To an old white guy the analysis in this piece of the surrender of a major academic institution to a cabal promoting ignorance and intolerance is worse than scary. Time to join street protests.
I'm another old white guy (82 years old) and a retired professor from UC Davis. I agree ; this is far worse than scary, it's terrifying. Academia must stand up to this bully, not bend the knee as Columbia just did. The same goes for law firms that are being asked to do even more, including bribes at the highest level.
The Democrats need to call out these cowards and let them know that when the pendulum swings back--and it's already swinging--their capitulations won't be forgotten or forgiven. Obeyance in advance is our fascism takes over. We need to let the universities, corporations, and other institutions know that taking the expedient route now to appease trump will have consequences--and not just those that come when trump decides you're not loyal enough.
I agree with you, but how can we Democrats criticize them, when our Minority Leader capitulated big time? I was watching a DNC town hall, and people talked about their concerns, but there still is no strategy for dealing with Trump.
Strongly agree. A Mother Jones writer who did the piece on the Bernie Sanders/AOC Fighting Oligarchy tour in Tempe, said the voters' opinion' on Schumer would be a focus group's worst nightmare. They talked more about his lack of a spine, than about fascism." (or something very close.)
Another old white guy, 77 next week. USMC veteran and retired lawyer. While I find the undemocratic, authoritarian, nihilistic conduct of the Trump administration appalling, I am absolutely horrified by the complicity in this insanity by major institutions such as Columbia and Paul, Weiss. Everyone must speak up. We’ve reached the point where silence is complicity.
You'd think that a university of this size would have a history department & a psychology department that could tell their administration that acquiescing to a bully just doesn't work. But then again, that administration wants to keep their jobs just like the Republican lackeys in our government. No need to stand up for what is right, just keep MY job, MY income, MY security! Leave it up to the students that pay their salary to make the outcry!
In recent decades many universities, my alma mater among them, have greatly expanded their bureacracies and that is a problem. The administrator class is interested in expanding and protecting its interests rather than the apparently quaint idea that students attend to learn, and that learning can include having their beliefs challenged and that might include being uncomfortable.
As a staff member at a college (retired) I told students that if it weren't for them, there'd be no need for the school. Administrators need to get their minds right on priorities - it's respect for the students and imparting knowledge that's most important.
This is what the entire CA University system has become. Administration having big salaries, large retirement incomes, resulting in continued higher student costs. Going from the greatest educational institution system in the world to a less than educational system.
Reduce government involvement, and let the people decide what is best for America!?
Does not seem to be working, from my point of view.
And you need not look just at what is happening in colleges and universities. Leave "the people to decide their fate and, as sure as day follows night (darkness to the Washington Post) greed will take over.
This is exactly why the Founders made us a democratic republic in lieu of a straight up democracy. Unfortunately the six Christian Nationalists decided the Felon should be a king and the GOP decided gerrymandering would ensure their power.
Part of the problem is they can rest comfortably assured that when (or if) decent people get back in the white house and congress, they'll do what they can to undo all the harm trump has caused, and they'll never have to a price.
Democrats need to start messaging directed at the capitulators. The receivership won't be lifted for Columbia; your funding won't be restored. There will be a price for your cowardice.
Stand up and reject fascism, and you'll be made whole again. Lay down and you won't get lifted back up.
An ironic side note - you know who else banned masks on protesters recently? China. The country that MAGA calls a communist dictatorship. Birds of a feather…
Inasmuch as Columbia is not a government entity, I'm not sure how much our Constitution matters here. But by now, it should be obvious that Columbia's mask ban is, on its face, contrary to the principles in our Constitution.
We are entitled to use masks to ensure our anonymity when exercising rights and freedoms secured by the First Amendment. This is a well-settled understanding of the First Amendment. For examples, check out the many references to "anonymous" or "anonymity" in Watchtower Bible & Tract Soc'y of N.Y., Inc. v. Vill. of Stratton (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/536/150/).
The thing that bugs me about disallowing masks is, what happens to people like me who wear a mask to protect myself from respiratory illnesses. Are they talking ALL masks or just ski masks?
Good point! Masks don't only help ensure our freedom of expression. They help ensure our health. I've long worn a mask when I'm coming down with a cold (to fight off the symptoms) and when I have a cold (to avoid spreading it). For decades, I've worn a mask when I run in the cold (to prevent getting a cold).
