dostoyevsky-official

[dostoyevsky-official]

Blockade of Hamilton Hall at Columbia University demanding the university divest from companies doing business in South Africa. April 12, 1985.

#1985 #posted about 1968 but the same myopic condescension was aimed at students in 1985

[dostoyevsky-official]

this too shall pass

[dostoyevsky-official]

Among those arrested in Atlanta today were Noelle McAfee, Chair of the Philosophy Department at Emory University. You can hear her ask the PhD student taking the video:

“Can you call the Philosophy Department office and tell them I’ve been arrested?...I’m Noelle McAfee, I’m Chair of the Philosophy Department”

#lots of 'i apologize. i wasn't familiar with your game' recently

[dostoyevsky-official]

god made colleges in america that you didn't think could exist

[dostoyevsky-official]

Mark Mazower, The week that shook Columbia

Crises in the Middle East tend to play out here with unusual intensity. For years, the university was home to probably the best-known and most influential Palestinian intellectual in the world, Edward Said, and its leadership defended him against numerous attacks in the press. It has a great tradition as a world leader in Jewish studies and a highly diverse and international student body. There have been tensions and strains on campus in the past among faculty, students and administrators over the issues roiling the Middle East. But since I have been here Columbia has invariably followed the basic institutional principle of academic life that the university should govern itself, and the crises that arose from time to time were dealt with accordingly.

It has not helped that the university is being led by newcomers. President Shafik made her inaugural speech to Columbia only on October 4. A chief operating officer, the first in our history, started in February and appears to have little or no experience of academic governance. The new provost arrived only this month. In short, key leaders have no institutional memory nor much knowledge of the university. Worse, they give every impression of seeing themselves as the problem-solvers, and the institution they lead as a set of problems. In reality Columbia is more than a set of problems; it is home to thoughtful faculty and students.

[...] One student tells me it was crazy to call in the police. Another finds it scary to know they could come in again. I hear the same from others, of diverse backgrounds, nationalities and faiths. [...] Much of the external pontification about what is happening at Columbia is based on the craziness going on here, outside the gates. Those you see on television are mostly not Columbia students.

[...] Dozens of little hand-painted slogans are lying on the grass; I take a close look and none that I can see strikes me as offensive. I bump into a colleague, a social scientist who was until recently a senior administrator. No rabble-rouser, he feels President Shafik erred badly in her discussion of individual faculty members.

On Broadway an undergraduate I know, from the Midwest, tells me what they think about it all. They reflect for a moment. “It feels like a powerful moment,” they say. “It probably won’t lead to change but it might.” They like the solidarity of the students on the lawn, the mix of faiths and views. It is students such as this who give me hope.

Antisemitism as a concept is both highly charged and deeply opaque, and there is no agreement among scholars on how the term should be used. So let us start with a simple definition: prejudice against Jews. This has been around for centuries, and no doubt it is to be found on university campuses. The real questions are: in what degree and with what implications? The campus protests are directed against Israeli policy. But the argument that any criticism of Israel is tantamount to antisemitism is simply false.

I actually do not know from first-hand any instances of what I would count as antisemitic rather than anti-Israel abuse on the part of protesters. But the line between the two is exactly what there is argument about right now and it is not impossible it has been crossed. Although the universities have been vigilant in protecting student sensitivities in the past few years, some students supportive of Israel believe their feelings are being ignored. I do know for a fact that Israeli students — some of them sympathetic to the demonstrators — have been on the receiving end of vitriolic language in the past months. I find this singling out of people for political opprobrium on the basis of their nationality pernicious and absurd.

[...] Unlike the media or the politicians, the police have consistently underscored the non-violent nature of what has been happening inside the campus. At an impromptu press conference at the top of 116th Street held by the NYPD a reporter asked about students preparing to attend Passover seders: “What is happening in general, and have there been any threats against the campus in relation to the upcoming holiday?” To which NYPD deputy commissioner for public information Tarik Sheppard responded: “There have been no credible threats to any particular group or individual coming from this protest or any other.”

