Woody Allen once said that “80 percent of success is showing up.” Yesterday, Columbia University established its academic corollary: 80 percent of defeat is not showing up. In a disgraceful decision that deprived students of one of the most memorable moments of their lives, the university yielded to protesters who have occupied parts of the campus and buildings. Instead, graduates will be allowed to go to small-scale graduations.
It is a profile of cowardice that will stain the record of Columbia for years to come.
Notably, the graduation is ordinarily held on the space where students set up an encampment, but that space was finally cleared by police last week. It did not matter.
Columbia stated that “holding a large commencement ceremony on our campus presented security concerns that unfortunately proved insurmountable…Like our students, we are deeply disappointed with this outcome.”
“Insurmountable?” It is your campus. These are your students. Hold the damn commencement.
Columbia said the security advisers identified “too many variables” for holding the commencement and that adding security would only trigger the protesters.
So the solution, once again, is to do precisely what the protesters wanted.
Schools like University of Southern California said late last month that it was canceling its main commencement ceremony, citing similar security concerns.
Protesters disrupted the commencement at University of Michigan this weekend. However, Michigan did not yield. They handled the disruption and held their ground. They held their commencement.
The decision by Columbia is consistent with how administrators have approached disruptive protests for years. While some of us have called upon schools to suspend or to expel students preventing others from speaking on campus, universities have yielded over and over again. Indeed, citing security concerns became an easy way for schools to cancel conservative speakers while professing neutrality on the content of their views.
Faculty have not only encouraged but participated in such cancel campaigns.
Even classes have been stopped by protesters at places like Northwestern without any repercussions for the students. Northwestern (my alma mater) is the ultimate example of administrators picking the path of least resistance in the face of radicalized students. Recently, seven out of 11 members of the “President’s Advisory Committee on Preventing Antisemitism and Hate” resigned in protest.
Under the controversial agreement, the school will admit five Palestinian students each year, support two Palestinian faculty members annually, create special housing for Muslim students, and add students to Committees to review purchases from Israeli businesses.
Columbia has been consistently ranked at the very bottom of schools for free speech due to its intolerance for opposing viewpoints and failure to protect a diversity of opinions on campus.
Even the dean of its leading journalism school has warned against the “weaponization of free speech.” One of Columbia’s centers publicly complained when Justice Brett Kavanaugh was allowed to speak on campus.
When Columbia finally drew the line at protesters damaging and taking over buildings, the response from many students and faculty was outrage.
After Hamilton Hall was cleared by police, the editors of Columbia Law Review asked for the cancelation of exams because they were emotionally compromised. The editors wrote that the clearing of the unauthorized encampment constituted traumatic “violence” that left them “irrevocably shaken” and “unable to focus.” They were joined by editors of five other law journals, including the Columbia Human Rights Law Review & A Jailhouse Lawyer’s Manual.
They portrayed the trauma as the appearance of counter protesters and police on campus, accusing a “white supremacist, neo-fascist hate group” of “storming” campus. The Columbia students told the university that “many are unwell at this time and cannot study or concentrate while their peers are being hauled to jail.”
Columbia then faced threats of protests at the commencement, so it solved the problem by doing what the protesters were demanding. Of course, it did not solve the problem. Columbia is the problem. It is an example of how administrators have yielded control over their campuses to the loudest and most aggressive elements in their community.
Higher education is not supposed to be an academic version of the Hunger Games where the last person standing wins in a contest of attrition.
It is perhaps only appropriate that Columbia’s final lesson for graduates should be a continuation of years of yielding to the demands of those who dictate what can be said or done on campus.
Many of these students were denied commencement ceremonies four years ago. They worked to get into Columbia and many of their families had to make huge sacrifices to allow them to study at the university. As protests ramped up, they found themselves barred from campus and told again to take remote classes. A Jewish professor’s access card was deactivated because his presence on campus was viewed as too inflammatory for the protesters.
When they are finally ready to celebrate that moment, they have been told, again, that commencement is cancelled. However, this is not due to a pandemic but protesters. They will have to go to smaller graduations that are less objectionable to the radical elements of the student body.
Henry David Thoreau once said “The path of least resistance leads to crooked rivers and crooked men.” It has the same effect on higher education. There was a clear path open to Columbia. Hold the commencement and hold any disrupters accountable. In choosing to yield, President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik has abandoned not just these graduates but the integrity of Columbia.