“Students will not be permitted to wear face masks on campus for the purposes of concealing one’s identity. An exception would be made for people wearing them for health reasons,” the university said. To implement these changes, a 36-member internal security force will be authorised to remove or arrest individuals from campus. The mask ban will include exceptions for religious and health reasons, but anyone participating in protests while wearing a mask will be required to present their university identification when asked.-Hindu Times
We have one of the least well educated presidents in history. He bullied UPenn into sealing his transcript and I can guess why and likely I am right. He doesn't like people capable of critical thinking because they see through his bafflegab. There should be an IQ requirement built into eligibility to run for president. RFK jr is over at HHS imposing his equivalent of Lysenkoism on the medical community. We are in for some dark times.
But I'm not sure about your declaration. I believe Benjamin Franklin put it better: "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters."
In his speech at the Constitutional Convention the day the Constitution was signed, Franklin said something similar. He believed that our national government was "likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other."
I disagree with you Sandra. Trump has neither intelligence or morals and the team around him demonstrates the same characteristics. To have a democracy we need both intelligence (in a well educated population) and morals (the ability to think selflessly about others).
"Intelligence and morality are mutually exclusive qualities." This simply does not parse for me, Sandra. According to what you are saying, if one is intelligent, one cannot be a moral person; and respectively, if one is moral, one cannot be intelligent, because the two are by nature exclusive of each other. Would you like to rethink what you wrote, and try again? Because as it is, it scares me that people find that a reasonable statement. It is not. There are many people who are intelligent and moral. I do not get what your point is, or what it has to do with making America constitutional.
Everything about Trump is about revenge. He is taking revenge on the one institution that showed up his stupidity and inadequacies. That is what this is about. Every move he makes is about how much better he is than anyone else. He is such a pitiful little man.
There are very intelligent people who use their intelligence to manipulate their way into wealth and power. There are many kinds of intelligence, and few ways to measure mos of them. What would you measure? The people on the Hill now are not necessarily unintelligent, but lack some of the other qualities we need in our decision makers. I am having real problems reading these kinds of assumptions when what we need is to look at the whole of a person's character. I also have to say that the "brightest" are not always the best choice, because we need people with the capacity to take a broad view, and that takes more than intelligence.
To my mind (in a way that echoes Franklin's comments cited here), one way to judge societies is to look at the sort of people who rise to positions of great power. That such people are mostly ambitious will be a given, but there are different ways to be ambitious, and different ways to exercise power. If our selection systems elevate either the amoral or the unintelligent -- which strike me as orthogonal rather than as "mutually exclusive" -- then we have a problem with those systems, and our travails will not go away until we resolve the problem. And that resolution may well require things like "educating the citizenry" (at places like Colombia?) as well as tinkering with the cursus honorum and fiddling with voting.
I am attending a HANDS OFF rally at the Bangor Maine Public Library on April 5th. We have to continue to rally at every opportunity to make our voices heard. This administration is lawless and somebody has to push back!
Two years!!! The House will be up for reelection in two years. Vote!!!! and kick the spineless traitors out. Strip them of their pensions and let them work for McDonald's or Taco Bel and feel the pain.
I work at the University of Minnesota which has also been under surveillance like Columbia by the MAGA forces. I intend to send this essay to our university president to encourage that we hold fast against Trump’s threats. If universities are willing to give up academic freedom, then that is the time to close their doors.
Using financial cost-benefit analysis to make decisions about the value of human rights is unwise. Freedom isn't free. Indeed, history shows us repeatedly that the cost is very high - just count the dead and injured in, e.g., The War of Independence, The Civil War, WW-I and WW-II.
Likewise, using cost-benefit ratios to decide what government programs are valuable and contribute to the betterment of society is not only unwise, it is irrational. Cost-benefit analysis almost always externalises costs (thus not taking them into account) and undervalues benefits such as keeping people healthy and ensuring universal education- because the values can't always be expressed in dollars.
I believe the choices that Paul, Weiss and Columbia are making are so abhorrent to most Americans that they will turn the tide against the Trump administration even if some formerly venerable institutions must destroy themselves.
Susan - I am hoping so. There has to be a moment which is so clearly felt and known that the momentum turns the other way. I think we are in it, right now.
Which "MAGA folk" are you talking about? The people to be concerned about are indeed interested in law firms and universities- which is why they are trying to take them out. If we'd been paying attention, we would have seen that all along the "red hat" Magas were just a distraction. The real danger comes from people who wear suits, and do not refer to themselves as "folk".
