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[EuchreJack]

Columbia University announces that negotiations have broken down, and the main point of the protesters of "Divest from Israel" is completely unacceptable.
Universities are now suspending those students that protest, forbidding them from graduating, and are being criticized for being "not hard enough".

Almost no government or academic official recognizes that sometimes "Free Speech" is going to sound "Downright Hateful".

Provocateurs infiltrate the non-violent protests, inserting their own hateful speech.

Allegations of "large rocks" on some campuses are used to justify "clubs and cuffs".

Unnamed members of the University faculty and staff are assisting the students, at least at Columbia. Their futures are far from certain.

The protests continue. God Bless.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68923528.amp

[Folly]

Can someone explain to me why these protests are happening on Campuses?

Is it that College kids are the only ones naive enough to think they can influence global affairs on the other side of the planet, but they're too lazy to travel to City Hall so they just set up protests at their own Campus?

Or am I missing something in that educational institutions actually have some sort of influence over government decisions, so protesting the Colleges actually makes sense somehow?

[Strongpoint]

PTW this entertaining development

[Frumple]

Can someone explain to me why these protests are happening on Campuses?

Is it that College kids are the only ones naive enough to think they can influence global affairs on the other side of the planet, but they're too lazy to travel to City Hall so they just set up protests at their own Campus?

Or am I missing something in that educational institutions actually have some sort of influence over government decisions, so protesting the Colleges actually makes sense somehow?

I mean... think for a second, here? Ease of access is big, but you're badly, badly underestimating what sort of organization universities are, especially larger ones. They're national and international hubs, where people from all over the country and all over the world interact with them daily for extended periods; so far as exposure and awareness goes, they're tremendously more effective a venue than some city hall nobody actually gives a shit about and very few has to or tries to stay near.

They're massively funded organizations where a great deal of their funding is reliant on their student population, giving that population leverage they would not have at city hall. College age protesters are not universally stupid, a great deal of them are aware of that.

They have some of the best social networks in existence through alumni, increasing the likelihood of both awareness and action (if not necessary positive action, but still).

Their higher admin and staff get called into government decision making regularly (no one gives a fuck about random staffers at city hall, local mayors barely even matter on the state and national level even for ruddy metropolis scale cities).

They're traditional hubs of activism (for all sorts of reasons), which means organizational knowledge on how to manage and organize protests are often right there, which goes a long damn way towards cultivating and maintaining a major protest.

The list pretty certainly keeps going, that's not exhaustive by any means.

Protesting at a college makes a ton of frikkin' sense, especially in cases where it's literally the college acting (what's perceived as) poorly, and generally a hell of a lot more sense than the city hall that might be miles and miles away, nobody gives a shit about, and probably possesses a great deal more willingness to just teargas everybody.

E: And, like, beyond all that? Protesting is a lot like any other sort of political activity. Once you've done it, you're fairly likely to keep doing it. It's about as certain as certain gets that a substantial number of the folks protesting on a uni campus are, in fact, going to go on to protest at city hall, or some embassy, or the capital, or one corp headquarters or another, or wherever. It's a false comparison painting it as college vs. city hall -- "both" is an option, it's just not one that can happen simultaneously for any particular protester. When the next major protest kicks off, a pile of the folks involved with the college ones'll be at those ones, too.

[McTraveller]

Also even more simply:

* Youth.

* Close physical proximity to lots of people with similar ideas, it's easy to feel "we're in this together."

* A relatively large amount of free time and low risk: missing a class or two for a week, or getting kicked out of a particular college/university, has a low risk to derail your entire life.  Contrast to the risks associated with protesting if you are "in the workforce."

That doesn't even get into what was said above about effectiveness of the protests - it's just so easy to protest while in college.

[anewaname]

Something I have noticed in the news reporting is bothering me....

The articles commonly say there are Jewish students among the protestors (an unspecified quantity of the whole), and that Jewish students are "afraid" for their safety (the implicit being that "all Jewish students are afraid for their safety").

So, if you try looking at it from the pro-protestor narrative, you see there is Jewish support for the protestors, and if you look at it from the anti-protester narrative, you see no Jewish support for the protesters. When you have competing ideas of "all of them" versus "some of them", it tends to create the idea "the some of them is practically none of them".

Unless the pro-protestor groups get some statistics about their groups, like "what percent of the jewish students from campus are among the student protestors", and "what percentage of the jewish students from campus are more afraid for their own safety than for the protestors' safety"?, then the narrative is going to swing towards ideas like "the few Jewish students protesting aren't Jewish" and "all Jewish students on campus feel unsafe".

