From the Bee: on Columbia’s decision to have online classes
For quite some time, the Babylon Bee has been writing such sharp and relevant satire that it is almost painful to read. It skirts that thin line between humor and sad truth.
In the wake of ongoing anti-Israel protests that have engulfed the school’s campus, Columbia University announced it has switched to online classes so Jewish students can participate from the attics where they are hiding.
The school’s leadership met earlier in the week to discuss options that would ease tensions on campus and allow Jewish students to continue their education without leaving the safety of the attics where they have been forced to take refuge from rampant antisemitism among large pockets of the student body.
“I’m glad I can still do my coursework,” one Jewish student said after the announcement was made. “After being relegated to hiding here in this attic, I was afraid that I’d start missing too many classes and my grades would suffer. Thankfully, the administration has been kind enough to give me online access to my classes right here in this attic while they allow violent antisemitic protests to sweep across campus. Thanks!”
And in an unfunny vein, here’s Professor Jacobson:
Academia, particularly at the level of Columbia and the Ivy League, is completely broken. I don’t think it can be repaired internally. They have created over 20 to 30 years a unified monoculture which is hostile to western values, which is hostile to capitalism, and which exploits and singles out Israel as the object of their ire as a mobilizing tactic…. People need to understand that there is no internal opposition left.
In other words, these universities are completely and utterly dominated by the left. Professor Jacobson knows whereof he speaks; he’s a law professor at Cornell, and the left tried to drive him out of his job recently but so far has failed.
And make no mistake about it, these anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, and leftist developments in academia are led by faculty. Here’s Jacobson again:
I’d say you have to go back really 10, 20 years. There has been a gross dehumanization of Israeli Jews and of Israel on campuses led mostly by faculty.
There is no diversity of viewpoint among faculty on campuses, not just on domestic issues. We often talk about Republican versus Democrat and how there are no Republican professors left pretty much.The same is true for Israel.
There are almost no openly pro-Israel professors left because they don’t get hired.
I’ve written about some of the origins of the takeover by the left in many posts, most recently in this post from yesterday. But I’m planning another one, this time on one of the most influential figures within the campus movement that has borne such bitter fruit today: Edward Said, professor of literature at Columbia and influential political and philosophical activist for “Palestine” from the early 1960s till his death in 2003.
A book could be written about this, and several have; I won’t be writing a book. But it’s a huge topic, and I plan to at least touch on it in a post or posts.
NOTE: Not all universities are tainted by this problem, fortunately.
The Babylon Bee ran another headline the other day, which said that ‘Palestinian students have rejected the proposal for a 2-campus solution’.
You’re right, the Bee is one of the sharpest wits around when it comes to on-the-money political commentary, both funny and deflating.
Southern universities are hardly free of coercive leftism, though slight constrained by (i) the communities in which they are situated and (ii) in the case of public universities, their state legislatures. When my daughter was at Emory, someone chalked Trump slogans around campus one night, and the university responded with outrage. President Wagner vowed that the university would review the available surveillance footage to identify and discipline the perpetrator(s). Sasha Volokh, of the Volokh Conspiracy, helpfully explained that chalk sloganeers were in the wrong, because they had chalked on vertical surfaces, which apparently violates some university rule.
It is long past time for university faculty to reap what they’ve sown. They richly deserve the fate they have earned.
Re the hostility to capitalism mentioned by Professor Jacobson, here’s a memorable quote from Henry Ford II’s letter of resignation from the board of the Ford Foundation (~1974):
The foundation exists and thrives on the fruits of our economic system. The dividends of competitive enterprise make it all possible. A significant portion of all abundance created by U.S. business enables the foundation and like institutions to carry on their work. In effect, the foundation is a creature of capitalism—a statement that, I’m sure, would be shocking to many professional staff in the field of philanthropy. It is hard to discern recognition of this fact in anything the foundation does. It is even more difficult to find an understanding of this in many of the institutions, particularly the universities, that are the beneficiaries of the foundation’s grant programs.