“Instead of Swastikas, they are wearing Keffiyehs.”
https://www.capitalismmagazine.com/2024/05/what-does-the-holocaust-have-to-do-with-me/
Do you really think that if right-wing students were holding disruptive protests that the Columbia administration would be so passive?
The Columbia administration views any person with right wing views as a member of “white supremacist, neo-fascist hate group”. Dealing with “those people” is not insurmountable.
When your university trains them to be communists, you shouldn’t be surprised when they act like communists. If it was a legitimate university producing legitimate education, then I would say have the graduation with lots of armed security. If Hamas interupts, arrest them. If they attack, shoot them with tasers and rubber bullets. If they keep attacking, shoot them with live ammunition.
That’s what foreign traitors do.
“Minouche Shafik is Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science. She was Vice President of the World Bank, Permanent Secretary of the Department for International Development, Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, and Deputy Governor of the Bank of England.
Born: Alexandria, Egypt
Spouse: Raffael Jovine (m. 2002) Resides in England.
Minouche Shafik nationality: American, British, Egyptian
Office: Member of the House of Lords of the United Kingdom since 2020 ”
You have a foreigner running your crap, so it is crap.
Former husband: Mohamed Abdullah El-Erian is an Egyptian-American economist and businessman. He is President of Queens’ College, Cambridge, and chief economic adviser at Allianz, the corporate parent of PIMCO where he was CEO and co-chief investment officer.
FOREIGNERS WON’T LISTEN TO YOU, THEY WILL DO WHATEVER THEY WANT TO.
The president of Columbia is MUSLIM. It matters – obviously … given how this has played out. Are people afraid to state facts.
Warn, then expell five students (not suspend – EXPELL). Non students, find the serious laws broken, jail for 2 years minimum. All will end.
Immediately make universities disburse at least half of their endowments and take away their 501c3 Status and deny federal funds for any university or
Correctimundo.
Excellent idea. When the money starts going away, people think differently.
Earlier tonight, a buddy and I were out walking our dogs. We live near DePaul in Lincoln Park.
So while near campus my buddy says hey, lets cut thru the tent city.
While walking thru, all I saw was a bunch of stoner types hanging out as if they’ve been at a party.
No serious protesters, maybe one or two standing around.
Its like its a big party and these people are clueless on the region, history or current politics.
More rebels without a clue.
-G
I think the President of Columnia is AFRAID. She doesn’t handle conflict well, just shrinking from confrontation.
A sorry example for the students of leadership.
Her University is losing credibility day by day, and I’m pretty sure alumni will show their disapproval by withholding donations.
She’s in on it you clueless hooter.
I think the president of Columbia is not afraid. She is supportive. She is from Egypt and her family is muslim.
It must be nice having all of this campus chaos to write about. It makes it easy to ignore Merrick Garland and the DOJ.
It’s got to be a pretty high piss off factor for those who spent years studying, sacrificing, working and paying hundreds of thousands for a degree only to have their
glorious moment of acknowledgment of those efforts suddenly taken away.
Kind of like winning an Olympic gold and then finding out the ceremony is canceled.
The only thing that might possibly be worse is knowing you are now the holder of a degree that instantly brands you as a graduate of a unhinged hate filled racist institution that produces lunatics. And if hired, you will probably pull the same sh!t in the corporate world you pulled in school…and it won’t matter if it’s true or not.
Just as during the Vietnam War protests, people will eventually mellow-out their comprehension of the experience, indeed even their remembrance of the experience, in the years to come.
For now it’s important to recognize that a large-scale graduation @ Columbia can’t happen
People protested the vietnam war in the 60’s and 70’s. Protestors naively wanted peace.
They did NOT want the Viet Cong and NVA to overrun the country.
I do not recall anyone protesting FOR the NVA or VC. I do not recally anyone protesting FOR the geneocide of the South Vietnamese.
You can have participated in protests against the Vietnam war and grow up most proud of your role, but possibly recognizing that you were a little bit naive.
But no one protesting the vietnam war was protesting FOR terrorism, FOR Genocide, FOR immorality.
No this is not going to age well.
The handling by most universities and shows an outrage of the.lack of backbone to properly deal with unacceptable this unacceptable behavior. I hoper you will join with Alan Durrschewitz in seeking a better outcome.
