The presence of NYC police on the Columbia campus was an outrage. Columbia, the paradigm of free speech, becomes the symbol of repression and authoritarianism.
I am a veteran of the Vietnam anti-war movement on a college campus. Police violence and mass arrests were common in those days and I really hope that this young generation is not exposed to that. Those kinds of tactics only served to stiffen and build resistance though.
The plausible cause for coercion by the Columbia President would be imminent violence to Jewish or Muslim students; up to her to demonstrate that, in view of incomplete information in front of her, she reasonably believed that her actions protected the physical well-being of the students under her charge.
Making that case successfully sounds like a challenging task for the Columbia Administration. Speech intended to trigger violence is NOT protected under the First Amendment. It is unclear, perhaps unlikely, that pro-Palestinean students were manifesting any intention to pursue violence. Strident they certainly were; violent they were likely not. While I do not like argumentation underlying their protests, pro-Palestinean students have every right to express their views. If I am annoyed, so be it.
Repressing dissent — especially under the confected pretext that even peaceful, nonviolent protesters endanger the safety of others on campus — is standardly a prelude to the regression of democratic freedom and its enabling rights. When institutional authorities, especially those empowered with protecting America’s foundational values of free thought and academic freedom, genuflect to political interference and intimidation by acquiescing to the extremist ideological/ religious demands of crusading, dogmatic anti-intellectuals hellbent on subverting democracy and Jack booting the human mind’s ratiocinative and imaginative and empathetic capacity to defend justice, increasing state violence portends — unless preempted by morally and rationally-motivated nonviolent protest, often involving civil disobedience, as America’s greatest moral conscience, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., practiced and instructed.
One would hope that Columbia’s non-academic leadership would have learned the lessons about the value of informed, passionate and compassionate dissent on campus from the turmoil of 1968. But alas, what Columbia has experienced is a shonda or disgrace.
Thank you, Dr. Lee, for highlighting the plight of over a hundred students arrested at an American university a short while ago. It is always undesirable for law-abiding civilians to encounter uniformed, armed personnel acting against them. It is worse still when the civilians being physically dealt with are young persons and students. Civil strife and war are ways in which young persons are drawn into life-threatening situations before they have properly begun to live their adult lives and to effectively contribute to the generational continuity of human beings and society. Part of the solution to the ethically reprehensible cutting down of future generations in the bud is to do what you are doing: to unleash a full and sustained media highlight whenever young and older civilians become victims of destructive socioauthoritarian forces, and to ensure that arrested students and older activists get full and fair legal representation. This will also restrain authoritarian leaders from unimpeded youth conscription and needless deaths through their war machines. May the media spotlight, peaceful civic, and legal response not be dimmed as long as their is even one activist-one student in the recent arrests-still behind bars or with freedoms otherwise curtailed, and as long as there are such unacceptable happenings as student and other civilian activist clashes with uniformed, armed personnel of the state apparatus that is established to protect society and to preserve human rights!
This is a time of great conflict and war. The impulse to “contain” (or aggressively invalidate) perspectives is dangerous. I wish we could communicate across the divide with empathy. Instead the fear of aggression, antisemitism and congressional overreach - which has happened already - seems to be triggering a new McCarthyite era. “Are you now, or have you ever, been in favor of a ceasefire or a free Palestine?”
"They represent the height of analytic thought, unconflicted action, untainted desire for good, and the zeal of youth." (Dr Lee)
The students are protesting war. A more effective usage of their insight and zeal is to identify, sideline, see-through, tame, and annihilate within themselves the cause of humanity's willful, conscious violation of the appropriate boundaries of other.
Many are not aware of a boundary between themselves and existence or that it is possible for human nature to mature or how it is done. Ego knows no boundaries and vehemently defends itself, keeping humanity's maturity at a Bronze Age level.
Ego is not a Freudian balance of human attention; it is a developmental mental organ to help children grow into unique individuals, but needs to be consciously discarded if we are to become trustworthy.
When we have no Ego we flow with Tao, Realize Atman, know the way to embody Anatman, embody the divine's purpose in the world, and create paradise on earth; all of which Ego cannot conceive or believe and will perpetrate inhuman amounts of violence to fight.
The young have the analytic thought, unconflicted action, untainted desire for good, and the zeal; all they need is knowledge.
Dr Lee, in today's globalized world, violence happening anywhere can be destabilizing to far away place. A Genocide happening in Gaza will trigger a public response and outrage in American public. And if this outrage and feeling of alienation, suppression of voice is not healed, the society will get sicker.