Monday April 22, 1.14am: An email message from President Shafik, the first since the crisis erupted, informs us that classes are to be held virtually today. My seminar is only a few hours away and I decide to ignore it. My students and I had already agreed we would hold class in my apartment, and anyway I do not like people telling me when and how to teach without good reason. During the Covid restrictions I continued to hold in-person seminars because foreign students needed them for their visas. Since then, I have had a strongly protective feeling about the campus and my students. The care my colleagues and I can show our students is part of our mission as teachers. Closing things down goes against my instincts. For learning, it is always better to be face to face.

Monday April 22, 1.30pm: I join colleagues heading on to campus. There are so many of us that we need to queue for admission at the 117th Street gate. While we wait, a man walks by sticking his camera in our faces, assuming we support Hamas. Once inside I join the crowd of professors standing on the steps; several hundred students are below us. Together we listen to the speakers. One of them asks a question that resonates with me. Why has our university president failed to express the pride we feel in our university and our students?

[dostoyevsky-official]

in addition to student protests you missed, just an hour away from nyc at flagship suny school stony brook university, nine students were arrested for a peaceful sit-in for divestment in an administrative building, weeks before headlines broke about columbia. haven't heard any noise about it since.

afaik charges have not been dropped against the students and they are being disciplined by the university. both adminstration and students have been hateful around the events surrounding the arrests. still disturbed by the reaction of the community.

On Tuesday, March 26, a pro-Palestine demonstration led by organizers of the Stony Brook University’s (SBU) chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SB4Palestine) ended with the arrest of nine protesters in Stony Brook University’s Administration Building.

[...] When asked if he was willing to be arrested, one of the demonstrators said yes. “Because I know what I’m doing is not wrong,” he said. “[I am] sitting on the floor of a public building demanding a school to divest from bombing literal children.” 

Administrators spoke with the protesters who stayed behind, requesting again that they left. “Children are dying in Gaza,” Zubair, a student member of SB4Palestine who asked to be referred to only by his first name for safety reasons, responded. “I don’t care about an arrest. There are 13,000 dead children. Can you repeat the words back to me? There are 13,000 dead children in Gaza. You said [the arrest] is life-changing. How dare you?”

Administrators present continued to ask protestors to leave the building. They urged the demonstrators to think about their futures and how an arrest record would affect them. Adam French, one of the arrested students, incredulously called their request “crazy … when a genocide is happening in Palestine.”

[...] While waiting for a bus to the UPD station, a freshman student who preferred not to give their name due to fear of retaliation from the university said, “I feel like it’s a complete betrayal of all the values that Stony Brook claims to uphold of being at the forefront of social justice, climate justice, all that. This act of censorship and suppression of voices for Palestine by students is … proof that this university is not standing on that fucking business when they need to.”

(x)

[dostoyevsky-official]

'Would you ever imagine the manager of a firm making a statement publicly in opposition to his board of directors?' That's the answer!

Well, I ask you to consider: If this is a firm, and if the board of regents are the board of directors; and if President Kerr in fact is the manager; then I'll tell you something. The faculty are a bunch of employees, and we're the raw material! But we're a bunch of raw materials that don't mean to be—have any process upon us. Don't mean to be made into any product. Don't mean ... Don't mean to end up being bought by some clients of the University, be they the government, be they industry, be they organized labor, be they anyone! We're human beings!

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels ... upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!

#mario savio #free palestine

[dostoyevsky-official]

the portland state university president has promised to pause taking money from boeing before protests have even begun. do not accept the narrative that students aren't achieving anything or that the demands are stupid, small, inactionable: the demands are just, thought-out, precedented, and they will be achieved. i hope everyone who thinks otherwise corrects their judgment.

#free palestine and free the university

[dostoyevsky-official]

"Taylor's not a poet" yes that's the point of the album, congrats on working out a woman has a sense of humour and is making fun of her charlie-puth-loving fake-hipster scumbag ~tortured poet~ ex

you can tell the swifties aren't good at reading and analyzing text because they can't distinguish between what is and is not a joke

#please stop sending me anons about swift

[dostoyevsky-official]

zionist counter-protesters showed up to northeastern yesterday night and chanted "kill the jews" as an act of sabotage. this morning, the administration called its own students "outside agitators" and had them arrested, but other students were able to de-arrest a few (x)

[dostoyevsky-official]

Blocked for blazing

i just saw that a post of mine was blazed by someone else... i assure you that i'm not spending money on this

#why would you blaze my posts 😭

[dostoyevsky-official]

apologies with regards to when i wrote that cal poly humboldt students, who have fully occupied a second building, aren't reaching the level of 1968. i wasn't familiar with their game.

