It looks like the efforts of the Columbia trustees to negotiate “in good faith” with the Fascist dictator have failed so far. I guess this is good news, because the alternative would be reading an announcement further solidifying our reputation as “Vichy on the Hudson”. Maybe the trustees will some day realize they don’t have any choice except to go to court and fight. In the meantime, according to the NYT:
“We understand this finding is part of our ongoing discussions with the government. Columbia is deeply committed to combating antisemitism and all forms of harassment and discrimination on our campus,” a spokesman for Columbia said in a statement, adding that the school would continue to work with the government to address those issues.
The “Stand Columbia” group is solidifying its reputation as “Bend the knee, Columbia” by immediately coming out with a call for capitulation, without even knowing what we would be capitulating to.
Update: The Fox News story about this gets it right, with lede paragraph
The Trump administration on Thursday accused Columbia University of having violated federal law through its “deliberate indifference” toward anti-Israel protests that have been taking over the campus since Oct. 7, 2023.
This is not about the university allowing antisemitic attacks on students, it’s about Israel, with Columbia standing accused of allowing protests against the Israeli war on Gaza. Columbia was guilty of this until a year ago, but since then has had a policy of not allowing anti-Israel protests on campus, as the genocidal nature of the Gaza war becomes increasingly clear.
The New York Times has an excellent essay today by Steven Pinker, entitled Harvard Derangement Syndrome. This is about Harvard, not Columbia, but the two institutions are very similar, so most of what he writes applies here (except that they are now in open warfare with Trump, we’re trying to appease him).
Pinker has been one of Harvard’s most prominent critics on the subject of the excesses of identity politics, and he’s often been right about that. But about accusations of “antisemitism”, here’s what he has to say:
For what it’s worth, I have experienced no antisemitism in my two decades at Harvard, and nor have other prominent Jewish faculty members. My own discomfort instead is captured in a Crimson essay by the Harvard senior Jacob Miller, who called the claim that one in four Jewish students feels “physically unsafe” on campus “an absurd statistic I struggle to take seriously as someone who publicly and proudly wears a kippah around campus each day.” The obsession with antisemitism at Harvard represents, ironically, a surrender to the critical-social-justice credo that the only wrong worthy of condemnation is group-against-group bigotry. Instead of directly rebutting the flaws of the anti-Zionist platform, such as its approval of violence against civilians and its historical blind spots, critics have tried to tar it with the sin of antisemitism. But that can devolve into futile semantic disputation about the meaning of the word “antisemitism,” which, our council has argued, can lead to infringements of academic freedom.
Update: I haven’t always agreed with Matt Strassler about things, but he’s got it right
As far as I can see, the government is merely using Jewish students as pawns, pretending to attack Harvard on their behalf while in truth harboring no honest concern for their well-being. The fact that the horrors and nastiness surrounding the Gaza war are being exploited by the government as cover for an assault on academic freedom and scientific research is deeply cynical and exceedingly ugly.
Update: What I for a while mistakenly thought happened yesterday did happen today. Harvard went to court to challenge the removal of its ability to enroll foreign students and immediately got a temporary restraining order.
I have been told that one reason the Columbia trustees caved in March was that they had legal advice that Trump could do exactly this and that it would be a disaster for the university that they could do nothing about. We now know that this was very bad advice. So far, the court system is holding and absurdly illegal actions like this are often being immediately struck down. If, as seems all too possible, the trustees are about to cave-in further on the basis of legal advice that they have no choice because of things like this, they need to immediately fire some lawyers and rethink what they have been doing.
Update: Rise Up, Columbia has some analysis of the day’s events. They quote the opinion of a law school faculty member that the latest attempt to pressure Columbia is something that will quickly be enjoined or fall apart if the university does not cave, but goes to court:
It is very rare for an agency to complete the review this quickly, and to come to a final determination this quickly. That suggests to me that there were short cuts taken to prove the conclusion the Trump Administration wanted (similar to the Department of Education finding, which was legally insufficient and is invoked by reference in this press release). It would quickly be enjoined or fall apart, in my opinion, if Columbia filed suit instead of working with the administration to damage the university.
