News @lemmy.world Stopthatgirl7 @lemmy.world 7mo ago

Columbia University community 'shattered' after police raid

www.bbc.com Columbia University community 'shattered' after police raid

Students say they have lost trust and are in limbo after New York police raid to clear Gaza protests.

Police and private security throng every entrance but one. Steel barriers line the streets. Students pack up belongings in their cars and leave for home - classes are cancelled, and exam plans are up in the air.

Everywhere there is gloom, and uncertainty about what happens next at Columbia University.

Students told the BBC that the university's decision to call in police to clear a Gaza protest late on Tuesday, leading to a raid on the occupied Hamilton Hall and hundreds of arrests, has left the college community shattered.

The university president, Nemat Shafik, said that it was with great regret that she ordered the police raid against students and others she said had infiltrated the protest. It would "take time to heal", she added in a message in the operation's aftermath.

For students of this prestigious school in Manhattan, New York, how long is unclear.

98 comments

Only authoritarian governments crush student protests
- This is a private university crushing student protests.
  
  With police, an apparatus of the state.
  
  You have to work harder to come to that conclusion than just going “hey isn’t the police employed by the government?”
  
  I didn't know that the university had control over the NY police force.
  
  They tear gassed students at my old public university. The way they're being treated is ridiculous and completely out of line with previous protests.
  
  Cool. Now do universities like UCLA and IU.
- Name a government that doesnt do their damndest to crush student protests.
  
  That isn't the contradiction you imply...
  
  There are plenty in Europe.
  
  I struggle to think of a more authoritarian structure than the hierarchic state.
  
  Stateless areas, such as Rojava and the Zapatistas are a good example of a “government” that doesn’t crush student protests, but they really don’t have them in the first place, since their bottom up structure makes it such that the students can directly use political power to prevent shit like supporting genocidal ethnic states.
How to radicalize a lot of smart people in a very short period of time
It would "take time to heal", she added

That's some big "I'm sorry you made me do this to you" abuser energy there
- It is with great regret that she [did something nobody was forcing her to do].
  
  I can make some educated guesses on who forced her to do it.
  
  Edit: upon learning more about her, no, it seems like she's just like that
- Most of what she said are pretty typical non-exuses in British politics and upper class circles, which is were she made her whole career up to this.
The President needs to resign.
- I had never heard of her before. Wow:
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minouche_Shafik
  
  Nemat Talaat Shafik, Baroness Shafik, (Arabic: نعمت طلعت شفيق) DBE, HonFBA (born 13 August 1962), commonly known as Minouche Shafik (Arabic: مينوش شفيق), is a British-American academic and economist.[2] She has been serving as the 20th president of Columbia University since July 2023. She previously served as president and vice chancellor of the London School of Economics from 2017 to 2023.
  
  From 2014 to 2017, Shafik served as deputy governor of the Bank of England and also previously as permanent secretary of the United Kingdom Department for International Development from 2008 to 2011.[3] She has also served as a vice president at the World Bank[4] and as deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund.[5] She was created a life peeress by Elizabeth II in 2020.
  
  She's taking a "World Bank" approach to this situation, that's for sure. This quote by her is hilarious:
  
  "The point of university is to be intellectually challenged and confronted with difference." She argued that universities needed to 'teach people to have difficult conversations', adding: “It’s through that process of listening that you learn, you build consensus, and you move forward as a community."
Imagine if the Columbia administration decided they could swim in regular water instead of a moneybin like Scrooge McDuck and divested the university from Israel. Maybe all of this could have been avoided.
Other than "wrong thought" what was it that the protesters were doing that required such a heavy handed response?

By contrast, in a country with actual freedom Student protesters at McGill encampment determined to stay after judge rejects injunction
- Not free for long if we get our own Trump Jr (aka Bitcoin Milhouse, aka Pierre Pollievre) elected. This would likely be ' too woke' for them.
  
  Anti-trans Pierre Pollievre? The same Pierre Pollievre who opposed a tax change only affecting the richest 0.13% of Canadians each year?
  
  Not a big fan oir conservative but pretty sure comparing Pollievre with Trump is laughable at best. You're thinking of something like the PPC.
Keep fighting! We're starting to win
- First they ignore you..
  
  Then they laugh at you..
  
  Then they fight you.. (I think we're in this vicinity now)
  
  Then you win.
Ahhhh, the good old land of the free...
- Welcome to the United Snakes, Land of the thief and home to the slave
and others she say had infiltrated the protest

What’s this about?
- It's about the narrative that there are outside agitators rallying the protest, but virtually all of the arrests are of students 🧐
  
  we have always been at war with Eurasia!
  
  They've arrested people who weren't students, not sure why you're saying they haven't
Then don't give them your money or time and transfer to another school?
- Try not giving boomer ass platitudes that you have clearly put about 20 seconds of thought into.
  
  Do you tell struggling minorities in southern states to 'just move to a blue state'? I'm sure no one has forgotten this is an option, and I expect that future enrollment to the school is going to be way less, but this is an immediate problem and transferring is a semester-scale solution. Some of the students may be ready to graduate as well.
  
  Actually, a national student strike would be incredibly effective. Just like it was after Kent State.
  
  You cannot fund weapons development on donations alone.
I was with them (because one SHOULD be able to exercise their constitutional rights) until they started breaking shit.

We have a right to peacefully assemble, not act like idiots.

Now, I still wish this was handled differently. They really should have tried to just go after the idiots and not everyone.
- No one listens to peaceful protesters
  
  But won’t somebody think of the property!
  
  /s
  
  Yes, they do.
  
  The majority of sustained peaceful protests in US history have led to changes.
  
  Like it or not that’s the only right you’re entitled to.
I'd put a #IthoughtthiswasAmerica here
nothing can screw up a kids future quite like college
God I hate the dramatization of articles like this.

98 comments