#free palestine and free the university

[dostoyevsky-official]

sorry about posting about what's happening in nyc nonstop. it will happen again.

[dostoyevsky-official]

i think its so funny that alumni from schools like harvard and columbia that were there during the protests in the 60s-80s are expressing support for students currently protesting against the genocide in palestine, and random zionists that were NOT at these protests in the 60s-80s have the never ending audacity to tell these alumni "well thats different, what you protested was good and what they're protesting is bad." as if protesters against the vietnam war and apartheid south africa were not also demonized, arrested, brutalized, and even killed for their activism. history only remembers them fondly after the damage has already been done.

#the alumni are praising the protesters from the encampment

[dostoyevsky-official]

Multiple instances of harassment were reported at a “United for Israel March,” which drew hundreds of protesters on Thursday and was organized in part by the nonprofit StandWithUs and right-wing media figures, including Christian musician Sean Feucht, conservative radio host Eric Metaxas, and pastor Russell B. Johnson. [...] During the demonstration, Spectator captured on video numerous incidents of harassment and inflammatory language primarily targeting individuals inside Columbia’s gates and counterprotesters outside. [...] Multiple pro-Israel protesters moved toward them, with one man repeatedly yelling, “You want to get raped, you want to get murdered” at the group. [...] At around 6:33 p.m., a group of protesters, led by Feucht, began marching west on 115th Street before heading to the 116th Street and Amsterdam Avenue gates, chanting “Israel will be free, from the river to the sea” and “hate will not win.” The crowd also sang Israel’s national anthem. [...] One NYPD officer stood next to the counterprotester as pro-Israel protesters shouted at the individual, “Go join ISIS, I heard they like Jews,” “You’re a fucking Nazi,” and “You would get killed in Gaza, they hate you.” Protesters shouted that he was a “fake Jew,” “coward,” and “traitor,” called him a “kapo,” and tried to untie the back of his mask. [...] A protester shouted at a Black man holding a pro-Palestinian banner: “You don’t know where Gaza is. Where is Gaza? It’s not in Africa, buddy.” At one point during the protest, Johnson, one of the organizers, held up a sign reading “Hamas Universities,” with the names of several universities, including Columbia, written inside a swastika. At the Amsterdam Avenue gates, around 7:30 p.m., a protester leaned over the barricade to shout at a group of observers and counterprotesters within campus. One outside protester shouted through the gates that “Hamas would love you,” “You got nice lips for Hamas,” and “You’re sexy.” At around 7:50 p.m., the protesters breached the NYPD barricade separating the demonstration from the Amsterdam Avenue gates. Multiple protesters climbed up the gates and continued to shout at students on College Walk. Protesters at the gates chanted “Terrorists go home,” “Go to Gaza,” “cowards,” “Hate will not win,” and “Bring them home.” (x)

(x)

yesterday, a group of zionist pro-israel protesters in tandem with the proud boys and christian nationalists like sean feucht, brandishing israeli, american, and lehi flags, a zionist terrorist organization that carried out massacres in palestine, as well as swastikas, tried to climb over columbia's campus gates while yelling things like "go back to gaza," "kill all palestinians" at students, unimpeded by police until they were almost over. yet this isn't receiving widespread coverage

#that whiny business professor also called students kapos #someone asked for a source - here it is

[dostoyevsky-official]

congress also sat on its hands for 7 months, preventing aid from reaching ukraine, causing innocent civilians to die under russian bombs and artillery, quite possibly throwing the whole war into russia's favor because republicans and putin are berries plucked from the same field; that aid instead reached israel almost immediately, causing innocent civilians to die under israeli-american bombs and artillery. then those same people show up to columbia uninvited and try to call the national guard on students while looking them in the eyes

#johnson: enjoy your free speech! i will do everything to have you shot #where do i stand here do you think

[dostoyevsky-official]

even congress said it's antisemitic but you do you

my word!... even congress, that polestar of morality..

#gosh