The president of Columbia has her turn before Congress
Minouche Shafik is president of Columbia University, and like the troika of other Ivy college presidents before her who testified before the House about campus anti-Semitism, she recently was interviewed by that legislative body. Shafik had the advantage of having seen her predecessors’ errors, and the reaction to what they said.
However:
Representative Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) asked Shafik during the hearing whether she had seen anti-Jewish protests on Columbia’s campus, to which the university president responded that she had not.
My, my.
Some excerpts from the testimony:
By the way, Shafik is a Muslim who was born in Egypt and came to this country as a young child and went back to Egypt for a while as a teenager. That said, I actually don’t think this has much if anything to do with her stance here. Most of the university heads we’ve heard from – whatever their origins and whatever their religion or lack thereof – have the same lawyerly, evasive, double standards about Jews/Israel versus other groups and countries. If the topic were, for example, anti-black speech and behavior, their answers would be very different and far less equivocal. Shafik is quite typical and not an outlier – in fact she’s probably at least somewhat better (which isn’t saying much), perhaps because she had the advantage of seeing the testimony of the others and had a lot more time to prepare.
In the meantime while she’s testifying, looks like even the NYPD has had enough and is arresting protestors on the CU campus.
She’s, and Neo indicates, just another typical college prez in today’s higher ed world.
Spineless and utterly devoid of the principle of decency. Hire her fast! Promote her to the Harvard presidency.
Arresting yes, jail time No.
An academic careerist slimeball.
The only reason these college presidents are being dragged before Congress is because they allow anti-semitic activities on their campus and they do nothing about it. They don’t want to do anything about it.
They allow these activities because they agree with the pro-Hamas demonstrators.
One cannot become a president of an Ivy League school unless they are true left wing, progressive/socialist, DEI believers and proponents and hate Israel and hate Jews.
After all, for the DEI proponents, it is membership within a group – white, black, female, hispanic, gay, not gay , etc., – that DEFINES the individual and how/what the individual thinks and believes. For all intents and purposes, for the DEI crowd, there are no individuals, just group members. Therefore, if one is Jewish, that individual is completely defined.
The testimony of these college presidents just shows everybody what these academics really believe.
I really don’t think any real changes will occur; the anti -semitism on the campuses will just be shoved under the table.
What these colleges will really pay attention to is govt. derived funding for research or anything else. If the govt. stopped providing any $$$$ to them , unless they really did something about antisemitism – and general lack of free speech on campuses – you watch how fast they would put an end to hateful activities.
It was some time ago that the connection between having a degree and having a clue stopped seeming as solid as advertised.
And the last six months, if not couple of decades, have accelerated the obvious distance.
That’s funny, Omar asking if the president has seen any anti-Jewish demonstrations at Columbia, given that Omar’s daughter was arrested there today and has been suspended from Barnard College for her participation.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/rep-ilhan-omars-daughter-custody-amid-nyc-anti-israel-protests-columbia-university
President of Columbia University. An office once held by Dwight D. Eisenhower. We are living in diminished times.
Just to be clear, it wasn’t the NYPD that had enough. Minouche had enough and ordered the lawn cleared. (Myself, I thought the encampment was pretty harmless.). The NYPD doesn’t clear demonstrators from private property unless requested. She’s actually been pretty hardline, having suspended quite a few students.
Not sure we’re being fair to her…or to any of them.
One of the purposes of a university education is to learn—at a more advanced level, of course—how to compare, analyze, dissect, see, hear and experience and CONTEXTUALIZE, so as to determine, describe—and understand—what is different, what is similar, and in which ways, etc.
Now, even though one may disagree that it’s OK or even virtuous to hate and disparage, attack, assault and aggress Caucasians, Asians and Jews but to love and respect everyone else, one CANNOT say that the students haven’t in fact learned ABSOLUTELY NOTHING or have NOT gotten their 60,000 bucks a year’s worth of a very special education.
…Since apparently, context is EVERYTHING!
To amplify what I said, Minouche has banned hanging pro-Palestinian banners from dorm room windows, banned pro-Palestinian posters on dorm room doors, suspended Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Students for Peace for having unauthorized demonstrations, commenced disciplinary proceedings against students who participated in unauthorized demonstrations, banned pro-Palestinian speakers from campus, and yesterday arrested and suspended 100+ students (including Ilan Omar’s daughter hahaha) for participating in a pro-Palestinian occupation of one of the university lawns. I don’t know what more she could do.
I suppose neo might complain that the ban on signs and banners applies to pro-Israel signs and banners too, that pro-Palestinian speakers can still speak nearby to campus, that the disciplinary proceedings are proceeding slowly and confidentially, and that students have only been suspended, not expelled, but that seems like caviling.
In that case, ALL power to her!!
(Um, do we have a date on that?)
” I don’t know what more she could do.”
What’s your background ey81? You’re new here, so that you know I spent 40+ years in the belly of academia. Did you listen to her testimony? For me, it was the very typical academic president wishy washy bullshit that everyone of them engages in. I would bet a large sum of money that the ONLY reason any consequence is happening to protestors at CU is that she saw what happened to the Penn and Harvard prez’s and she wants to avoid that with herself. I guarantee that she sympathizes with the protestors, and once the heat is off, it will be back to business of DIE and indoctrination as usual.
She has proven to be aggressively wrong in the past
https://president.columbia.edu/content/about-president-minouche-shafik
But she is smart enough to know the audience before her
“What’s your background ey81?”
I have degrees from Yale and Berkeley, and I am currently enrolled as a post-bacc student at Columbia (from which perspective, as I said, the encampment seemed pretty harmless).
I’m a strong supporter of Israel, but I am not a millennial or even close. So the intersectional perspective of today’s Jewish students and junior faculty (in common with their non-Jewish peers), which considers feeling unsafe or excluded as a cognizable injury, or believes that words are violence, is totally alien to me.
Since October 7, 2023 it has been one continuous Kristallnacht and it will get worse – just wait until next month when they have their college graduation ceremonies which will be an orgy of Jew hatred.
Given that the protests at Columbia got worse over the weekend, it seems that expulsions, not just suspensions, and serious police charges are going to be needed to stop the campus violence.
nothing to see here
https://twitter.com/EFischberger/status/1782345951295795609