I’m not playing the role of the hard-headed tycoon who thinks all philanthropoids are socialists and all university professors are communists. I’m just suggesting to the trustees and the staff that the system that makes the foundation possible very probably is worth preserving. Perhaps it is time for the trustees and staff to examine the question of our obligations to our economic system and to consider how the foundation, as one of the system’s most prominent offspring, might act most wisely to strengthen and improve its progenitor.
I don’t think Ford’s letter had any detectable impact on the “philanthropoids.”
Thank the powers that be for The Bee…showing all of us that comedy is hanging in there, is in fact NOT DEAD.
At least not yet….
Hold on! It look—yes, it LOOKS—like Columbia U. is trying to give The Bee some genuine “Biden”esque-style competition…
“Is Columbia funding its own occupation? Student organization policies suggest so;
“Many student groups that have organized the pro-Palestine encampments are official student organizations, often eligible for funding from the very administration they are disrupting.”—
https://justthenews.com/nation/free-speech/columbia-funding-its-own-occupation-student-organization-policies-suggest-so
Yep, the good ole college try!
(That “Biden” is such a card….)
Milton Friedman in 1964 ( !!) while a Visiting Professor at Columibia University:
“In 1964–to the disgust and dismay of most of my academic friends–I served as an economic adviser to Barry Goldwater during his quest for the Presidency. That year also, I was a Visiting Professor at Columbia University. The two together gave me a rare entree into the New York intellectual community.
I talked to and argued with groups from academia, from the media, from the financial community, from the foundation world, from you name it. I was appalled at what I found. There was an unbelievable degree of intellectual homogeneity, of acceptance of a standard set of views complete with cliche answers to every objection, of smug self-satisfaction at belonging to an in-group. The closest similar experience I have ever had was at Cambridge, England, and even that was a distant second.
The homogeneity and provincialism of the New York intellectual community made them pushovers in discussions about Goldwater’s views. They had cliche answers but only to their self-created straw-men. To exaggerate only slightly, they had never talked to anyone who really believed, and had thought deeply about, views drastically different from their own. As a result, when they heard real arguments instead of caricatures, they had no answers, only amazement that such views could be expressed by someone who had the external characteristics of being a member of the intellectual community, and that such views could be defended with apparent cogency. Never have I been more impressed with the advice I once received: “You cannot be sure that you are right unless you understand the arguments against your views better than your opponents do.”
Some things never change. NYC has always been a hotbed of leftist group think.
It’s no coincidence that the CPUSA headquarters is in Manhattan.
Another “Biden” stand-up routine?
“Biden appoints Lise Grande Special Envoy for Middle East Humanitarian Issues;
“President of the United States Institute of Peace appointed to position created in aftermath of October 7 massacre.”—
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/389032
The “US Institute of Peace”… Say what?? (Sounds like a Sorositic Construction…)
So might one wonder what the punch line here is…as she seems to have a lot of experience but a firm and consistent record of dubious successes…?
+Bonus:
Facebook face plants…
“US Futures Tumble After Facebook Implodes…”
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/us-futures-tumble-after-facebook-implodes-gdp-data-deck
Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy….
I will point out that, the last I heard, the University of Florida was in the top 5 public universities.
It is certainly a hotbed of liberal bovine excreta, no question, but there are, at the least, forces in the state which oppose that garbage, namely Ron DeSantis, who has shown considerable willingness to pushback against such garbage. DeSantis has encouraged the SUS (“State University System”), which oversees the top universities in FL, to promote more “equal” policies when it comes to political ideology.
And they’ve specifically caused UF to disband its DIE department. Many of them probably moved sideways rather than out, but at least they have less power in implementing DIE policies at the university.
I suspect that if the antisemitic types got too pushy, that DeSantis would find ways to make them very miserable.
My reaction to the Bee post is anger, rather than laughter.
Academia, particularly at the level of Columbia and the Ivy League, is completely broken. I don’t think it can be repaired internally.
–William A. Jacobsen, “Legal Insurrection”
__________________________________________
Same is true for Disney, which owns Lucasfilm and the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU, also parodied as M-She-U).
They’ve all been captured into the woke black hole. They cannot escape. They can only be broken into broke. Then, and only then, can they make a choice. But it will likely be too late.