Sonoma State University President Mike Lee has been suspended after sending out an email yielding to the demands of pro-Palestinian students and faculty. In a Wednesday statement, California State University Chancellor Mildred Garcia criticized Lee for “insubordination” and placed him on administrative leave. Lee had only been in the position for 20 months.
The action was taken soon after Lee’s Tuesday memo in which he announced four “points of agreement” with protesters encamped on the school’s Person Lawn. This included disclosure of university vendor contracts and pursuing “divestment strategies.” It further adopted an “Academic Boycott,” that will avoid formal collaborations that are “sponsored by, or represent, the Israeli state academic and research institutions.”
Sonoma State University is not the first to cave to protesters. In addition to schools like Columbia canceling their commencements, 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.
Notably, at Columbia, the faculty overwhelmingly passed a vote of no confidence this week in President Nemat Shafik for her actions “to have our students arrested, and to impose a lockdown of our campus with continuing police presence.” These students occupied critical areas of campus, took over a building, trashed school property, and held workers briefly against their will.
On my own campus of George Washington, we are still not allowed access to our offices without prior approval and high fencing now blocks off much of the campus. With commencement this weekend, it may have the feel of graduating from the Gulag Archipelago for some of our students.
https://www.calstate.edu/csu-system/chancellor
Take. Away. The. Endowments. Period.
Let these people fend for themselves, and parents: stop thinking sending your kids to these schools is anything other than a transaction. Degrees are basically receipts in 2024, and you didn’t even get the good meat. Nobody is going to hire these clown children; you should have saved your money for when they will live in your basement well into their adult years, because they will, just with a whole boat load of debt.
Have to be really stupid to throw your entire career on the line
In the American south there were people who taught their children to hate black people. It is apparent that these people were despicable racist. There is a place today where children are taught from an early age to hate the Jew. https://www.memri.org/tv/gaza-strip-kindergarten-graduation-ceremony-military-drills-celebrate-surrender-israel-liberation-palestine. Somehow these racists are considered to be sanctimonious freedom fighters. White hood or keffiyeh scarf, what’s the difference?
A slight correction for Thinkitthrough. Having been born in the south and lived all over this country subsequently, I can unequivocally state that racism was taught all over this country. Was it more blatant in the South, yes. But there were Jim Crow laws North and East and West and racism everywhere else, just a little more subtle but very much there.
GEB said: “racism was taught all over this country”
Exactly right. My father sold life insurance in NJ in the 1950s and early 1960s. He was disciplined on several occasions, and transferred once, for ignoring redlining, and writing policies for people in the Black and Hispanic parts of town. This was when reflecting statistical differences in life expectancy in premium rates was not subject to government regulation of any kind, so decreased margins was not a legitimate reason for that kind of restriction.
“Thanks for chiming in, liar. Come back when you haven’t been caught in the middle of your lies.”
How would one know which reply this refers to? I’ll guess it is from the boozer. Try using that little thing in your skull.
Those who rally to HAMAS are declaring their support for the mission defined in the Charter of 1988 and the means to the end to achieve it. Whether out of blind stupidity or deliberate intent, they are in league with the kind of ideology that peoples and nations yearning to be free of a yoke of suppression and oppression as the religious dogma of these Islamist demand and profess, sacrificed blood and treasure to rid the world of. First they’ll come for the Jews, and then who will be left to speak for the rest? They are sailing in a ship of fools.
“Nothing Ever Last Forever … Everybody Wants To Rule The World”
Sorry got caught in autoplay:
Everybody Wants To Rule The World
Blackbeard is correct in his statement: “isn’t that a call for another Holocaust?” Yes, it is. As many of the respondents here will remember the riots on the University campuses in 1968 and onward, the only difference that I have noticed is these present-day riots are well organized by outside professionals. It should be easy to follow the money. Where is the FBI in all of this? Oh, that’s right… they are busy going after prolife people and parents who attend school board meetings. Perhaps if the FBI would send half of its resources to find who is behind these protesters the matter would fizzle quickly.
@Anonymous
Sure wish you’d post with a name, but anyway: yep. We went from, ‘Supporting Palestine’, to simply, ‘Hating all Jewish people due to the hashtag of Zionism’, mighty quick. And that was absolutely the M.O. of the Aryan movement 30 years ago. Don’t kid yourselves. This is quite literally history repeating itself because our modern youth are privileged, bored, ignorant, and susceptible. Wake up. Wake up, because it is now or never without metal meeting propulsion flying. Think you are an exception? You aren’t, if you are supporting this even a little bit. You are just another bubbled tool, and that bubble is going to pop, likely dramatically eventually.