Dr Lee, sometimes a few right words can be greatly healing. Small but symbolic actions can be greatly beneficial. For example, US President can say that he condemns the genocide in Gaza, he won't send offensive weapons & missiles to Israel and US can make a symbolic vote in UN for recognition of Palestine. These are the easiest things to do.
(the difficult and right thing to do is to start war crime proceedings against Bibi in ICJ and issue an arrest warrant against him (& his clique) just like Putin. Also start a neutral international committee investigation into failure of Israeli military & intelligence on Oct 7. How did this failure happen?)
But US Govt can start with the very minimal. Condemn Gaza Genocide, stop sending 1000s pound bombs to Israel and vote in favor of Palestine in UN.
US won't even do that. And Biden says he has "unconditional support to Israel" and US keeps sending billions of $$$ to Israel - even vast majority of Dems voted for military aid. And Biden has a forked tongue. On one hand he talks about peace and two state solution but when opportunity to act on it arises by voting in UN - US make 180 degree turn.
Dr Lee, i know many progressive people in American civil society who now questioning Biden's integrity. This distrust and suspicion by civil society regarding Biden is harmful especially when the sword of monster Trump is hanging over our head. Biden must act to heal this mistrust and grievance.
This is reminding me of Kent State in 1970.calling police on your own students is wrong. I watched her testimony and thought she was groveling to Congressional pressure.
What do you think of John Gartner making the media rounds to focus on his opinion of Trump showing symptoms of dementia? I think it is irrelevant to the extreme dangerousness of Trump getting re-elected to the Oval Office and greatly waters down, and detracts from getting the public to understand how dangerous this lying criminal would be if put back into such a powerful position. I wish Gartner would shut the eff up if he can’t do better. Ronnie Reagan had dementia and didn’t murder populations of people!!! 😳😳😳
The presence of NYC police on the Columbia campus was an outrage. Columbia, the paradigm of free speech, becomes the symbol of repression and authoritarianism.
I am a veteran of the Vietnam anti-war movement on a college campus. Police violence and mass arrests were common in those days and I really hope that this young generation is not exposed to that. Those kinds of tactics only served to stiffen and build resistance though.
This issue is very difficult. Very unclear what is happening as the point-counterpoint links, posted below, indicate.
https://www.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/296-24/mayor-adams-on-ongoing-protests-columbia-university
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/04/columbia-university-protest-shafik-israel-palestine-gaza-jewish-muslim-students.html
The plausible cause for coercion by the Columbia President would be imminent violence to Jewish or Muslim students; up to her to demonstrate that, in view of incomplete information in front of her, she reasonably believed that her actions protected the physical well-being of the students under her charge.
https://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/educational-resources/about-educational-outreach/activity-resources/what-does
Making that case successfully sounds like a challenging task for the Columbia Administration. Speech intended to trigger violence is NOT protected under the First Amendment. It is unclear, perhaps unlikely, that pro-Palestinean students were manifesting any intention to pursue violence. Strident they certainly were; violent they were likely not. While I do not like argumentation underlying their protests, pro-Palestinean students have every right to express their views. If I am annoyed, so be it.
Repressing dissent — especially under the confected pretext that even peaceful, nonviolent protesters endanger the safety of others on campus — is standardly a prelude to the regression of democratic freedom and its enabling rights. When institutional authorities, especially those empowered with protecting America’s foundational values of free thought and academic freedom, genuflect to political interference and intimidation by acquiescing to the extremist ideological/ religious demands of crusading, dogmatic anti-intellectuals hellbent on subverting democracy and Jack booting the human mind’s ratiocinative and imaginative and empathetic capacity to defend justice, increasing state violence portends — unless preempted by morally and rationally-motivated nonviolent protest, often involving civil disobedience, as America’s greatest moral conscience, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., practiced and instructed.
One would hope that Columbia’s non-academic leadership would have learned the lessons about the value of informed, passionate and compassionate dissent on campus from the turmoil of 1968. But alas, what Columbia has experienced is a shonda or disgrace.