Upstate – in re the below, I read something recently (can’t remember where) that shed some light on the current situation. So, in the years leading up to WWII and even up through Pearl Harbor, Great Britain was the leader of the free world, in the sense that it was on the front lines against the forces of darkness and it had moral clarity. At that time the forces of darkness threatening Western Civilization were Nazism and Fascism. After Pearl Harbor and through the end of the Cold War, it was the US. At that time the enemy of civilization was global Communism.
But, who is the leader of the free world now? It is not the US. We have caved and lack moral clarity. So, who? It is Israel. Israel is on the front lines in the war against global Jihad. Global Jihad is the new incarnation of Nazisim, Fascism, and Global Communism.
@Oldman
The interesting thing is that Israel isn’t standing alone.
Consider the 300 drones and rockets out of Iran directly attacking Israel. 99% failed to hit a target.
Israel didn’t defend themselves against it alone.
And there are rumors about the future of Gaza after Israel clears out HAMAS from Rafa.
Again its not just Israel and its going to be interesting to see if the rumors are true. (Sorry I’m not going to say what I’ve been hearing.)
Lets just say the Middle East will welcome Trump back w open arms. (Well mostly. Iran, not so much.)
Brandon has done a lot of damage that continues the damage Obama did.
As I walk past DePaul here in Chicago… I want to toss a couple of CS canisters into the compound.
Granted I don’t have any… but you know the feeling.
I blame the students, their parents and the education system for not teaching world history, or critical thinking.
Then I blame that ticky tocky thing. Should be banned and market forces will come up with a replacement.
And yes you’re correct.
We’re watching Arab Nazis in action.
Maybe Brandon should talk w Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon as to why we shouldn’t take in any refugees. 😉
-G
Gumby, as you know, the Arab Nazis you mentioned were allies of Nazi Germany and wanted to participate in the genocide of Jews. Biden and the Democrats are supporting a new Nazi (fascist) machine that wages war to obtain their ends.
In important ways Israel is an anachronistic 20th Century relic.
Gads, you just can’t sustain a country in the 21st Century that has a de facto apartheid r’ship w/ a second-class-citizen population in a ‘neighboring’ country
We need to see two sovereign states, neither holding dominance over the other.
For instance, Jordan sits next to Israel & commands its own affairs.
The same should hold for Palestine next to Israel
Poor Anon.
You clearly don’t understand the terms you use.
There is no Apartheid.
Hamas controlled Gaza since Israel unilaterally left in 2005.
So all of the horrors in Gaza are due to Hamas.
Israel had wanted a two state solution. Interestingly enough… Jordan was supposed to be the one Arab State and Israel the Jewish state. But no the ‘Palestinian Arabs’ didn’t want to be Jordanians.
You have no clue about the region and the history.
The truth is that everyone wants the Palestinians gone. No more Hamas, Fatah, PA, Hezbollah, insert your terrorist group here. Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel all want them gone. There’s more, but I doubt you could comprehend the proxy war of Iran and their involvement.
There will be no Palestine until the ‘Palestinian Arabs’ recognize Israel.
BTW, there are over 2 million Israeli Arab citizens. There is no apartheid in Israel.
-G
G – what you said is true, and it only scratches the surface of how Israel is the opposite of an apartheid state. What the other guy said is ignorant drivel that has little connection to reality.
-omfk
The West Bank was part of Jordan until 1967. When Israel won that war, Jordan refused peace (and a return of the West Bank). Eventually, in the 1990’s Jordan signed a peace treaty but did not want the West Bank back. Similar situation for Gaza and Egypt.
Left wing nuts like to throw words arround disconnected from their meaning.
A signficant portion of the citizens of Israel are Palestinian. They have full rights of citizenship.
They control a significant portion of the Knesset. They govern portions of israel.
The people of the West Bank and Gaza are those that fled during the 1948 war and/or fought against Israel.
They do not live in Israel. They live in the West Bank and Gaza. They have had numerous oportunities to form their own nation in the West Bank and Gaza. They have done pretty much everything possible to thwart that.
These people do not want to govern the teriritory they have, They want to destroy israel and rule “from the river to the sea”.
There is no Israeli apartheid. There is no Israeli colonialism.
Israel want to govern itself including the Palestinian people in Israel.
And it wants not to have to constantly fight wars with its neighbors – including the West Bank and Gaza.
Those are the rights of any nation.
It is likely after this war is over, that Israel will excercise a heavier hand over Gaza – not because it wants to, but because the Gazan’s have given it no choice.