Update: To the extent the Trump administration has a strategy here, it’s explained by Christopher Rufo on twitter:
The strategy should be to barrage the Ivy League universities with civil rights investigations and negotiate toward consent decrees, placing their administrations under a federal anti-discrimination regime. Then dismantle DEI down to the foundations.
If Columbia agrees to a consent decree, the Trump plan is to use that to have a Trump appointee exercise control over the university. On the “anti-semitism” front, any criticism of Israel would be eliminated (this there probably are trustees happy to vote for). On the other “DEI” issues, this would be an excuse for Trump’s people to control admissions and hiring, as well as vetoing any overly “woke” course content.
Update: A late Friday communication from Shipman is here. No change: still negotiating, no consent decree, no going to court, no fighting Trump. All about the huge effort by the university to fight antisemitism. As for the ongoing negotiations, to figure out what’s going on you’ll have to read between these lines:
The finding is part of the process to resolve these investigations and seek a restoration of our vital research funding. While we disagree with the government’s conclusion, we are continuing to engage in a thoughtful and constructive manner in addressing these serious issues. It is not a signal that we are no longer working to resolve the issues with regard to our critical and long-standing partnership with the federal government…
As we move forward in our discussions with the government, we will continue to explore all strategies as we do the important work of addressing these serious issues.
Update: Bend the Knee, Columbia is out with a new long argument for why Columbia must immediately capitulate to Trump. The main part of the argument is about the tuition Columbia would lose if Trump does the same thing he did to Harvard, remove its ability to enroll foreign students. This argument I’ve been told was a significant factor in the initial cave-in last March. The obvious problem with this argument is that yesterday a federal judge immediately issued a temporary restraining order since the Trump action was absurdly illegal, and the same thing would happen if the Trump people try this tactic here. Not only that, but such temporary restraining orders are now often getting turned into permanent injunctions (see an analysis by a law professor here):
Here, Judge Burroughs will likely follow the path of Judges Beryl Howell and John Bates, who permanently enjoined the administration’s efforts to punish the law firm Perkins Coie and Jenner & Block, respectively, for speech and conduct that met with the president’s disapproval. Those rulings will likely echo in this decision as well, but not for the same reasons. Here, the failure of the administration to follow even the most basic of administrative steps required to take its desired action will likely doom the effort.
I had thought that the Bend the Knee, Columbia people were a possible counter-example to my increasing conviction that this is all ultimately about Gaza, since that wasn’t a motivation they discussed. Things have changed in the latest newsletter, where they now make explicit that they share Scott Aaronson’s motivation for collaboration with the Fascist dictator, that this is justified by the supposed fact that anti-Israel protesters here are intent on killing the Jews. Worse than that, the anti-Israel protesters are domestic terrorists and threaten national security. Discussing the recent murders in DC, the author writes:
The alleged perpetrator had been affiliated with a communist organization (which led protests at Columbia’s gates, and since disavowed him), and has now been praised by certain extremist groups as embodying “the highest expression of anti-Zionism” and “an act of solidarity and love.” One these groups (which has a following at Columbia) is now going further, calling for its members to be “completely willing and ready at all times to KILL.”
We previously wrote in these pages: “Meanwhile, these extremists are going beyond public displays of support for terrorism, to claiming they are actively in coordination with and ‘seeking instruction’ from actual terrorists… Left unchecked, we fear it is only a matter of time before some unhinged individual decides to stop ‘playing make-believe’ and turns to actual violence.”
Tragically, it appears that time has come. When those who commit acts of violence are celebrated rather than condemned, we cross a line—from protest into something far more sinister. What once may have felt like theoretical risk has now crystallized. This is no longer a matter of campus politics. It is a matter of domestic terrorism and national security.
