the law and brought to justice,” Kemp wrote. Ilya Nemenman, Samuel Candler Dobbs professor of physics and chair of the University Senate’s Open Expression Committee, said that the protest appeared to violate Emory’s Respect for Open Expression Policy, given the information he had at the moment. “This is not a protest that will be protected by the policy,” Nemenman said.

    Georgia’s Attorney General Christopher Carr (R-Ga.) also took to social media to express his support of the police response.

    “We will proudly stand by any university that takes action to protect the health and safety of Georgia’s students,” Carr wrote. “Nobody has the legal right to shut down our schools by camping out and making antisemitic threats.

    https://emorywheel.com/police-chief-confirms-28-protestors-arrested-at-morning-protest/

  6. Think this is bad? Just wait until the election. 🙄 Modern universities are a plague, many in these generations will likely never be ‘ok’, and we are *going* to have to deal with it, one way or another, whether we like it or not. These administrators are some of the biggest cowards our country has ever seen; they have the foresight of a potato if they think society won’t collapse all around them, too.

    1. James,
      “Think this is bad? Just wait until the election.”
      That right there!
      And yes, those administrators would find out real quick what life is really like outside of their ivory towers if society collapsed. All those people they look their long noses down upon, like me who feed them, would find themselves in a real hurt locker.
      So would most of those woke leftists.

      Invest in chickens, PMs, ammo and your own personal well being.

    2. Concern Trolls fret that the convention in Chicago may be a focal point

  7. In 1967, my senior year, half my class was drafted and sent to Vietnam. I dropped out a semester before graduation. I don’t recall college administrators or the press bemoaning the fact that an entire generation of young Americans were being killed off. Rather they threw them indiscriminately to the wolves. There were plenty of empty chairs at graduations all across the nation. I finished up two years later. My diploma came in the mail. I didn’t even want to go to some posthumous graduation where their memories were completely ignored.

    1. I mean, 60,000 Americans KIA + 150,000 WIA in Vietnam
      Is this worse than attending a Zoom class online–?!!?

  9. Jonathan: Looks like student protests are occurring even on your campus. The AP is reporting today that “George Washington University said it would move its law school finals from a building next to the protest encampment to a new location because of the noise”. I’m sure why you are quite upset by that.

    So even your campus is not immune. It’s like a wild fire that can’t be controlled. At Columbia over a hundred peaceful protesters were violently arrested–but hundreds of other students came in and reestablished the encampments. It doesn’t look like the protests will end any time soon.

    Now you call the student protesters a “mobocracy” that should be put down. Lost in all this is that you have claimed students who try to stop a speaker inside a class room should be arrested and expelled. But you also say peaceful protests outside the classroom are acceptable as an expression of “free speech”. Aren’t the protests and encampments at university campuses around the country just that–an exercise in free expression? You can’t have it both ways!

    1. He didn’t mean protests that were designed to shut down the campus. Then they are they same as other protests that prevent speech.

      1. The protests didn’t shut down the campus. They are doing exactly what Turley had said is acceptable exercise of free speech. Turley is being hypocritical.

    2. Dennis: Thank you–now you are on-topic.
      First of all, I believe the student protesters were NOT initially interfered with, -and police were not called in,–UNTIL they began to disrupt, threaten, and physically encircle or force out/remove other students with whom they disagreed; and disrupt/ interfere with the peaceful business of campus learning/conducting of classes. Keep that in mind. Thanks.

      1. lin: Look at the videos of the encampment at Columbia. It wasn’t there to “disrupt, threaten, and physically encircle or force out/remove other students”. It was a peaceful protest with other non-involved students walking around. That changed when the police came in–encircling, threatening students who were beaten and then arrested. That’s the reality!

    3. Some of these protests have coincided w/ on-campus events celebrating the First Amendment. Do you take your cognitive dissonance shaken or stirred–?!!?

  11. “Israel is committing atrocious war crimes . . .”

    If you *start* your evaluation with the bombing of Dresden, you can conclude that the Allies were genocidal maniacs.

    Thinking adults, though, don’t start with a victim’s response to invasion, kidnapping and murder.

      1. To be fair, the dinosaurs had it coming because they refused to stop smoking three packs a day.

          1. Lin,
            You are on a roll today! 🙂
            Some day, we need to meet and I will buy you a drink and or dinner.

  12. See? Terrorism works. They got, pretty much, just what they wanted.

  13. Prof. Turley, this article has got to be a candidate for the worst you have ever written. You write:

    “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.”