Of course it is those in suits and in power who are interested in and are attacking our institutions. The 'folk' would be those of the red hat wearers. In their own way, they aren't a distraction as they are the voters for the ones in the suits.
Colleges and law firms are about to show if they are as spineless as GOP politicos.
Capitulation to dictators only inspires more demands. The demands will not stop until we are all kneeling at their feet. The more who resist, the more who will join them. The more who bow down, the more who will feel they have no choice.
And in case you missed it, none other than the New York Times' David Brooks, proclaimed it on the PBS NewsHour last Friday, flat out calling Trump, BY NAME, an extortionist.
Well-stated piece. Masks are not as silly and petty and they appear. They enable those will health vulnerabilities to participate - another blow to “DEI.”
Exactly. I doubt those withheld dollars would have made any great difference to the university’s proper functioning, tho administrative salaries may have been pared down (a good thing) and interest of investments may have wobbled. Grrr.
I recently read an essay on fiscal crises and the threat of huge cuts in Federal support in the alumni magazine of another Ivy, and after long discussions of hiring freezes, research cutbacks, and other stringencies, there was a passing phrase along the lines of "and in the most dire case, the university might even have to tap the endowment...." Since that endowment is now north of $50bn and has been growing for decades faster than anything else about that university, I'm inclined to say, "damn straight you should tap the endowment!" But it's a horror to the administrators and Boards and Committees, who see the growth of the hedge fund as sacrosanct, I fear.
I really agree with you. I think the reliance on endowments for “what might happen. “. rather than for what is needed now. I think development of critical thinking skills, of our responsibility as human beings to one another, and our connection to the larger world. I don’t think lavish athletic and resident facilities that mimic 4 star hotels facilitate students becoming good citizens
If colleges and universities don't stand together to assert their independence, we might as well replace "academic freedom" with "academic acquiescence."
The problem here is when you say "universities". That word used here rarely includes the students. The fight against the war in Viet Nam had casualties but students prevailed. That will happen here as the older generation capitulates. The students know they own the future.
Please be careful declaring "the older generation" capitulators. We're the ones with memory enough to understand what's at stake. We don't all have 6-figure salaries.
The most active protestors against the Viet Nam war were the vets who came home and told the truth. The media didn't break the story- the vets did. And then they set out to let the public know, and built a support system for returning vets that were ignored. You haven't heard about "Vietnam Vets Against the War"? A great number of Viet vets went into public service and ran for public office.
I hope you're right, Paula. But the longer programs are closed, readings are censored, and classroom discussions curtailed by government, WILL students actually know that they own the future? Will they know enough about past and present to foresee their future?
I agree! No one should apply for admission. And students who are there should look to transfer. With no one to teach and no money coming in, there will be nothing to feed the greed.
To an old white guy the analysis in this piece of the surrender of a major academic institution to a cabal promoting ignorance and intolerance is worse than scary. Time to join street protests.
I'm another old white guy (82 years old) and a retired professor from UC Davis. I agree ; this is far worse than scary, it's terrifying. Academia must stand up to this bully, not bend the knee as Columbia just did. The same goes for law firms that are being asked to do even more, including bribes at the highest level.
I'll bring the pitchfork; you bring the torch.
I hear you. But I’m into old time non-violence. Will be singing hymns with Mennonite Action in South Bend tomorrow late afternoon. ☺️
The Democrats need to call out these cowards and let them know that when the pendulum swings back--and it's already swinging--their capitulations won't be forgotten or forgiven. Obeyance in advance is our fascism takes over. We need to let the universities, corporations, and other institutions know that taking the expedient route now to appease trump will have consequences--and not just those that come when trump decides you're not loyal enough.
I agree with you, but how can we Democrats criticize them, when our Minority Leader capitulated big time? I was watching a DNC town hall, and people talked about their concerns, but there still is no strategy for dealing with Trump.
Chuck needs to go away too.
Strongly agree. A Mother Jones writer who did the piece on the Bernie Sanders/AOC Fighting Oligarchy tour in Tempe, said the voters' opinion' on Schumer would be a focus group's worst nightmare. They talked more about his lack of a spine, than about fascism." (or something very close.)
Another old white guy, 77 next week. USMC veteran and retired lawyer. While I find the undemocratic, authoritarian, nihilistic conduct of the Trump administration appalling, I am absolutely horrified by the complicity in this insanity by major institutions such as Columbia and Paul, Weiss. Everyone must speak up. We’ve reached the point where silence is complicity.