Harvard has its own analog of our Bend the Knee people, the 1636 Forum, which is run by Sam Lessin, who has been on a campaign to stop criticism of Israel at Harvard for a while. His latest newsletter has a long explanation of how disastrous the Trump order about foreign students is for Harvard, that Harvard has no choice but to negotiate surrender. That the whole thing is absurdly illegal doesn’t seem to him worth mentioning, nor that courts will immediately put a stop to it.
Update: The Intercept has this story about what is going on with Shoshana Shendelman, one of the Columbia trustees.
Update: A story at Politico claims that the Trump administration is pausing all new interviews for student visas, and planning to add new screening of social media of all students applying for visas. Note that this is not specifically aimed at Harvard, but applies to all US educational institutions. Under the excuse of stopping pro-Palestinian terrorists, the plan may be to implement the larger MAGA goals of doing as much as possible to stop foreigners from coming to the US while at the same time doing as much as possible to harm US universities, seen as dominated by MAGA’s enemies.
A Stand Columbia Sympathizer,
Your only response to my argument that this is a moment when institutions need to stand and fight dictatorship by decree is that I am “agitating for performative irresponsibility”. About that I guess it’s a matter of values and we’ll just have to disagree.
If you insist on discussing this as a purely practical matter, I’ll just point out that so far all the trustees have gotten from desperately trying to appease Trump by the cave-in and firing the university president is a second round of grant cancellations on top of the original ones. You accuse me of naivete about loss of jobs, but you seem to me to be far more naive about this. You ignore who the Trump people are, what they want and how they operate, despite having the lessons of the last couple months to consider. The idea that Columbia can just sign a settlement document and trust the Trump people to follow it and restore funding is to my mind naive in the extreme.
It is not a naive position to calculate that a large chunk of government funding is gone for the duration of a Trump administration, and that if we’re going to get any of it back, prospects for doing so are best optimized by going to court, not by trusting in Trump’s “good faith”.
Related to this, part of what I’ve never understood here is why the trustees don’t both go to court and continue to negotiate. Even you seem to agree this may be the thing to do if the Trump demands are unreasonable. One difference between us is that we likely have different views of what changes to the way the university operates are “reasonable”. But more importantly, it is the illegal (dictatorship by decree) nature of the way the demands are being made that tilts the calculation way in favor of litigation.
To give an analogy: if mobsters show up at your store and tell you you have to give them $500/week, you have a cost/benefit analysis to do. But you also have to decide whether to go to the police. If the police have not been corrupted and you still have a functioning criminal justice system, you have a strong moral obligation to go to them. This is because if you won’t defend against having a neighborhood run by the mob, you’re helping turn your neighborhood into one run by the mob.
To continue the analogy, ignoring the moral argument. As a matter of practicality, once you’ve decided to give in to the mob, chances are they are not going to be satisfied with $500/week and you’ll soon find out you no longer have a store, they have taken it over.
Dear Peter,
Your moral passion is admirable, and I don’t doubt for a second your sincerity or your desire to see Columbia resist authoritarian pressure. But I’d gently suggest that your framing—however principled—also risks coming across as absolutist, and at times, untethered from the institutional, legal, and financial realities at play.
You write compellingly as a citizen and concerned academic, but when you start asserting how litigation works, how settlements are negotiated, or what financial exposure the university faces, you enter domains where you are, by your own admission, not an expert. You’re not a lawyer, nor a university CFO, and the nuances of regulatory law, consent decrees, and institutional risk management are real and nontrivial.
It’s entirely fair to argue that the moral stakes justify a legal fight. But to assert that litigation is the obviously correct strategic path, and that not pursuing it amounts to capitulation or collaboration, overlooks the possibility that there are informed professionals who share your values but disagree with your tactics.
There is room, I believe, to oppose authoritarian overreach without collapsing every strategic disagreement into a moral failing. When you suggest that anyone who isn’t 100% aligned with you in demanding litigation is naive, complicit, or collaborating with a “Fascist dictator” you risk alienating people who might otherwise be your allies.
