Columbia University - Remote Learning As Campus ‘Rancor’ Puts Jewish Students On Edge

[Cow Poke]

Where did I say they created or are running the protests? I think they are fanning the flames and making them worse than they normally would be. Instigators. Wrangling the student sheep herd into being more violent and intense. So yeah "ambulance chaser" might be more appropriate, as most ambulance chasers will create a mountain out of a molehill.

The liberals' defense of these protests sounds amazingly similar to the "Occupy" protests that just spontaneously sprang up all by themselves.

[Sparko]

The liberals' defense of these protests sounds amazingly similar to the "Occupy" protests that just spontaneously sprang up all by themselves.

Yeah and I think someone is supplying the professionally printed signs, maybe tents, and other sundries to keep them there protesting.

[Sam]

Where did I say they created or are running the protests? I think they are fanning the flames and making them worse than they normally would be. Instigators. Wrangling the student sheep herd into being more violent and intense. So yeah "ambulance chaser" might be more appropriate, as most ambulance chasers will create a mountain out of a molehill.

Yeah and I think someone is supplying the professionally printed signs, maybe tents, and other sundries to keep them there protesting.

The latter quote is agreeing with the person you originally tagged, who is stating that the campus protests are very similar to the Occupy protests, which he heavily implies were not "grassroots" protests but rather orchestrated, as they ostensibly "just spontaneously sprang up all by themselves". Following that voice of agreement, you suggest that "someone" is supplying the materials for the students and that this is suspect, ignoring the fact that there are numerous solicitations for donations and these protests have both national attention and nationwide supporters.

I don't particularly want to trawl through the old Freedom Convoy threads but I'll bet a dollar that no one there thought to question the authenticity of the protests over their use of outside donations.

-Sam

[Cow Poke]

Yeah and I think someone is supplying the professionally printed signs, maybe tents, and other sundries to keep them there protesting.

What amazes me is how many liberals think parents actually send their offspring to these expensive colleges - not so they can learn and become productive members of society - but so they can hunker down in comfort and demand food and drink be brought to them.

When these kids graduate - IF they graduate - do they really think they're going to be able to pitch hissies in the workplace to get what they want?

[Cow Poke]

What amazes me is how many liberals think parents actually send their offspring to these expensive colleges - not so they can learn and become productive members of society - but so they can hunker down in comfort and demand food and drink be brought to them.

When these kids graduate - IF they graduate - do they really think they're going to be able to pitch hissies in the workplace to get what they want?

I think we have to agree that there must have been something that caused this trooper to rush in and tackle the protester, so I'm still looking...

Thanks to a video report from Fox 5’s Eric Perry, we do have some much-needed context for the tackle.

“It was something never seen on the campus of Emory University Thursday as pro-Palestinian protesters and those against the Atlanta training facility went head-to-head with law enforcement,” Perry’s report began.

Thus, the protesters at Emory also included antifa miscreants from Atlanta’s “Stop Cop City” movement.

For further context, Michael Doudna of WSB-TV posted a video of a “peaceful” antifa protest outside Emory’s theology school.

As they crowded around law enforcement officers, pushing them against the building, the protesters maintained a chant that equated the Atlanta Police Department (APD) and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) with the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

“A-P-D, K-K-K, I-D-F, they’re all the same!” the protesters chanted again and again.

Perry’s report also showed Emory faculty and staff being led away in handcuffs after cosplaying as activists.

According to representatives of the university, the protest did not originate with members of the Emory community. Thus, university officials called on both Atlanta Police and Georgia State Patrol to help quell the disturbances.

All of this, of course, followed a pattern of ugly recent incidents at campus protests across the country.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1783651267165753525

[Cow Poke]

....

https://twitter.com/i/status/1783651267165753525

By the way, the video shows "peaceful protesters" pushing the police against the wall, trying to pin them between the wall and their protest signs.
Not only are the "peaceful protesters" pushing and yelling, you can also see objects being thrown at them.

police pinned to wall.png

[Starlight]

Experts seem to think the best comparison to these protests is the anti-Vietnam War student protests.

Though other experts are commenting that these protests have been far more peaceful so far than the Vietnam War protests:

The tactics employed by protesters in the 1960s were also vastly different. While many started and remained peaceful, at their most extreme, students rioted, barricaded themselves in buildings, fought with police, burned down ROTC buildings, and raided draft boards to steal or destroy files. They culminated in the Kent State massacre in 1970, when members of the Ohio National Guard shot at a crowd of unarmed student protesters, killing four and injuring nine.

Columbia students have now also barricaded themselves inside a building, suggesting that their tactics are escalating. But the recent protests still have not gone anywhere near as far as those in the ’60s.

“What we are seeing in this spring’s wave of protest is students who are not engaging in property damage. They are certainly not initiating physical altercations on any large-scale level,” Johnston said. “In the late ’60s, what we were seeing was protests that were much more aggressive in their tactics than the ones that we’re seeing today.”

[Starlight]

It appears that the student protesters at UCLA were violently attacked during the night by a pro-Israel group who were wearing masks and appeared older than student age. The masked attackers seem to have wielded baseball bats, and launched exploding fireworks into the tent area.

BBC: 'Horrific' violence at UCLA after counter-protesters attack pro-Palestinian camp
CNBC: Israel backers attack pro-Palestinian camp at UCLA
Al Jazeera: Israel supporters attack anti-war protesters at UCLA university in US

[Juvenal]

And when the officer was carrying him, his body weight was being carried from his armpit and shoulder (and leg) not his wrists.