[zhijinghaofromchina]

Anyway these college students’ reactions make me think of China’s  May 4th Movement. But the different point is that we care about our own country’s business, the American students care about the foreigners. It sounds silly to me to do something for the Palestinians or the Israel.

Interestingly according to what one of my history professors once said , such naughty guys do such things are not for the country, they just want to avoid their final or medium-term exam. That’s ironical.

[Strongpoint]

The articles commonly say there are Jewish students among the protestors (an unspecified quantity of the whole), and that Jewish students are "afraid" for their safety (the implicit being that "all Jewish students are afraid for their safety").

Imagine an alternative reality... Right Wing Students protest against actions of something like BLM movement. Some right wing black Americans are on the side of protesters. And protesters randomly attack black people with "wrong" views on BLM. Would you need polls? Would you care about the percentage to determine what those protests are about?

[Starver]

Anyway these college students’ reactions make me think of China’s  May 4th Movement.]
That's over a century ago. How about the April 5th event, though? (A little under half a century. Decried as counter-revutionary, at the time, hailed as patriotic later.) There are always (at least) two sides, and "history is written by the winners". (The June 4th spark, 35 years ago, is of course still likely a verbotten subject, so I won't continue.)

But the different point is that we care about our own country’s business, the American students care about the foreigners. It sounds silly to me to do something for the Palestinians or the Israel.

It isn't wrong to consider the situations that others are in. In fact, it's far better to do so (if you're relatively free of injustice) than to go all "I'm alright, Jack" and basque in your own security of living.


Perhaps there is some tendency of considering that "it's a lark, I can skive off of lessons" (or because you have a crhsh on someone else in the movement), but once it gets to this level then you're far more likely to be involved because you actually are seeing something worth protesting about.

Higher-educational establishments are full of people who seek out information, by definition, and can be quite cosmopolitan and involve meeting plenty of people who you'd never have encountered in your birth neighbourhood or hometown. This way, you will hear opinions and information that you may never have encountered any other part of your life so far. With the possibility to vehemently agree or disagree with it all, and so become motivated to be an activist to one degree or another, for whichever perspective you sympathise with.


You need time, freedom and opportunity. And, yes, probably the recklessness of youth to try to make your newly formed opinions felt. (Though some people do continue beyond. It seems you can be an old protester, a bold protester and an old, bold protester; but they would still be rarer.) And you needn't even be wrong or misguided. You could be speaking cassandra truths, be ahead of your time, even be more realistic and practical than 'the old guard', untied by long term prejudice. (Or, of course, be completely misguided. Possibly at the same time.)


Me, I never did get involved in 'issues', when I was young. (I have an awkward memory of agreeing with a friend's statements on an issue that I later learnt were fairly close to actual fascist policies, and pretty much in the same words, not far from the precursor oratories to the whole beerhall putsch thing... I know what it's like to hear a ramped up "reasonable" opinion going a bit extreme... But luckily I never got dragged too far in that direction.) I may not have been less opinionated, but it seems I never found "my cause" in that particular period of my life. And I was probably more often on the VT100 terminals in the CS than likely to be anywhere near any kind of hand-painted banners being eaved in front of the campus library. These days, I'm probably more likely to become radicalised regarding proper use of apostrophes. Or the total rejection of Oxford Commas.

[Frumple]

But the different point is that we care about our own country’s business, the American students care about the foreigners. It sounds silly to me to do something for the Palestinians or the Israel.

It isn't wrong to consider the situations that others are in. In fact, it's far better to do so (if you're relatively free of injustice) than to go all "I'm alright, Jack" and basque in your own security of living.

Like, more than that, what many of the campus protests currently going on are caring about is our country's business. Protesters are calling for divestment specifically for the campuses they're protesting at, cancelling (future, to not immediately screw current students that were signed up for something before the current atrocities started happening) programs in cooperation with Israel, and so on.

They're specifically targeting America's business with a foreign country. The protests would be a lot smaller and probably differently targeted if the US wasn't feeding billions of dollars of funds and munitions into Israel and the IDF's coffers, our organizations weren't training with israeli military/police, our universities weren't trying to build satellite campuses in Israel, etc.

What the protesters are substantially concerned about at the mo' very much is our own country's business, heh. This ain't some distant conflict by unrelated powers, it's one the US is pretty damn actively involved in. That involvement is a good chunk of what's got so many people pissed off.

[Starver]

I don't disagree with where you take that, but of course the (willingly?) apathetic can still bask (not "basque", doh!) in a "nuthin' to do with me" attitude, even if their country has all-but-wet actual boots on the ground, and their equipment is their by proxy.

It's still a matter of expanding you consciousness, but of course you're not just targetting the <Foo> embassy for that country's treatment of region <Bar>, but also trying to pivot the diplomatic/trade/treaty links of your actual government.

