University officials gave the pro-Palestinian demonstrators a 2 p.m. deadline and threatened to suspend them if they did not leave.
After a day of protest and confusion on its Manhattan campus, Columbia University announced Monday evening that it had begun to suspend students who had not left a pro-Palestinian encampment by a 2 p.m. deadline.
The measure reflected the difficult balance Columbia administrators are seeking to strike as they try to avoid bringing the Police Department back to arrest those in the encampment, but also commit to the stance that the protest must end.
Students in the encampment, along with hundreds of supporters, had spent a tense afternoon rallying around the site in a show of force meant to deter the removal of its tents. But by 4 p.m., with no sign of police action, most of the protesters had begun to disperse, leaving only what appeared to be several dozen students and about 80 tents inside the encampment.
Universities under neoliberalism remind me of the adage about online stuff: "if you're not paying for a service, you're the product, not the customer". Except of course, at university, we do pay — quite a lot, in some countries. Even being customers is bad in this context though, because the over-businessification of universities is a huge problem, in my view. <Shakes fist at Thatcher and Reagan>
The primary product of universities nowadays is metrics, which is why the ratio of bureaucrats to teaching staff has shifted so much over the last couple decades.
If an educational institution won't abid by the First Amendment it means they're more interested in pumping out cogs for the machines of capitalism than they are teaching students critical thinking skills.
Fuck Columbia and every other school that follows this path.
There is a difference from having to uphold a constitutional right by law or by principle of valuing the right.
Free speech is essential for universities as it creates the space in which scientific discourse and development can strife. This is also why autocratic governments always crack down on universities and then within a few years the quality of research and teaching goes down the drain.
By cracking down on students that were voicing their opinion Columbia declares that it does not want to be an university in that spirit anymore. It might not be a legal problem. But it is a complete moral failure.
Such a protest is unthinkable merely 5 years ago. Both the Left and the Right hates Israel. The latter only pretends to like Israel because they think it will accelerate The Rapture. As if you can force God to do something. Blasphemy.