As Golda Meir said long ago. If the palestinians put down their weapons tomorow – there would be peace.
If the Israeli’s put down their weapons tomorow there would be genocide.
Exclusive: Columbia Custodian Trapped by ‘Angry Mob’ Speaks Out
https://www.thefp.com/p/exclusive-columbia-custodian-trapped
Aren’t they precious?
One Third Of Stanford Students OK With Violence To Shut Down Speech; Report
https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/judge-duncan-shoutdown-what-stanford-students-think
Upstate – that it was law students doing the heckling is particularly egregious. Where I went to law school, a person would have been expelled for such behavior, as it is the antithesis of how lawyers are supposed to represent their clients’ interests. I went to one of the few non-ultra-liberal law schools in the country, and the faculty and administration made it clear to us that interfering with anyone’s speech, including that left-wingers, would not be tolerated. People took those admonitions seriously and it made for a peaceful, civil environment conducive to learning.
omfk:
“Where I went to law school, a person would have been expelled for such behavior, as it is the antithesis of how lawyers are supposed to represent their clients’ interests. ”
****************************
To quote one of my favorite Con Law professors on the same topic: “You have a constitutional righ to be an a-hole; you just don’t have the right to be an a-hole with a law license.” Sage words there, Prof. Leedes.
Meanwhile, in Israel, which faces greater threats every day, commencement ceremonies are going forward as usual.
Israel could take a knee, but a century of Fatah, Hamas and sympathetic protesters informed them that is not a viable choice.
@ n.n
10/7 showed them that they can’t stop until Hamas is eradicated.
The interesting thing. There’s a video of an IDF soldier calling out to some Palestinians to leave the area in Rafa.
They instead tell the IDF soldier to F himself. (I’m paraphrasing)
This is like the Nazi civilians in Berlin choosing to stay and die rather than flee.
For anyone who has sympathy for these people, don’t.
They are Hamas. Even though they are civilians they are supporters and willing to die for their cause like good little Arab Nazis.
And yes. Hamas/Hezbollah/Fatah/PA/etc … are all offshoots from the PLO which is an offshoot from the Arab Nazis who fought along side w Hitler’s SS in Europe. (You can google that if you want…)
-G
Also–Amalak.
OldManFromKS,
That is one significant difference between Israel and the US.
If there is some kind of terror attack, they shoot the perp, clean up the mess and carry on as if it never happened publicly. Not giving the terrorist any kind of limelight or acknowledgement.
In the US, if the perp is not killed, we hold a trial. They laugh at us in court. We put up mini-shrines. We will even go as far as leveling a perfectly good building for . . . reasons. We talk about it for days or weeks and have memorial every year.
Universities like Columbia have demonstrated a number of things about their administrations.
They are fundamentally weak and incompetent and unable to perform their fundamental functions, control their employees, protect their students, or respond to Marxist insurrections. I might add that they are also not worth the tuition they charge, but that is so evident as to be unnecessary to state.
They have also destroyed they reputation, and failed in their financial responsibilities. This will become clear as financial gifts continue to dry up.
“They are fundamentally weak and incompetent and unable to perform their fundamental functions, control their employees, protect their students, or respond to Marxist insurrections.”
– John A Busch
__________________
Are you out of your ——- mind?
“Universities like Columbia” ARE Marxist!
When communists such as Nancy Pelosi and comrades say, “Our Democracy,” they mean the democracy of the Communist Manifesto—they have extirpated the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the United States of America, and the [rational restricted-vote] republic that Ben Franklin gave the newly minted Americans.
Take a quick look around.
Do you see any Central Planning, Control of the Means of Production (unconstitutional regulation), Redistribution of Wealth, and Social Engineering?
Have you noticed the presence of Karl Marx’s motto, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs?”
Have you never felt the “Democracy” of the “dictatorship of the proletariat?”
American universities disparage and deprecate American exceptionalism, actual Americans, and American fundamental law, while they brainwash, propagandize, and indoctrinate students against freedom and self-reliance and immerse them in communism.
You can thank impulsive and “Crazy Abe” Lincoln for opening the flood gates and throwing the baby out with the bathwater—the Constitution out with reprehensible slavery—for which Karl Marx congratulated and commended him by writing “that it fell to Abraham Lincoln…to lead his country through…the RECONSTRUCTION OF A SOCIAL WORLD.” [B]
Americans suffer in the Marxist “SOCIAL WORLD” that Lincoln “RECONSTRUCTED.”