I mean, I'm technically letting who knows how many objectional links go unprotested that might well involve my energy suppliers/local-to-national governments/regularly visited shopping chains, etc. I could possibly be blissfully unaware that SupermarketCo's buying practices are reinforcing tribal tensions over on a completely different continent. And even if I'm then informed of this, might consider it not worth my while to unilaterally change my choccy-biscuit consumption, let alone daub a bedsheet with messages and wave it around in front of the local store.

I might well avoid doing the latter. Especially if someone else was already doing it. And perhaps this then had me I silently doing the former (or switched to DiscountLtd's own-brands instead, imagining that this was a more guilt-free alternative, with or without proof), and I'd end up doing practically nothing to help the situation by doing so. Because I'm less inclined to activism, or more inclined to apathy.

But it'd be good (if the cause were good... and perhaps that's subjective) for there to actually be actual protesters. Outweighing my own direct 'contribution' of merely no longer buying one packet of chocco-bisqui-cruncho-wafers a week. Which would hardly contribute even a downward-blip on the respective financials (and wouldn't even identify the reason for it, by the time the munged information hits any decision-makers). Someone who can (and will) get noticed properly is better.


The only properly thought through problems I have with these particular protests is that while calls for divesting are amongst the more powerful legitimate messages they can make, any divest will typically just ensure an equivalent (slightly discounted) revest by any body that is in a position to do so but without pesky students ever really in their face enough. Caveats to "do what's right, but without causing different forms of harm instead" are far more difficult than merely dropping a hot-potato. (The dropping of all the Sackler Family philanthropic links from all kinds of institutions probably was never net-positive in alll the consequences, just a performative 'good' that led to scrabbling around for different sponsorship/funding/honourations to link up with, etc.)

And that it's only a few precarious steps from "protect innocent Palestinians" to "support the annihilation of the Jewish state", which probably the right-minded bulk of the protesters would not willingly take on their own, but certain elements can move the mob's group-overton window into that easier than they ought to. Notwithstanding that denying the right to protest is a bad thing that one would hope never happens in "the land of the free", one should ideally be intolerant of intolerance (and no more).

Of course, heavy-handed 'authorities' can pivot the "just here to indicate my support for peace" people into "you're denying us our voice" reactionaries, as well, and doesn't do much to prevent the creep from protest (or counter-protest, where applicable) into riot (and counter-riot), which then makes it an issue that does directly effect those who turned up, despite not being directly involved.


(TL;DR;, voices need to be heard, or we never hear the vital message. When the voices are suppressed or go beyond being merely legitimate opinion-stating, or both trying to be done at the same time, then it gets problematic. Square that circle however you can.)

[EuchreJack]

Bit of an update.

https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinian-campus-student-protests-war-8b0d3a0cedb17f5e892c6ca43bbdf628

[EuchreJack]

Well, it's over, at least at Columbia University.
As night fell on the campus, 100 NYPD officers raided the building, zip tied the students, and loaded them into buses.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/04/30/nyregion/columbia-protests-college

[anewaname]

The articles commonly say there are Jewish students among the protestors (an unspecified quantity of the whole), and that Jewish students are "afraid" for their safety (the implicit being that "all Jewish students are afraid for their safety").

Imagine an alternative reality... Right Wing Students protest against actions of something like BLM movement. Some right wing black Americans are on the side of protesters. And protesters randomly attack black people with "wrong" views on BLM. Would you need polls? Would you care about the percentage to determine what those protests are about?

You don't need the percentages to know what it is about, you need the percentages to show that the narrative of "all Jewish students are afraid for their safety" is false. The protestors will lose the propaganda battle if they cannot get that data out.

If any of those colleges had as many as 20% of their jewish students protesting, that would change the narrative.

[Strongpoint]

The articles commonly say there are Jewish students among the protestors (an unspecified quantity of the whole), and that Jewish students are "afraid" for their safety (the implicit being that "all Jewish students are afraid for their safety").

Imagine an alternative reality... Right Wing Students protest against actions of something like BLM movement. Some right wing black Americans are on the side of protesters. And protesters randomly attack black people with "wrong" views on BLM. Would you need polls? Would you care about the percentage to determine what those protests are about?

You don't need the percentages to know what it is about, you need the percentages to show that the narrative of "all Jewish students are afraid for their safety" is false. The protestors will lose the propaganda battle if they cannot get that data out.

If any of those colleges had as many as 20% of their jewish students protesting, that would change the narrative.

Would they? I can tell you what will the other side say the next day they provide such statistics. "Those are not real Jews."

After all, "Jew", like any ethnicity, is a very vague term. With Jews being an ethnoreligious group it is even more vague.