The Trump administration brushed aside decades of precedent when it ordered Columbia University to oust the leadership of an academic department, a demand seen as a direct attack on academic freedom and a warning of what’s to come for other colleges facing federal scrutiny.
Great job by leadership who thought that not standing up for student protestors would somehow protect them from reprisals.
For being literally Academia, you would think they would be more familiar with history of all fucking things.
Anyone with a brain knows that a bully you try to please will just demand more. Trump’s hate cannot be satiated.
Because most of those institutions aren’t about teaching any more, it’s about soliciting donations from wealthy people, building fancy buildings named after billionaires, and managing all that money.
BDS threatens all of that.
The leadership of these colleges are a part of the oligarchy. They proved that when they chose to crush their students civil rights and bend the knee.
Calling most of these corporate whores “academics” is like calling Musk an “engineer”. It’s complete bullshit. They are the leadership of a for-profit corporation. Their actions sully all of their credentials and authority.
It’s usually vapid, amoral MBAs that handle the admin side that push this shit not the academics doing the actual work.
https://library.columbia.edu/libraries/cuarchives/presidents.html
That’s a nice thing to tell ourselves, but the three most recent Presidents at Columbia were a Law Professor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Bollinger), a woman with a Masters of Science in Economics and a Doctorate of Philosophy of Economics, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minouche_Shafik), and a literal fucking doctor (Masters of Science in clinical epidemiology) with a background in genetics testing for cancer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katrina_Armstrong).
Bollinger, for example, was literally named as a defendant in Supreme Court case Grutter v. Bollinger. The school was on the side of Affirmative Action and Grutter was just a pissed off white bitch who couldn’t handle the fact that maybe there were minority students more capable and worthy than her.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grutter_v._Bollinger
The board of trustees is mostly Juris Doctors (Lawyers), a Master of International Relations, a bunch of Masters of Science, and yes, some MBAs in there too (7 MBAs out of 22 people on the board, literally slightly less than a third of the board).
https://secretary.columbia.edu/directory
We don’t have to exaggerate and make shit up to justify how we feel. That’s what the MAGA fucktards do.
A ton or CEO’s have STEM degrees. A ton of prominent academics in history were terrible assholes. Being an “academic” doesn’t guarantee that someone is not a dangerous, selfish narcissist, or a fascist.
Why are you defending leaders who attack student protesters civil rights, and bend the knee to fascists? That should hold more weight than their credentials ever should.
Nazis behave in comparatively mild Nazi ways to hurt enemies of Nazism. Experts shocked.
Strap the fuck in. It’s going to get so, so much worse. Palestine is fucked. The ability to protest Palestine being fucked in the US is also going to be fucked soon. Not that the protests mattered anyway. The genocide still happened and will soon be ramped up to make real estate deals for billionaires.
Trump doesn’t care about Palestinian protests. He cares about people not being able to protest HIM. This is the trial run.
First they came for Columbia, but it wasn’t my football team.
It’s no one’s football team. Even the alumni 😅
How are you guys not marching on Washington yet?
Because they thrive on the attention and it is expensive, dangerous, and a complete waste of time.
There’s been hundreds of protests. The national media isn’t covering them but there have been protests in every state capital and major city. Republicans have stopped doing town halls. France is the size of Texas and Paris is a few hours (by train) from Marseille. Los Angeles is like a 6 hour flight from DC. It’s a lot harder to have one big protest here than in geographically smaller countries.
It’s 1200 miles away…
Even if I could afford it it’s not exactly a day trip.
Easier said than done when the possibility of a bullet is on the other end of that protest.
Now there’s no possibility of a bullet. Wait too long however and you’ll have to contend with that possibility before you protest anything.
Enough people and they can’t shoot you all. Revolutions are never easy and it requires some victims. Your fascist government doesn’t give up peacefully. If you just decide to sit on your hands, things will never change.
Didn’t we hear about this 5 days ago or something? And Columbia capitulated? I could’ve sworn I got updates from reputable (ish) sources.
After they capitulated to Trump, Trump cut funding anyways.
Now Trump is here stating that they need to do such and such to regain funding (that Trump cut despite Columbia University capitulating to Trump).
Capitulating to fascists doesn’t get you off the hook. It just shows them you’re weak and easily duped.
Fascists must be fought, not appeased.