The challenge right now is how to preserve the long-term integrity of institutions like Columbia legally, financially, and morally. That will require not just courage, but coalition-building, humility, and a willingness to accept that even among those fighting the same fight, there will be disagreement over means.
Respectfully,
Aaron R. Bush, SEAS ’77
Aaron Bush,
I make it abundantly clear that I am not a legal expert. I would very much like to hear from anyone who is well-informed about the status and prospects of Harvard’s two lawsuits or the legal advice pro and con re litigation that the Columbia trustees are considering. Given that Harvard, with presumably the best legal advice money can buy, has decided to litigate, as a non-expert I’m quite comfortable disagreeing with other non-experts who want to argue that litigation is an unrealistic and doomed strategy.
The legal issues Columbia faces are as far as I can tell precisely the same ones as Harvard’s. The difference is purely in the unknown list of demands that Columbia is negotiating, which surely are different. This difference may though not be significant. The Harvard demands are what Trump wants, the idea that Columbia will accept the principle of dictatorial rule by degree, sign an agreement not giving Trump what he wants and this will be over seems to me extremely naive.
I got into this partly because of dealing with Scott Aaronson, who was very explicit to me that it was of the highest importance to him that Columbia do what Trump was asking. I’m quite comfortable describing him as a collaborating with a Fascist dictatorship in order to get what he wants. His fanaticism is an extreme case but he’s not the only one doing this with this motivation. I don’t think Scott’s narrow obsessions are the same as for Stand Columbia, but accusing the student protesters of being terrorists and a threat to national security is going a long way down that path.
I got into this convinced that I needed to blog in support of Columbia and the Columbia administration, helping to defend the institution against outside forces that were spreading lies about what is going on here. Slowly I came to the realization that there are powerful forces within the university community with a very different agenda than mine, perfectly happy with the lies. The university needs to be defended not just against Trump but against these forces that are collaborating with him.
I’m in no way a moral purist, am a strong believer in the necessity in life of realism, compromise and understanding other people’s views. I now understand Scott Aaronson’s views very well, and realism tells me there is no compromise with him on this. About Stand Columbia, at this point I unfortunately don’t see any common ground on the litigation issue, see the exchange above.
Dear Peter,
I haven’t followed this quite as closely as you have, so I raise the following observations (with openness to correction if I’ve misunderstood anything):
1. As far as I can tell, Columbia has not received demands comparable to those issued to Harvard, at least not publicly. In fact, Columbia’s president explicitly stated that if such demands were made, the university would reject them. That to me suggests that the Harvard demands were unique (and the government later backpedaled, saying they were sent in error.)
2. It’s also worth noting that Harvard has roughly four times Columbia’s endowment and is in a far stronger financial position to absorb the costs and risks of prolonged litigation. That practical difference seems relevant when weighing decisions.
3. Regarding the protests: I’ve seen credible reports and photographs showing that the student protestors distributed material from the Hamas Media Office, which is a terrorist organization. Would your impressions change if they handed out documentation from ISIS or Al Qaeda or, to go in another direction, the Jewish Defense League or violent white supremacist groups? In your mind, are they just harmless idiot kids who don’t know what they are doing?
Aaron Bush,
With 3. you make your agenda clear. I’m done arguing with the Scott Aaronson crowd, too much time wasted on that already.
Dear Peter,
Respectfully, I am not part of the “Scott Aaronson crowd”. I also don’t have an agenda. I simply want to know: do you think these are just harmless idiot kids? If so, that’s fine. It’s not my perspective, but I am genuinely trying to understand how academics on campus (i.e., not me) think of this. Please don’t dismiss my genuine question out of hand as somehow not worthy of being answered or… “not even wrong” :o).
Aaron R. Bush,
The protesters are mainly upset about the ongoing slaughter in Gaza and the situation in the West Bank. I would guess few are in favor of the killing of Israeli civilians but you probably could find some.