    Then you complain, not of the valedictorian’s cancellation, but the school’s!!! Your article leaves the impression that you agree that anti-Israel rhetoric is a bad thing & a reasonable grounds for cancelling the valedictorian. On the contrary, if you are speaking on the subject of Israel’s war on the Palestinians, if you are honest, unbiased, and well-informed despite ubiquitous Zionist propaganda, how can you avoid taking an anti-Israel position? And even if you disagree and are pro-Israel, how can you tacitly endorse the cancellation of the valedictorian just because you disagree with her position on Israel?

    Like so many others, you are for free speech & against cancellation – except when Israel is involved, in which case you are against free speech & favor cancellation.

    You write, “The problem of violent protests and threats on campus is not solved by removing the potential victims. ” You provide not ONE SCINTILLA of evidence that protests have been violent or that they make true threats of violence. The only evidence of violence I have seen is that of the cops called in to suppress the protestors’ freedom of speech. I have seen a video of a student whom the cops tasered AFTER he was already prone on the ground & handcuffed. I have seen a video of a cop body-slamming a professor in her 60s, breaking her glasses, and causing her face to hit the concrete sidewalk. I have seen pictures of snipers, presumably placed there to terrorize the protestors that there would be a repeat of law enforcement’s massacre of Kent State protestors during the Vietnam Era. About all this and other violence perpetrated on behalf of Zionism, you say . . . nothing.

    I used to be able to rely on you for your facts, no matter what position was. That day is gone. I know you have at least one exception about not slanting or mis-stating facts: Israel. What a colossal disappointment.

    1. Ross S. Heckmann: Good analysis of Turley’s column. It’s nice to see someone else willing to back up his comment by using his real name. That’s unlike many of JT’s supporter on this blog who hide behind “Anonymous” or some other alias. They are all cowards!

      1. Actually, many of us remain Anonymous because we do not have WordPress accounts and have no desire to get them.

        1. I have a WP account but do not use it for security reasons. Yet I have a unique user name here on the good professor’s blog.
          Then again, for someone without a degree, I am smarter than the average college educated so-called elite, like Dennis.

      2. This is a fine example of the professor’s hypocrisy. He said nothing about a school preventing a speaker, the valedictorian from speaking because others claimed she was going to say something controversial. Thats the literal definition of a hecklers veto.

        It shouldn’t matter what she was going to say. Turley should have defended her and scolded the school for preventing her from speaking. That kind of hypocrisy is not lost on those who pay attention.

      4. I’ll take truths by anonymous authors over the lies by the like you you, every time. In fact, most of what drives these kiddies on campus to their shear stupidity is their need for an ‘authority’ to lead them. Same happened in Nazi germany and biden’s US

        1. The only stupidity is what you saw on Jan 6, 2021 by the ‘authority’ of the orange messiah!

      5. Yeah, Dennis, you are not only the arbiter of bravery but the paragon as well

      6. Not everyone wants yet another sign-in
        When one walks onto the town square to share ideas, one need not sign in–or even introduce oneself

    2. The evidence is available in the MSM, lots of it. It is easy to say that those whp support murderers, rapists and torturers are promoting violence.

      1. What they say in the MSM is often disgusting, but Zionists have a right to free speech even when they speak in support of murderers, rapists, torturers, and genocide.

    3. @Ross

      We’ve never seen you before (i.e. pop-up troll), and virtually everything you presented is based basically on hearsay. The facts in the post are not. You can’t editorialize facts on the ground away. I have never in my life seen hate and madness in this country at the levels we are now, and it is coming very nearly exclusively from our left. You aren’t convincing anyone with your gaslighting.

  14. Whoever said when you sacrifice freedom for safety you’ll get neither.

    1. In this case you are sacrificing other people’s safety for YOUR freedom. It’s not the same thing.

      1. “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
        – Benjamin Franklin

        Regardless of whose safety you think you may be protecting, the outcome is the same: By sacrificing other people’s freedom, you are sacrificing your own.

    2. That’s not exactly what Franklin said. “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety” is a quote and motto attributed to Benjamin Franklin. There’s a difference.