And rightfully so. If you cave to terrorists you deserve to get your ass put out on the street. Hope he gets fired with zero severance.
You are right.
They have much in common with the Nazis with their hatred of Jews and their despise of dissent and free speech.
These are loud, obnoxious, pro terrorism, Jew hating activists who have conscripted some mindless student followers and are using them to make this out to be “protests.”
Wait…what? a person with common sense and a moral code living in California? How could that be?
Suspend the president who announced the policy, suspend him, but keep the despicable policies in place? Insanity instead of sanity.
What are the odds the “chosen” will be worth a darn? I’d say the caliber of faculty and students adhering to that cult will closely match the wackos chanting “death to America/Israel” since October 7th. The facts remain: there is no such country as Palestine. The people living in Gaza, Samaria, Judea, “refugees” in various Arab countries in the region, and the diaspora are Arabs. Twenty percent of Israeli’s population are Arabs, some are Christian, but the vast majority are Muslims. All Israeli citizens are afforded full citizenship and freedom of worship. The same cannot be said of Muslim Arab majority countries anywhere in the world.
Ask Lebanon what happens to a country when so-called Palestinians are allowed to enter. Ask Jordan, Kuwait, Tunisia, and Egypt the same question. The fact each of these countries refuse to accept any additional Arabs from areas from “the river to the sea” because they’ve learned their lesson. War, corruption, death, and destruction is what follows. Countries in the West are growing impatient with the disgusting behavior from wacko Islamist radicals.
Termination for subordination?
Yup. The president was toast when he failed to follow his marching orders from the chancellor.
Those Universities that caved or after the fact didn’t expel the students that were suspended…
Just lost billions (combined) in donations along w fewer students wanting to go to that school.
Here’s the downside.
A brain drain now will take years to surface when the students today go out and make a name for themselves in the field.
-G
Sonoma State University: Endowment: $52.7 million (2020) – Budget: $149 million (2019) – The parent organization is California State University: Endowment: $2.3 billion (2021–22) – Budget: $7.72 billion (2022–23). These Leftist organizations have F-You money coming out of their orifices.
Glad to see the Chancellor suspended the President of this erstwhile university. Guess that they never understood that divestment is just painting a Star Of David on Every Jew and business that should dare to work with Israel.
This is the NEW antisemitism. As Blackbeard wrote above. Clearly elucidates the modern Nazi’s are just like the old Nazi’s. They even have a state that terrorizes Judaism (called Hamas, or Gaza.) Once Hamas won an election they took over the entire state and voila! No more elections. Almost a complete copy of the generation of the Nazi state in Germany in 1933. HAMAS just follows the same script. Win enough votes as a political party, form a government , eliminate any further elections, take over every organ of the state, grab control of courts (eugenics laws), grab control of the education. The Hitler Youth were formed and they became the ground troops of the SS divisions that performed atrocities on the battlefield, and executed Germans who started to show some concerns about the morality and actions of the state. Syria and Iraq already followed this script with the Baath Party and you can see how that turned out.
And the Nazi’s (Hamas) had great popularity until Germany turned into a defeated ruin (California and NY)
Universities, have for decades, been the hot house, nurturing and growing murderous anti antisemitism.
Never forget.
These universities are managed by some of the most credentialed administrators in any field you choose. You could paper the outside of two story house, With all the degrees and credentials, when even the lowliest admin aide has a masters.
Yet they are too stupid to complete the simple task of maintaining a safe secure campus for the students.
So where are the calls to adopt an “Academic Boycott,” “that will avoid formal collaborations that are ‘sponsored by, or represent, the [*Hamas*] academic and research institutions’”?
Oh, wait.
Perhaps that “Oh, wait” should tell you something about the quality of the two cultures.
Problem is it’s faculty too, and they are a lot more radical than might be thought. Fairly out of step with most other segments of society. It’s not like they have the support of Democrats. I’m also hesitant to label these folks, I’d say a characteristic is to be radical just to be radical, if there were large demonstrations like this for climate, or anti police, I think they’d be into it also.
Isn’t using a term like “pro-Palestinian” a bit of a whitewash? Wouldn’t antisemites, Jew-haters or neo-Nazis be closer to the mark? When they chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free,” isn’t that a call for another Holocaust?
“Isn’t using a term like “pro-Palestinian” a bit of a whitewash? Wouldn’t antisemites, Jew-haters or neo-Nazis be closer to the mark?”
Bingo Blackbeard! 🙂