For context, this past weekend large crowds of Israelis marched in Jerusalem chanting “Death to Arabs”, see
https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-jerusalem-nationalist-march-ben-gvir-0c6471592182aac205115150d1b3a552
I’ve never heard anything even remotely like that from the protesters at Columbia.
Not going to waste more time fighting the protesters=terrorists propaganda.
The Harvard demands were not a “mistake”, there was just a claim from someone involved that they were sent a couple days prematurely. The Trump people were not expecting Harvard to make them public. They have not backed down from them in the least, with the later McMahon letters, Trump posts even more clear in their desire to destroy Harvard as it currently exists. There is no reason to believe Trump’s goals with Columbia are different than his goals for Harvard (and for the US university system in general). Yes Columbia is now negotiating surely based on a lesser set of demands, but if it gives into those, that won’t be the end of it, the agenda of the Trump people will be the same.
Yes, Columbia’s endowment is significantly smaller than Harvard’s. It’s also a very large number and could finance not all of the things Harvard is doing to fight, but quite a few of them.
Peter,
To me at a meta level the motivations of the protesters doesn’t really matter, and the issue of “antisemitic” or “not antisemitic” is a rabbit hole not worth going down. What does matter is their behavior. However, as it has been brought up, the evidence doesn’t really support your claim that they are primarily motivated by the ethnic cleansing currently going on-because it is public knowledge that on October 9th 2023, Columbia’s SJP and SVP wrote letters calling for protest and resistance and by October 12th we had very large protests here at Columbia on and near the steps of Low Library with over 100 participants. These are largely the same core of people and organizing groups involved. It seems to me they are mostly motivated by their view (longstanding) that Israel is an unjust oppressor society-and October 7th was a very visible reference point to restart protests. Israel’s disproportionate response of the current times certainly throws fire on these flames but clearly the core motivations were there a couple of days after October 7, well before now. It is also true that there are numerous instances of protesters passing out Hamas and related group propaganda and using images from such groups. Of course, these protesters are not Hamas members, essentially none of them would really join Hamas, and there has been essentially no violence here (and as you know because this was at the center of thread you rightly shut down last week-I find the idea of on-campus threat to Jews an example of a very 21st century hysteria), but these are facts that go along with the fact that Hamas’ original charter invokes several times the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and calls for the killing of Jews worldwide. Make of that what you will.
Again, my view is that we should allow protests if they follow reasonable guidelines and we should punish those appropriately who do not follow these guidelines. I don’t want to shut down this or other speech even though I feel the protesters are doing their cause harm with their tactics. It does however bring me to one last point-the issue of Title 6 violations. It would seem to me that almost all of the Trump lines of attack are clearly illegal, but the one line that will have judicial traction is that there was institutional indifference to disciplining cases of bias based on national origin and religion. Columbia was very quick to punish other examples of perceived bias-which by contrast puts them in a worse position. We know of dozens of unpunished cases-and while we also know that part of the problem is that Columbia was not set up to handle these kinds of cases at scale, and it is very disorganized, this argument doesn’t always work in court. There are cases now where even Obama-appointed judges have seemed sympathetic to this line of attack at other universities in the privately filed Title 6 cases-so it is something to pay attention to as the fight (for lack of a better word) continues between the administration and Columbia. My feeling is that the use of such Civil Rights laws by the government are very problematic, but here we are.
As an addendum, I want to point out that I commented on the “Hamas” thing because it was asked and I do think it is relevant-not to deciding the question Peter thought was being asked, namely one of antisemitism, but because it does potentially add to the legal exposure issue. I don’t think the average protester loves Hamas just like I don’t think the average protester in ’68 wanted “to bring the war home.” But from the standpoint of legal vulnerability, such an issue can be engaged with. Is it really relevant? Perhaps not-as I think there are much more mundane legal issues tied to the Title 6 question I brought up above.
