Ok listen, I'm all in favor of Israel knocking it the f*ck off and students protesting, but this article is written with a very specific skew.
Last week, Columbia University summoned an army of heavily armed, riot gear-clad police officers to attack its own students for peacefully protesting Israel’s war on Gaza and the university’s financial ties to Israel.
Couple of notes here.
It has evolved to a non peaceful protest. Some neo-nazi assholes were physically engaging with Jewish students. That's not cool.
A good number of nom-students showed up and we're the ones causing the problems.
Columbia called the local police to disperse a situation that was getting unsafe fast, because a university isn't really qualified to do that. Which is the right call IMO. It's the NYPD that choose riot gear.
Should it have been handled differently? Yes. Was the school dumb? Yes. We really don't need this slanted BS news to see that.
This is some of the quotes from a Newsweek article:
One video posted on X, formerly Twitter, showed a masked protester outside the university's gates appearing to chant: "Go back to Poland!"
Another video showed a man telling Jewish students outside the campus gates that "the 7th of October is going to be every day for you."
Then maybe arrest the Nazis instead of beating the actual protesters and shutting down the protest? Interesting that the absolute thinnest veil of an excuse is enough for you to be ok with police brutalizing innocent people who just happen to be exercising their right to protest.
Ok I. The interest of an honest conversation these are my thoughts:
I haven't seen any reports of beatings during the arrests. Can you send me something if you saw that? Were there brutalizations taking place? If so, you're absolutely right.
Looking at the pictures of the baracades and furniture, doesn't Columbia have an obligation to disperse a situation that is becoming dangerous? Isn't that one of the police's jobs?
I haven't been in a situation like that, but I'm pretty sure the police officer in that situation can't tell the difference between a Nazi and not a Nazi. And they might not self identify. I'm guessing things are getting heated. I read somewhere (sorry I don't have a source on this either) that the students were let off with a misdemeanor of trespassing, and the identified external agitators were charged with more. Then the students freely went back to protesting.
I'm going to reiterate, b.c. this is the internet, I would be protesting Israel too if I were a bit younger. My issue is with the way the story was reported.
Nope. They're not supporting Hamas, even indirectly because hamas is in control of Palestine.
They're raising awareness to the needless killing of children and other innocents
Self-deception is a process of denying or rationalizing away the relevance, significance, or importance of opposing evidence and logical argument. Self-deception involves convincing oneself of a truth (or lack of truth) so that one does not reveal any self-knowledge of the deception.
Wow, this is more relevant to you than others. Why go in so hard initially with your previous comment if you're only later going to present a statement like this. I do mean this kindly, let's try and talk rather than go in aggressively on others who have differing views to you. How on earth can something so nuanced and difficult be reduced to an attacking comment?
Neither one is in support of terrorist groups and last I check the ones inciting violence, which is on video for all to witness, was pro-Zionist protestors who came with weapons and attacked the opposition.
They are only "supporting terrorist groups" in the eyes of those who are so incredibly racist that they think that all Palestinians, including children, are Hamas and hence all deserve to die.
The only way to bridge the logic chasm between "being against the mass killing of Palestinian children" and "supporting Hamas" is the extreme racist idea that "Palestinian children are Hamas".
Sacramento State’s updated policy states that it “does not have any direct investments in these areas” right now but, in accordance with students’ demands, its investment portfolios will “remain free of such direct investments.”
Students: We're protesting until our school stops investing in stuff that's bad!
I don't think the students though that divesting would save all the Palestinians. I mean, I am sure one person did, but that is what happens when you have a large group of people. I think they just wanted to apply pressure against Israel where they could.
I think it is based and probably the most effective thing they could do to stop the genocide.
Divesting is a step, but it just allows them to remove personal responsibility for the death/suffering.
Uh, no. Divesting from South Africa had a big effect on the end of Apartheid. It's just not enough to do much by itself. But it is enough to push it over the top.
You attempt a lazy joke here because it seems you need attention, but policy like this matters, especially when things get "quiet" again after the spotlight fades. Also, in addition to divestment, the university also met their demand to appoint “a faculty member from Faculty for Justice in Palestine to sit on the finance committee, ensuring that investments remain ethical every year.”
Attention seeking? It seems like this could have been a single student government vote.
The university’s communications office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Jezebel on whether it is referring explicitly to Israel, or whether it regards Israel’s actions in Gaza as falling under the umbrella of “genocide, ethnic cleansing, and activities that violate fundamental human rights.”
Edit: Actually, just posting a list of the hundred + of schools that have changed official investment policy is not a fair response. The point is that it happens all the time, but it doesn't grab headlines. SGAs work with university leaders to cooperatively effect change not only on a regular basis, but as an essential part of their functioning.
This is one of the few oddities of the English language that I struggle with constantly. It seems like, as a native speaker, most of the other ones just "feel" or "sound" right, but I haven't been able to nail that down with effect/affect for some reason
The trouble is that both words have a verb sense and a noun sense.
The noun sense of affect is something like "mood" or "emotion" and isn't used often, while the noun sense of effect is "thing that happened (because of some cause)" and is a rather common word.
The verb sense of affect is "to cause something to happen (to something)" and is a pretty common word, while the verb sense of effect is more like "to make something be true" as in "effecting change" above.
The mnemonic I use is from dungeons and dragons, some spells are "mind-affecting effects" meaning they change minds and they're caused by the spell being cast.
To "affect" a change would be to alter the change itself, for example if the university had already been reviewing its portfolio then the protesters might be affecting the change by making it happen more quickly.
To "effect" a change would be to cause the change in the first place.
The vast, vast majority of 18 year olds are not in the military, and it's really weird to consider all 18 year olds adults because a tiny fraction of them are soldiers
I never once said they all were in the military or that them being in the military made them adults. I said if we consider them adult enough to be able to do that, then we need to just consider them adults in general.
Yeah, and I think that's stupid. It doesn't match reality. Just because 18 happens to be the age at which some policy says you're allowed to be a solider, doesn't magically make it the age that teens become adults.
I greeted my fellow 20-ish-year-olds with "what's up kids" at that age as a way of saying we were still young party machines. I am not disrespecting these folks.
The students being allowed to peacefully protest at all is a nice change, and hearing about it could encourage other peaceful protesters, who could enact more direct change
Definitely in that case, but short of something wackily eye-catching like "infoturkbot" or w/e tf that garbage is, I usually dont notice the name until im already on the page. I'm just sayin, I could easily imagine a few circumstances that would lead to someone not getting the obvious sarcasm in the headline.