Thank you, Dr. Lee, for highlighting the plight of over a hundred students arrested at an American university a short while ago. It is always undesirable for law-abiding civilians to encounter uniformed, armed personnel acting against them. It is worse still when the civilians being physically dealt with are young persons and students. Civil strife and war are ways in which young persons are drawn into life-threatening situations before they have properly begun to live their adult lives and to effectively contribute to the generational continuity of human beings and society. Part of the solution to the ethically reprehensible cutting down of future generations in the bud is to do what you are doing: to unleash a full and sustained media highlight whenever young and older civilians become victims of destructive socioauthoritarian forces, and to ensure that arrested students and older activists get full and fair legal representation. This will also restrain authoritarian leaders from unimpeded youth conscription and needless deaths through their war machines. May the media spotlight, peaceful civic, and legal response not be dimmed as long as their is even one activist-one student in the recent arrests-still behind bars or with freedoms otherwise curtailed, and as long as there are such unacceptable happenings as student and other civilian activist clashes with uniformed, armed personnel of the state apparatus that is established to protect society and to preserve human rights!
This is a time of great conflict and war. The impulse to “contain” (or aggressively invalidate) perspectives is dangerous. I wish we could communicate across the divide with empathy. Instead the fear of aggression, antisemitism and congressional overreach - which has happened already - seems to be triggering a new McCarthyite era. “Are you now, or have you ever, been in favor of a ceasefire or a free Palestine?”
"They represent the height of analytic thought, unconflicted action, untainted desire for good, and the zeal of youth." (Dr Lee)
The students are protesting war. A more effective usage of their insight and zeal is to identify, sideline, see-through, tame, and annihilate within themselves the cause of humanity's willful, conscious violation of the appropriate boundaries of other.
Many are not aware of a boundary between themselves and existence or that it is possible for human nature to mature or how it is done. Ego knows no boundaries and vehemently defends itself, keeping humanity's maturity at a Bronze Age level.
Ego is not a Freudian balance of human attention; it is a developmental mental organ to help children grow into unique individuals, but needs to be consciously discarded if we are to become trustworthy.
When we have no Ego we flow with Tao, Realize Atman, know the way to embody Anatman, embody the divine's purpose in the world, and create paradise on earth; all of which Ego cannot conceive or believe and will perpetrate inhuman amounts of violence to fight.
The young have the analytic thought, unconflicted action, untainted desire for good, and the zeal; all they need is knowledge.
Dr Lee, in today's globalized world, violence happening anywhere can be destabilizing to far away place. A Genocide happening in Gaza will trigger a public response and outrage in American public. And if this outrage and feeling of alienation, suppression of voice is not healed, the society will get sicker.
Dr Lee, sometimes a few right words can be greatly healing. Small but symbolic actions can be greatly beneficial. For example, US President can say that he condemns the genocide in Gaza, he won't send offensive weapons & missiles to Israel and US can make a symbolic vote in UN for recognition of Palestine. These are the easiest things to do.
(the difficult and right thing to do is to start war crime proceedings against Bibi in ICJ and issue an arrest warrant against him (& his clique) just like Putin. Also start a neutral international committee investigation into failure of Israeli military & intelligence on Oct 7. How did this failure happen?)
But US Govt can start with the very minimal. Condemn Gaza Genocide, stop sending 1000s pound bombs to Israel and vote in favor of Palestine in UN.
US won't even do that. And Biden says he has "unconditional support to Israel" and US keeps sending billions of $$$ to Israel - even vast majority of Dems voted for military aid. And Biden has a forked tongue. On one hand he talks about peace and two state solution but when opportunity to act on it arises by voting in UN - US make 180 degree turn.
https://apnews.com/article/un-vote-palestinian-membership-us-veto-8d8ad60d8576b5ab9e70d2f8bf7e2881
Dr Lee, i know many progressive people in American civil society who now questioning Biden's integrity. This distrust and suspicion by civil society regarding Biden is harmful especially when the sword of monster Trump is hanging over our head. Biden must act to heal this mistrust and grievance.
This is reminding me of Kent State in 1970.calling police on your own students is wrong. I watched her testimony and thought she was groveling to Congressional pressure.
What do you think of John Gartner making the media rounds to focus on his opinion of Trump showing symptoms of dementia? I think it is irrelevant to the extreme dangerousness of Trump getting re-elected to the Oval Office and greatly waters down, and detracts from getting the public to understand how dangerous this lying criminal would be if put back into such a powerful position. I wish Gartner would shut the eff up if he can’t do better. Ronnie Reagan had dementia and didn’t murder populations of people!!! 😳😳😳
Thank you for publishing the letter from the AAUP. And thank you for your ongoing efforts to keep us informed. These are truly frightening times...