  15. I have noted before that what we are seeing today is quite similar to what was happening in pre-WWII Germany. A predominantly Christian nation who through skillful propaganda was convinced back then that gassing Jews was acceptable and necessary. Today, I have three wishes. First, I would like to hear the protesters asked if they believe what Germany did in WWII was the right thing to do. After all, those whom they support are pledged to exterminate Jews “from the river to the sea” for the survival of Palestine, just as German citizens became convinced that extermination was necessary for the survival of Germany. Second, I would like to see the enormous resources of the FBI and CIA used to find out and publicize exactly who is financing these protests. Clearly they are well organized and well funded. Who is it? After all, fomenting civil unrest and a conspiracy to incite a riot are crimes in most places, surely as serious as the January 6 events. Third, I would like to see these feckless University administrators labeled the enablers that they are and then fired. I realize I may be waiting a bit for any of my three wishes to come true, perhaps until I actually see Santa Claus come down my chimney, but I am patient.

    1. I’ve heard the savages in the streets shouting about how Hitler had the right idea and they are going to finish what the Nazis started.

    3. I would go farther. I would immediately expel any student who took part in the Jew hating riots. If any of them are non citizens I’d have them deported. Any Jew hating faculty, tenured or not, would be fired. Plenty of non Jew hating young PhDs would love to have their jobs. All administrators who supported the riots fired too. A complete purge of these evil so-called educators and students is the only way forward.

    4. @honestlawyer

      There is no way in Hades any of this is organic, these kids likely didn’t even know what a Palestine was a few short years ago (they would have been in my wife’s cohort at sometime in the recent past, and in all seriousness, these kids do not know how to use a stapler or how many states there are in the U.S.); it is just a new coat for the likes of BLM and Antifa. There are absolutely entities behind it all, no question.

    5. Canada would freeze their bank accounts & shut them down financially–both those who fund the protests as well as the protesters–as Trudeau did w/ the antivaxx truckers
      O, Canada, we stand on guard for thee

  16. This pathetic excuse of “free speech” has been so prostituted by events like this.
    (1) My parents used a basic tenet when raising us: “nip it in the bud.” They never had to deal with escalation, insolence, or insubordination. IT WAS VERY CLEAR FROM THE BEGINNING what our parameters/boundaries were, in speech and conduct. We learned the consequence(s) the first time we tried something, and our “freedoms” were GREATLY expanded as we earned our parents’ trust. As modestly as I can say this, we all turned out well.
    (2) A few weeks ago, several of us talked about what smart-alecks WE were growing up (obviously an affliction- common to all boisterous, energetic youth). But I find a big difference in today’s youth. When WE did something wrong, we did it of our own creation and volition. We did it, we owned it, we were punished for it. We were not inspired by others over a metastasizing social media platform.
    (3)Conversely, seems like today’s kids are not so smart; they are simply kindergarten-level copycats of what they have learned from coordinated social media posts and exchanges, exacerbated (if not inspired) by the insidious infiltration of outside actors. One tent city occupation on one campus–which got a lot of attention and visibility–suddenly blossomed across the country. Speech became mob. (–And do an Internet/YouTube search of journalists interviewing several students who did not even know and could not articulate what they were even protesting!)
    Bottom line:
    I believe campus matriculation should include a no-tolerance outline of what is considered permissible speech, and what are the consequences of violation. Time, place, and manner, as well as examples of impermissible speech. And nip it in the bud for violations.
    I further believe that today’s youth display their immaturity by not thinking on their own about appropriate boundaries in making their voices heard in a way that earns the respect and attention of others to their issues.
    I express no opinion on the merits of the present issues–only the students’ inappropriate responses to their own selective perceptions and peer influence.

    1. There were no “time outs” at our house – it was more like “time’s up”. That nip it in the bud was very effective.

      1. BTeboe…exactly. Also, my father’s “Because I said so” upended any fantasizing about further discussion!

    2. @Lin,

      So you’re dictating to others how they should behave because of how your parents demanded you behave? Freedom and liberty, personal liberty is about making your own choices. Students choosing to protest and express their views is not subject to your values or expectations. They are adults. They are doing what they are free to do. Protests are meant to be disruptive. They are meant to bring attention to an issue. It’s funny how conservatives are quick to defend protests and riots in the Capitol and justify it as a right and freedom that shouldn’t be infringed. But students are not?

      That kind of hypocrisy is why conservatives aren’t taken seriously.

      1. Of course the protesters want to disrupt our daily lives & bring attention to their cause. That’s why they shut down bridges or prevent travelers from getting to La Guardia.
        Naturally they want to disrupt a commencement, because that is the university community’s crown jewel. Protesters want to hijack the commencement for maximum effect & exposure
        If even Tehran’s PressTV is writing articles about it, you know the protesters have “reach” & that the protest itself has “legs”

  17. Wailing anchor babies in restaurants ruining the meal that you paid for is another burden of illegal immigration that Americans must bear.