Dave,
I don’t see the point in trying to debate questions about the protesters as a group, or the history of what happened last year. This quickly starts getting like the arguments I’ve been hearing my entire life about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict (“Don’t you know what the Mufti of Jerusalem did in 1933?”, etc, etc…). I know you’re making a legitimate point in good faith here in response to a previous comment, but this debate immediately attracts a lot of non-good-faith actors trying to score points for their sides, so I don’t want to engage with it here (and want to discourage others from doing so).
On the question of principle of how such protests should be handled, that’s very difficult and I don’t have much of an opinion. I think it’s worth focusing not on last year or on what the right policy is, but what the facts on the ground are. What I’ve been seeing for the last year is
1. a very weird and oppressive security environment. Why is a security guard sitting outside in front of the math building? That this is justified as necessary because of a problem of “antisemitism” on this campus here and now is literally insane.
2. no approved on campus demonstrations about Gaza. I don’t know why that is.
What we’re living in now is an environment where anti-Israeli protests have been heavily suppressed at great cost to the community in money, inconvenience and free speech rights. The university’s calculation, even pre-Trump, was that announcing that this community had a bad antisemitism problem and doing this would satisfy the pro-Israel fanatics and defend us against Title VI suits. This hasn’t worked at all. The Scott Aaronsons of the world will never be satisfied, and for the Trump people “antisemitism” is just a fraudulent accusation designed to divide and conquer while they pursue illegal tactics to destroy us, and we’ve fallen into their trap.
To return to my obsessive point, the university needs to go to court, and try and get the courts to stop the illegal tactics and force Trump to follow the law. If we can get that, then we can worry about problematic but legal Title VI litigation. It appears that the trustees are hoping that not challenging illegality but bending the knee will make this problem go away, that they just need to convince Trump’s people that we’ve solved the nonexistent “antisemitism” problem. I think that’s continuing a terrible mistake they made from the beginning about what these “antisemitism” allegations are and what the goals are of those exploiting them.
Why not try a new tactic of speaking the truth and trusting the constitution will hold? This may not work but the damage from doing the right thing may be no worse than what we’re doing now.
Peter-
when was there a voiding on campus for approval of Gaza protests? There was at least one big one in October. Was that not sanctioned? Did the rules change after that? I’m curious to know.
I understand your point-but I do think the university needs to follow long-standing federal laws. That means things like the recent Butler action are a clear no-no. Many other things too clearly fall under these rules. You can’t not investigate claims of exclusion by students based on their views of a country given what we know about Title 6 rules. It simply doesn’t matter how just you think the cause is, despite the fact that many faculty here don’t seem to get this. One thing we never seem to ask: do the protesters actually want a dialog and discussion, or do they want to disrupt in the name of their cause? It seems abundantly clear to me that it is largely the latter. In that case of course there are going to be reactions by the university, even with a non-Fascist president in power, that are going to appear repressive. Whether or not the means of “repression” are the right ones is an important and slightly different question.
Dave,
I don’t know either. In recent months the only two protests I can remember seeing in the middle of campus that I assumed were sanctioned were very small protests by the grad student workers union and medical center faculty. Going back to last October, a useful source is the Sundial report (or the edited Stand Columbia version if you prefer). Taking a quick look at that, there was protest activity around the Oct. 7 anniversary, but this was not sanctioned.
Not at all opposed to following federal laws. Seems to me that possibly the trustees are now violating federal law by acting in consort with people in the Trump administration to bypass the statutory process for dealing with enforcement of the civil rights laws.
I was just talking to a colleague with extensive experience in leftist groups and he pointed out to me that instances where they engage in problematic and self-destructive behavior sometimes are due to agent provocateurs. The story of people supposedly printing up and distributing Hamas leaflets always sounded to me a bit off, and would be a great thing to do if you were an agent provocateur. No way of knowing in such cases whether you’re dealing with legitimate stupidity or illegitimate cleverness.
>Seems to me that possibly the trustees are now violating federal law by acting in consort with people in the Trump administration to bypass the statutory process for dealing with enforcement of the civil rights laws.
Yes, this is possible.