This old white gal agrees - academic freedom is gone - the black shirts are back. Fascism again -
Self reply: DON’T stop reading here. This is a great thread involving many; as a group thinking together it’s extremely encouraging!
You'd think that a university of this size would have a history department & a psychology department that could tell their administration that acquiescing to a bully just doesn't work. But then again, that administration wants to keep their jobs just like the Republican lackeys in our government. No need to stand up for what is right, just keep MY job, MY income, MY security! Leave it up to the students that pay their salary to make the outcry!
In recent decades many universities, my alma mater among them, have greatly expanded their bureacracies and that is a problem. The administrator class is interested in expanding and protecting its interests rather than the apparently quaint idea that students attend to learn, and that learning can include having their beliefs challenged and that might include being uncomfortable.
As a staff member at a college (retired) I told students that if it weren't for them, there'd be no need for the school. Administrators need to get their minds right on priorities - it's respect for the students and imparting knowledge that's most important.
This is what the entire CA University system has become. Administration having big salaries, large retirement incomes, resulting in continued higher student costs. Going from the greatest educational institution system in the world to a less than educational system.
Reduce government involvement, and let the people decide what is best for America!?
Does not seem to be working, from my point of view.
And you need not look just at what is happening in colleges and universities. Leave "the people to decide their fate and, as sure as day follows night (darkness to the Washington Post) greed will take over.
This is exactly why the Founders made us a democratic republic in lieu of a straight up democracy. Unfortunately the six Christian Nationalists decided the Felon should be a king and the GOP decided gerrymandering would ensure their power.
Part of the problem is they can rest comfortably assured that when (or if) decent people get back in the white house and congress, they'll do what they can to undo all the harm trump has caused, and they'll never have to a price.
Democrats need to start messaging directed at the capitulators. The receivership won't be lifted for Columbia; your funding won't be restored. There will be a price for your cowardice.
Stand up and reject fascism, and you'll be made whole again. Lay down and you won't get lifted back up.
Leave it to the students? If they protest too publicly, they face deportation (and threats of having their citizenship annulled).
An ironic side note - you know who else banned masks on protesters recently? China. The country that MAGA calls a communist dictatorship. Birds of a feather…
China also requires classes that teach students to worship Xi Jing Pi. I guess we'll be seeing classes on trump worship soon enough.
don't have to wait...go to any evan church
As does North Korea
Absolutely great comparison John 👏
We are falling that low.
Inasmuch as Columbia is not a government entity, I'm not sure how much our Constitution matters here. But by now, it should be obvious that Columbia's mask ban is, on its face, contrary to the principles in our Constitution.
We are entitled to use masks to ensure our anonymity when exercising rights and freedoms secured by the First Amendment. This is a well-settled understanding of the First Amendment. For examples, check out the many references to "anonymous" or "anonymity" in Watchtower Bible & Tract Soc'y of N.Y., Inc. v. Vill. of Stratton (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/536/150/).
The thing that bugs me about disallowing masks is, what happens to people like me who wear a mask to protect myself from respiratory illnesses. Are they talking ALL masks or just ski masks?
Good point! Masks don't only help ensure our freedom of expression. They help ensure our health. I've long worn a mask when I'm coming down with a cold (to fight off the symptoms) and when I have a cold (to avoid spreading it). For decades, I've worn a mask when I run in the cold (to prevent getting a cold).
“Students will not be permitted to wear face masks on campus for the purposes of concealing one’s identity. An exception would be made for people wearing them for health reasons,” the university said. To implement these changes, a 36-member internal security force will be authorised to remove or arrest individuals from campus. The mask ban will include exceptions for religious and health reasons, but anyone participating in protests while wearing a mask will be required to present their university identification when asked.-Hindu Times
perhaps the myth of the ivy league is broken......
Whatever happened to "state action"? https://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/educational-resources/educational-activities/14th-amendment-and-evolution-title-ix/grove-city-college-v-bell-facts-and-case-summary#:~:text=On%20February%2028%2C%201984%2C%20the,was%20benefitted%20by%20the%20grants.
Absolutely great comparison John 👏
We are falling that low.
We have one of the least well educated presidents in history. He bullied UPenn into sealing his transcript and I can guess why and likely I am right. He doesn't like people capable of critical thinking because they see through his bafflegab. There should be an IQ requirement built into eligibility to run for president. RFK jr is over at HHS imposing his equivalent of Lysenkoism on the medical community. We are in for some dark times.
https://handsoff2025.com/about
Intelligence and morality are mutually exclusive qualities.