Granted the cuffs weren't plastic. That makes it worse, because plastic cuffs can't be loosened. Or maybe these can't be loosened either. I don't know. I do know that being picked up from the elbow, the weight is born by the wrists, neatly explaining the greater distress everybody listening to this video is hearing.

Maybe you know the difference between an armpit and elbow, all evidence to the contary.

It's one wrong read after another with you, and all of them make you look like a nazi. None of this in any way provides an excuse for taking delight in somebody yelping in pain.

Dude, we've already got one seer.

This isn't a competition.

[Cow Poke]

It appears that the student protesters at UCLA were violently attacked during the night by a pro-Israel group who were wearing masks and appeared older than student age. The masked attackers seem to have wielded baseball bats, and launched exploding fireworks into the tent area.

If that actually happened, I 100% absolutely condemn it without hesitation.

[Cow Poke]

Anytime we see a very short clip of a police officer supposedly acting badly, I have to wonder why it started just at that point.

[Juvenal]

On the related topic, I have much more ambivalence about students occupying campus buildings, blocking other students from entering, and blockading emergency exits with large locks. If Columbia had tried and failed to negotiate a de-escalation quickly, I'd support a forced removal for safety reasons.

I'm beyond ambivalent. I'd be first in line to destroy a door or window if it meant helping a dog escape a burning building, for example, and here we're talking about stopping the bombing of starving children. That's a lot of moral leeway for aggressive, non-violent protests. But it's not enough leeway to justify occupying Hamilton Hall.

If the protests don't serve to change minds, they're useless. If they instead serve to harden minds against relieving the suffering in Gaza, they're not just useless, they're immoral.

[Cow Poke]

...

If the protests don't serve to change minds, they're useless. If they instead serve to harden minds against relieving the suffering in Gaza, they're not just useless, they're immoral.

Yes, it's "Opinion", but it's CNN....

Opinion: Campus protests write the GOP’s attack ads for them

Editor’s Note: Patrick T. Brown is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank and advocacy group based in Washington, DC. He is also a former senior policy adviser to Congress’ Joint Economic Committee. The views expressed in this piece are his own. View more at CNN Opinion.
CNN —
College quads have been turned into tent cities, university buildings have been taken over by groups of students unfurling banners supporting intifada, and campus protests are pockmarked with calls for violence and antisemitism across the country. This gives Republicans an easy argument to make about why voters shouldn’t place Democrats in charge of our key civic institutions. The attack ads write themselves: If they can’t keep their ivy-covered campuses safe, how can they protect you?

The GOP coalition is increasingly attracting voters without a four-year degree, who may have little sympathy for young people treating their time on campus as an opportunity for anti-Israeli activism rather than education. Voters who didn’t go to elite schools and see a Democratic coalition reluctant to criticize its unruly campus wings may find themselves culturally more at home with the party seen as favoring civic peace. So far, the Democratic Party hasn’t risen to the political challenge of disavowing the left-wing activists who could hurt them this fall.

House Speaker Mike Johnson is one Republican who senses the political opportunity. On Wednesday, he led the House in a vote on the Antisemitism Awareness Act. On Tuesday, he announced that House committees would investigate university policies around protecting Jewish students, including whether institutions should continue to receive federal funds if they haven’t taken sufficient measures to stop the harassment.

In the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has blasted students’ “dangerous, radical politics,” asking whether universities see their mission as education or consciousness-raising. Republican Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance has renewed his push to tax the endowments of elite universities, calling higher education “expensive day care centers for coddled children.”

Former President Donald Trump also senses the political blood in the water. On Tuesday he posted on Truth Social that President Joe Biden’s voice is one “that nobody has heard” over a picture of police arresting students in New York.

[Sam]

I'm beyond ambivalent. I'd be first in line to destroy a door or window if it meant helping a dog escape a burning building, for example, and here we're talking about stopping the bombing of starving children. That's a lot of moral leeway for aggressive, non-violent protests. But it's not enough leeway to justify occupying Hamilton Hall.

If the protests don't serve to change minds, they're useless. If they instead serve to harden minds against relieving the suffering in Gaza, they're not just useless, they're immoral.

I think that's fair and the strategic benefit of building occupations is where my ambivalence largely sits, understanding both the historical precedent for such occupations and the historical short-term costs relative to the longer-term benefit. The short-term costs here, as in some historical predecessors, is a lot of people the protestors are trying to support die. But did they die because popular opinion temporarily hardened against the protests and their cause or did they die from a reversion to the status quo as the initial support of protests hit "the wall"? I do not have a good handle on the intricacies of the question and I'm hesitant to opine too heavily on the merit of strategy.

From my vantage point, outdoor protests work to put pressure on a peace deal and building occupations work to move focus from the conflict in Gaza to the conflict of police raids. I think it's bad optics, bad strategy, and bad tactics.

Much less ambivalent about accessibility and safety, though. While favoring de-escalation, I think the universities do have a necessary obligation to the safety of its buildings and if students are barricading themselves in those buildings, the universities have an obligation to quickly end that.

-Sam

[rogue06]

What amazes me is how many liberals think parents actually send their offspring to these expensive colleges - not so they can learn and become productive members of society - but so they can hunker down in comfort and demand food and drink be brought to them.

When these kids graduate - IF they graduate - do they really think they're going to be able to pitch hissies in the workplace to get what they want?

And while they have their protest catered by the police they better get some feminine hygiene products sent in as well!