Wrt to the extremist rhetoric-supporting groups such as CUAD and Unity tweet similar (sometimes the same) stuff-now these groups are not made up of students here in fact, at least not entirely and maybe in the latter case almost not at all, but I don’t think this is external sabotage…I just think the loudest voices are often the most extreme voices.
I’m not entirely sure if Peter’s assumptions that Columbia may be better off litigating against Trump is a good idea – at least not with the current bunch of lawyers. I tend to agree with Peter that Columbia needs better legal counsel.
The case I have in mind is from last year: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/01/columbia-student-protest-lawsuit
A student who sprayed pro-Palestinian student demonstrators with “Liquid Ass” settled with Columbia and received $395,000. I genuinely wonder what Dave and Peter feel about this. Do you feel justice / punishment / reward was appropriate? If your life dependent on it, would you trust the bunch of lawyers representing Columbia University, who reached this settlement?
I will leave you all to make up your mind.
To Dave: Yes, in the ideal world, indeed everyone who breaks the law should be punished. However, if the world is not ideal, and when perverse interests hijack the government apparatus, where justice is meted out preferentially, how should the people who don’t get justice behave? There are examples in US history where this situation has arisen before: during the times of slavery, do you think slaves could have changed their human predicament by following the law? If not, exactly what amount of “law-breaking” is allowed (retrospectively)? I dont have answers, but it is worth reflecting upon these philosophical questions. I sometimes think that the right amount may be what future historians would deem to be ok, but I have not made up my mind on that yet.
Tony,
Good point. That was a pretty outrageous case. Ex IDF Israeli student sprays noxious substance on pro-Palestinian students, in his words “harmlessly exercising his freedom of expression in opposition to a pro-Hamas, pro-Palestinian rally”. His lawsuit claims discrimination since he was put on interim suspension immediately.
Caving in and not going to court to defend against this kind of bogus “antisemtism” accusation is yet another example of the really bad decisions the university trustees (and lawyers) have been engaged in. You’re right that what’s needed is not just a change in a specific decision about specific litigation but a more general change in approach.
Please all, no abstract debates about justice, I can’t deal with that.
Dave,
My working hypothesis about anonymous groups online or online accounts purporting to be a person, but not identifiable, is that they’re very likely not what they are trying to appear to be.
Probably a mistake on may part to do this identifiably under my own name. Might have had a much better impact if I was anonymous and claiming to be a large group of important people.
Tony-there are external and internal laws here. Let’s separate them. The university can set up its own rules and codes of conduct. These rules do not have to conform, for example, to the 1st Amendment. My feeling is that in this regard the university constantly failed to uphold any sensible rules or consistently enforce discipline when it was needed to ensure a positive learning environment for all students, which occurs when students take over buildings, prevent students from sleeping and studying, prevent students from use of space, and enforce rules to punish students for discrimination against other students based on their viewpoints on foreign countries and the like. Note that this should apply to pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel students alike. In addition, in my mind these rules do not mean that people can’t protest, e.g. in favor of Gaza and Palestinians. It just means there is a proper time place and manner to do so. We can get into what this is if you like. Because of this I don’t view this as indifferent to just causes, it simply means that you cannot simply do what you want because your cause is just. I feel very strongly about this, and am totally unconvinced of the “my cause is right” argument justifying the creation of a threatening campus, the disruption of learning, or the endangerment of safety and destruction of property.
Federal laws are a different kettle of fish. It has been noted for a while that standing Civil Rights laws often run the risk of violating the constitution with respect to things like the 1st Amendment. I find them really problematic. However, in this case they are pretty clear that many of the actions of the student protesters (in some cases Israeli ones) violated these statutes and the university was very torpid in action. Proving institutional indifference is another story, but I think that Columbia’s behavior and actions indeed make a logical case unfortunately including some low level dean’s text comments that were leaked.
Tony/Dave,
Sorry, this is interesting, but I have to cut this off before others start to join in and I have no free time to do things like eat dinner.