MAKE AMERICA CONSTITUTIONAL AGAIN!
I love your slogan!
But I'm not sure about your declaration. I believe Benjamin Franklin put it better: "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters."
In his speech at the Constitutional Convention the day the Constitution was signed, Franklin said something similar. He believed that our national government was "likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other."
Me too. Very solid!
I disagree with you Sandra. Trump has neither intelligence or morals and the team around him demonstrates the same characteristics. To have a democracy we need both intelligence (in a well educated population) and morals (the ability to think selflessly about others).
"Intelligence and morality are mutually exclusive qualities." This simply does not parse for me, Sandra. According to what you are saying, if one is intelligent, one cannot be a moral person; and respectively, if one is moral, one cannot be intelligent, because the two are by nature exclusive of each other. Would you like to rethink what you wrote, and try again? Because as it is, it scares me that people find that a reasonable statement. It is not. There are many people who are intelligent and moral. I do not get what your point is, or what it has to do with making America constitutional.
Everything about Trump is about revenge. He is taking revenge on the one institution that showed up his stupidity and inadequacies. That is what this is about. Every move he makes is about how much better he is than anyone else. He is such a pitiful little man.
Anyone running for Congress should have an IQ test. There's a bunch of idiots on the Hill now. Karma will get them.
There are very intelligent people who use their intelligence to manipulate their way into wealth and power. There are many kinds of intelligence, and few ways to measure mos of them. What would you measure? The people on the Hill now are not necessarily unintelligent, but lack some of the other qualities we need in our decision makers. I am having real problems reading these kinds of assumptions when what we need is to look at the whole of a person's character. I also have to say that the "brightest" are not always the best choice, because we need people with the capacity to take a broad view, and that takes more than intelligence.
Hopefully before they destroy us.
Love the reference to the Soviet potato guy!
To my mind (in a way that echoes Franklin's comments cited here), one way to judge societies is to look at the sort of people who rise to positions of great power. That such people are mostly ambitious will be a given, but there are different ways to be ambitious, and different ways to exercise power. If our selection systems elevate either the amoral or the unintelligent -- which strike me as orthogonal rather than as "mutually exclusive" -- then we have a problem with those systems, and our travails will not go away until we resolve the problem. And that resolution may well require things like "educating the citizenry" (at places like Colombia?) as well as tinkering with the cursus honorum and fiddling with voting.
I am attending a HANDS OFF rally at the Bangor Maine Public Library on April 5th. We have to continue to rally at every opportunity to make our voices heard. This administration is lawless and somebody has to push back!
My class of geezers has sent a letter to our alma mater’s administration demanding they resist and work to form unity against the tyrants.
Hope it works. My alma mater caved to texass gov a couple of years ago.
I'm SICK! Isn't this administration using our tax dollars to blackmail our institutions of learning? Can our democracy stand four years of this?
trump is looking at ruling for far longer than 4 years. Good times!
MAKE AMERICA CONSTITUTIONAL AGAIN!
the 2026 election will tell the tale. who will be able to vote?
Two years!!! The House will be up for reelection in two years. Vote!!!! and kick the spineless traitors out. Strip them of their pensions and let them work for McDonald's or Taco Bel and feel the pain.
I work at the University of Minnesota which has also been under surveillance like Columbia by the MAGA forces. I intend to send this essay to our university president to encourage that we hold fast against Trump’s threats. If universities are willing to give up academic freedom, then that is the time to close their doors.
Using financial cost-benefit analysis to make decisions about the value of human rights is unwise. Freedom isn't free. Indeed, history shows us repeatedly that the cost is very high - just count the dead and injured in, e.g., The War of Independence, The Civil War, WW-I and WW-II.
Likewise, using cost-benefit ratios to decide what government programs are valuable and contribute to the betterment of society is not only unwise, it is irrational. Cost-benefit analysis almost always externalises costs (thus not taking them into account) and undervalues benefits such as keeping people healthy and ensuring universal education- because the values can't always be expressed in dollars.
I believe the choices that Paul, Weiss and Columbia are making are so abhorrent to most Americans that they will turn the tide against the Trump administration even if some formerly venerable institutions must destroy themselves.
Susan - I am hoping so. There has to be a moment which is so clearly felt and known that the momentum turns the other way. I think we are in it, right now.