    1. Yeah, and these people who shouldn’t be here use your space as a playground, and if you object, then YOU’RE the bad guy.
      If they don’t get under your skin enough, then they will try even hard until they do. Then they will virtue signal over whatever reaction they get out of you by their provocations.

    2. While white babies are fine? I don’t want immigration but I want better allies than you.

  18. Jonathan: It started with small groups of university students protesting the war–handling out leaflets. Then it graduated into mass protests–encampments on campus and students marching across campuses across the country. Graduations were cancelled. But the protests continued.

    What I described above was what happened in the 1960s–the protests over the Vietnam War. Those protests continued with ordinary citizens joining in mass protests in DC and other cities across the country–until Nixon was finally forced to end the war. University protests are often the canary in the coal mine–they are a catalyst that focuses attention on an issue like a laser. The campus protests today are eerily similar to what happened when I was a university student.

    For university students today the issue is the state of Israel and its genocidal war against the Palestinian people. University protesters are calling for an end to the killing of over 33,000 innocent Gazan Palestinians–children, mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters whose only crime is that they happen to live in Gaza. University protesters are calling for an end to that wholesale slaughter and the creation of an independent Palestinian state. The international community supports that right.

    The protests at USC, Columbia and other campuses have nothing to do with “anti-semitism”. But some in this country want us to believe that. Anti-semitism is not the issue. The issue is whether the state of Israel will be allowed to continue its policy of exclusion–where Palestinians are beaten, killed and their property confiscated and are now confined to an open air prison in Gaza–depriving Palestinians any semblance of basic human rights. The continued military occupation of Palestinian lands and the brutal treatment of its occupants is not a sustainable policy. The only solution is the creation of an independent Palestinian living in peace with Israel.

    This is what university students across the country are calling for today in their protests. But the Biden administration continues to support Israel’s policies. Congress just approved more military aid for Israel. If Biden has an Achilles heal with young voters it’s his continued support for Israel’s genocidal policies.

    But you have a different take. You think “mobocracy” should not be tolerated: “The problem of violent protests and threats on campus is not solved by removing the potential victims”. If you look at the drone videos over the encampments at Columbia they were peaceful. There was no violence until the police arrived to dismantle the encampments and violently arrested the protesters–most of whom did not resist.

    As Yogi Berra famously said: “It’s deja vous all over again”. Back in the 1960s many in the press and pundits condemned university protests over the Vietnam War. They called for the police and National guard to put them down. You sound no different today. Putting down peaceful protests will not solve the problem–the Israeli war against the Palestinian people. Solving that problem is the only way to bring peace back to university campuses.

      1. Anonymous: Yes, I lived through that period. What is happening today is no different. It’s always the students who lead the way and the adults who eventually follow.

      2. Can we work an angle in that includes both Chamberlain & Churchill–?!!?
        I understand history better when we start w/ Chamberlain, zoom forward to Churchill–and then hit absolute warp speed w/ 1968 & Kent State

    2. Dennis: You and Gigi seem incapable of separating issues and staying on topic. The good professor’s post is NOT about the merits of the argument/issue between Israel and Hamas, it is about campus control of protest. Thanks anyway.

      1. @lin,

        What Dennis and Gigi are saying is relevant to free speech. Turley often argues that students are free to protest outside of the classroom. But when they do they are told they are disruptive and not following the rules. Guess that is not acceptable either. Protests are supposed to be disruptive or not follow rules.

        In Texas students are being arrested for peacefully protesting the situation in Israel. That’s arresting students for exercising free speech. If it’s anti semitic speech so what. It’s still protected speech. But in Texas it’s not. Turley is not defending students. The hypocrisy continues.

    3. Yogi Berra also said, “It got late early.”
      We’re exactly 47 minutes after Late right now

  19. OT,
    Great news!
    Poland says it is ready and willing to help Ukraine with its crisis-level manpower and recruitment problems! They will to round up all those military aged Ukrainian men who fled the Ukraine out of cowardice!
    Zelensky said he needs to conscript 400k to 500k for his summer offensive. Manpower issues are so bad, Zelesnsky signed a decree allowing foreigners to enlist in their military. He also is trying to lower the draft age from 27 to 25, which is meeting with great resistance from the populace.

    1. The US should take any and all of those Ukrainian refugees from Poland and anywhere else who are fleeing the US/NATO provocation war against the Russians. We should instead send the heirs of the US neo-cons and EU elites to the eastern front to fight for their supper.