The shocking realization for a lot of American normies, post 7 October, is the degree to which Zionist interests govern goings-on on our college/university campuses.
Jonathan: DJT has a scheduling problem. Justice Merchan approved DJT’s request to attend his son’s high school graduation on May 17. But guess what? Yesterday, the Minnesotal Republican Party announced DJT will be the headliner for their annual Lincoln Reagan annual dinner in St. Paul–scheduled also for May 17. Woops! Logistically, there is no problem. Barron’s graduation starts at 10:00 am.
Will Todd Blanche ask Justice Merchan to allow his client to attend both events? Unlikely. Because Merchan will probably tell Blanche: “I have granted your client permission to only attend his son’s graduation. Political campaigning the same day is not included. Take it or leave it!”
Dennis quit gloating over this petty lawfare by the kangaroo court judge, your bitter sick attitude towards the First Amendment rights of the former President is disgusting
Dennis does not support the Constitution and Bill of Rights, Dennis supports gross corruption and the communist American government.
Dennis still waiting on the crime that elevated misdemeanor bookkeeping entry to a felony.
You claim federal election law. But the criminal law assigns exclusive jurisdiction to the DOJ. The civil law is the exclusive jurisdiction of the FEC.
State NY election law only covers those running for Stated or local office.
The accounting charge has blown up in the prosecutions face. The bookkeepers taking direction from the Accounts that were informed by their software and his experience dictated paying an invoice from a lawyer, is legal expense. DJT did not hide anything trained staff made the decisions.
Now you dont even have a bookkeeping error.
Come on Dennis, you whined conservative don’t want to talk the law. Lets talk.
So awful, Dennis–a bookkeeping error
You talk about this like Judge (not Justice) Merchan is deciding conditions of parole and not a simple scheduling issue. Whether you like it or not, in our system of justice defendants are innocent until found guilty. Even Donald Trump.
That pesky burden of proof can be such an annoyance. Suck it up, buttercup.
Will Dennis’s mom do his laundry again this week?
I appreciate the comments from the person who was at Kent State during the riots. Although I was only eleven at the time, I can still feel the trauma of them. Realizing that our own government used actual bullets that killed four students and injured others was a terrible shock.
Years later when my daughter was in Basic Training, the Kent State riots were used as an example of what not to do. We talked about it after she came home and was surprised that I would remember the riots.
What can we learn from the demonstrations at the campuses ongoing today? First lesson is that not everyone will be satisfied with the decisions that will be made going forward. My vote would be to allow the students to have their graduation ceremony. After all, they have earned this. They did not ask for the war nor did they ask for the demonstrations. Let them have their moment crossing the stage once their named is called so they will be able to receive their hard-earned diploma. They have looked forward to this moment for the last four years. It is shameful to deny the students this honor because of a few.
Trump wears a rat pelt on his head because he thinks it makes him look like blonde Elvis. Only he’s a wannabe and the pelt is thinning such that it no longer covers his bald spots.
My grandmother used to vote for the most handsome candidate.
You are free to vote as you please.
“the people are nothing but a great beast…
I have learned to hold popular opinion of no value.”
– Alexander Hamilton
_________________________
“The true reason (says Blackstone) of requiring any qualification, with regard to property in voters, is to exclude such persons, as are in so mean a situation, that they are esteemed to have no will of their own.”
“If it were probable that every man would give his vote freely, and without influence of any kind, then, upon the true theory and genuine principles of liberty, every member of the community, however poor, should have a vote… But since that can hardly be expected, in persons of indigent fortunes, or such as are under the immediate dominion of others, all popular states have been obliged to establish certain qualifications, whereby, some who are suspected to have no will of their own, are excluded from voting; in order to set other individuals, whose wills may be supposed independent, more thoroughly upon a level with each other.”
– Alexander Hamilton, The Farmer Refuted, 1775
_____________________________________________________
“[We gave you] a [restricted-vote] republic, if you can keep it.”
– Ben Franklin, 1787
_______________________
Turnout was 11.6% in 1789.
Voter qualifications were generally male, European, 21, 50 lbs. Sterling/50 acres as set, or restricted, by States.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Article I, Section 2
The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.
Among the benefits that non-rioting students have lost… class hours, a safe environment, freedom of speech, and now — graduation ! Perhaps they should sue for a tuition refund.