Do MAGA folk even care about law firms and universities? Confidence is not high.
Which "MAGA folk" are you talking about? The people to be concerned about are indeed interested in law firms and universities- which is why they are trying to take them out. If we'd been paying attention, we would have seen that all along the "red hat" Magas were just a distraction. The real danger comes from people who wear suits, and do not refer to themselves as "folk".
Of course it is those in suits and in power who are interested in and are attacking our institutions. The 'folk' would be those of the red hat wearers. In their own way, they aren't a distraction as they are the voters for the ones in the suits.
One would have thought the same under Hitler but it didn't happen that way. Will history win out?
people did not speak up about Hitler the way Americans are speaking up now. Thankfully we are speaking up in larger and larger numbers.
Colleges and law firms are about to show if they are as spineless as GOP politicos.
Capitulation to dictators only inspires more demands. The demands will not stop until we are all kneeling at their feet. The more who resist, the more who will join them. The more who bow down, the more who will feel they have no choice.
Last time I checked, extortion is illegal... it also takes two parties, the perpetrator and a willing victim.
I am with you, Chris - this is extortion pure & simple. It is despicable.
And in case you missed it, none other than the New York Times' David Brooks, proclaimed it on the PBS NewsHour last Friday, flat out calling Trump, BY NAME, an extortionist.
Thanks, Chris, I had missed it. Good. We will all use the word that truthfully applies.
Well-stated piece. Masks are not as silly and petty and they appear. They enable those will health vulnerabilities to participate - another blow to “DEI.”
Agreed. I wore a mask last week while traveling by air to visit my elderly parents. We all stayed healthy.
Thank you, Tara. I made a similar comment above. I wear a mask in most public situations because I need protection from respiratory illnesses.
Columbia, like most large universities today, exists to solicit funds for its endowment/ hedge fund. It serves that fund. Not the other way around.
Exactly. I doubt those withheld dollars would have made any great difference to the university’s proper functioning, tho administrative salaries may have been pared down (a good thing) and interest of investments may have wobbled. Grrr.
Now is the time to use the endowment against trump.
I recently read an essay on fiscal crises and the threat of huge cuts in Federal support in the alumni magazine of another Ivy, and after long discussions of hiring freezes, research cutbacks, and other stringencies, there was a passing phrase along the lines of "and in the most dire case, the university might even have to tap the endowment...." Since that endowment is now north of $50bn and has been growing for decades faster than anything else about that university, I'm inclined to say, "damn straight you should tap the endowment!" But it's a horror to the administrators and Boards and Committees, who see the growth of the hedge fund as sacrosanct, I fear.
I really agree with you. I think the reliance on endowments for “what might happen. “. rather than for what is needed now. I think development of critical thinking skills, of our responsibility as human beings to one another, and our connection to the larger world. I don’t think lavish athletic and resident facilities that mimic 4 star hotels facilitate students becoming good citizens
If colleges and universities don't stand together to assert their independence, we might as well replace "academic freedom" with "academic acquiescence."
Acquiescence is the word I was seeking. Thank you. Yes.
The problem here is when you say "universities". That word used here rarely includes the students. The fight against the war in Viet Nam had casualties but students prevailed. That will happen here as the older generation capitulates. The students know they own the future.
Please be careful declaring "the older generation" capitulators. We're the ones with memory enough to understand what's at stake. We don't all have 6-figure salaries.
Thank you. I am sick and tired of pitting generation against generation. This isn't about age categories. This is about class and power.
The most active protestors against the Viet Nam war were the vets who came home and told the truth. The media didn't break the story- the vets did. And then they set out to let the public know, and built a support system for returning vets that were ignored. You haven't heard about "Vietnam Vets Against the War"? A great number of Viet vets went into public service and ran for public office.
I hope you're right, Paula. But the longer programs are closed, readings are censored, and classroom discussions curtailed by government, WILL students actually know that they own the future? Will they know enough about past and present to foresee their future?
It's up to us to see that they do.
Boycott Columbia university!! There are many other universities that do practice academic freedom!!
I agree! No one should apply for admission. And students who are there should look to transfer. With no one to teach and no money coming in, there will be nothing to feed the greed.
Oh, I think they will figure that out on their own.
I teach at a 15,000 person state university in the Southeastern U.S. I never thought I would be glad to be such small potatoes.
Yes, Corlis - small potatoes have certain freedoms - thank goodness!