      Bidens simultaneous false flag operations in NE Europe and Gaza are stains on the US perpetrated by the neo-cons, corrupt ukrainians, corrupt israelis and hamas, and globalist ‘elites.’ They should all swing for their crimes against humanity.

      The campus wokesters and their ball-less admins should be shipped to hamas territory to enjoy the righteous enlightenment, first hand.

    2. Tell your hero to get out of Ukraine, recognizing international borders, then Urkaine won’t have to conscript anyone.

  20. I posted this late yesterday but it is worth reposting given the article

    The Leftist Pro-Hamas “students” inciting violence and promoting anti-semitism on America “elite” universities are paid protestors just like the paid trolls. These antisemites are funded by George Soros Open Society Foundation and Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Consequently no one should expect a Soros funded DA to go after those universities for enabling violence against Jews. Columbia University president has no need to worry in losing her job.

    Some Anti-Israel Protesters Are Paid: Rockefeller and Soros grants are subsidizing those who disrupt college campuses

    Two of America’s largest philanthropic foundations are behind a group that has paid some of the anti-Israel activists for the kind of antics disrupting campuses across the country.

    Consider Malak Afaneh, a law student at the University of California, Berkeley, and Craig Birckhead-Morton, a senior at Yale. Ms. Afaneh went viral this month for disrupting a dinner at Dean Erwin Chemerinsky’s home. This week the Yale Daily News reported that Mr. Birckhead-Morton had been arrested for trespassing—and then re-emerged to address an anti-Israel crowd blocking an intersection in New Haven.

    Ms. Afaneh and Mr. Birckhead-Morton have both been “youth fellows” of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, whose website identifies them by their first names. As of April 4, the campaign was soliciting applications for a new cohort, whose “campus-based fellows” would receive stipends of $2,880 to $3,360 for three-month terms of roughly eight hours of work a week. That “work” could include aiding campaigns that “demand federal or state politicians cut US military, financial, or diplomatic ties with Israel.”

    The corporate entity behind these fellowships is Education for Just Peace in the Middle East. Where does it get its funding?

    George and Alexander Soros’s Open Society Foundation has put $700,000 into Education for Just Peace in the Middle East since 2018, most recently with a two-year grant in 2022, according to the Open Society Foundation’s website. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund has given Education for Just Peace in the Middle East $515,000 since 2019, most recently with a three-year grant for $225,000 awarded in August 2023.

    Wall Street Journal

    This is exactly how BLM ANTIFA had their endless supply of stacks of bricks and inflammable projectiles to spread violence.

    This is Marxism 101

    1. Estovir: Just reading this now, missed your post yesterday, thanks for the repost.

      1. The youth and others of today feel they can protest something just because they feel like protesting, whether or not it is justified. They do it because they can do it in a free society, and because it makes them feel good… also they have nothing better to do with their time…. which comes with affluence. If more of them had to work for a living it might be different.

        1. They do it because the constitution protects their right to do it. Are you against free speech and freedom of assembly? Or do you get to dictate when and how they should do it? Who gets to dictate when you get to protest and where? Me? Others?

          1. @George

            Nobody is listening to you. The Constitution protects the right to peaceful assembly, not this sheet show. You are a joke.

            1. They are not being violent. They are not rioting. Just chanting and doing a campus version of a sit in. You seem to be against free speech when it involves students peacefully protesting. You’re upset that they are being disruptive and demand they be punished.

                1. James,
                  Well said.
                  Based off reporting, yes, the pro-Hamas protesters are in fact violent.
                  And they will get more so.
                  A number of my Jewish friends have been asking me for advice of how to protect themselves. I have been advising accordingly.

        2. I Agree. These XX chromosome protesters grew up with an iPhone in hand, got trophies just for breathing, their parents are afraid of Karen, they are taking courses that the only career path is that of a Democrat operative. They are bored and want to be part of something, just to feel important.
          The XY chromosome protesters who aren’t getting paid, are there just to get laid.

          1. @Anonymous

            I have had people admit they were there just for the girls in the past, you are not wrong.

        3. Are you writing fan fiction about the inner motivations of college protesters–?!!?
          You’re speculating bigly

      1. De nada. I think this type of info proves everything people like HonestLawyerMostly, Lin, Mespo, others, and I have been saying for years regarding Marxism is here and well funded in America.

        I hope you and your ❤️ are well. I pray for you often.

        ¡Que Dios te bendiga!

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