The government is withholding $400 million in federal funds from Columbia University. The reason being given is that the New York institution supposedly isn't doing enough to fight antisemitism.
To convey the actual result, consider a metaphor: Imagine a Chicago synagogue threatened by neighborhood Nazis. So I go spray-paint a big red swastika on the front door, explaining this will satisfy any antisemites who might be tempted to go inside and cause trouble.
Would you say, "Well done, Neil! That'll keep the congregation safe." Or would you suspect that, pretense aside, I'm actually hurting the very people who I am pretending to help? Because that's the practical result of clawing back nearly half a billion dollars from Columbia, which though not quite a synagogue, has an undergraduate population that is 23% Jewish. Princeton University's is less than 10%.
Meanwhile, 10 other colleges whose campuses were riven by pro-Palestinian protests during the war in Gaza, including Northwestern University, have received letters from the Justice Department warning them that they too are on the block.
Don't get me wrong. Did student protests at various colleges, in the heat of the war in Gaza, often end up harassing Jewish students and calling for the destruction of Israel? Sure. Is that kind of thing going to happen in any situation where large groups of 20-year-olds are permitted to say what's on their young minds? Again, sure. Defunding colleges for that reason is a ruse, the way that imposing tariffs on other countries because Americans abuse a lot of their fentanyl is a ruse.
In this era when language is degraded — I can't bring myself to say "meaningless" though we've bought the ticket and are on the platform — one shouldn't get caught up on reasons. Bullies are cowards and liars. They rarely say, "I'm hitting you because I'm a bad person and like it." They always gin up excuses: "He bumped into me," or "I didn't like his face." The reasons are supposed to explain away whatever wrong act is being done. They don't, and it doesn't help when the victim falls into the trap of assessing the validity of the excuse: "Hmm, maybe I did look at him funny...."
I would never pretend to read the government's mind, no longer having the microscope I got for the boys when they were growing up. But one can connect the dots. With the Department of Education being disbanded, government scientific research frozen, study results censored, facts suppressed and the media threatened, demanding that elite universities gag their students feels par for the course. It's all part of a war on the learned and on free expression.
Judaism is a religion, but it's also a culture, and that culture values education, Stephen Miller notwithstanding, and believes in speaking out. Jews tend to think about stuff, then ask questions. Attacks on education, like attacks on free speech and tolerance, are attacks on Jews. And if Jews aren't in the cross-hairs at this particular moment, give it time.
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The awful thing to me is that the hate mongering works like a charm, every single time. Trump only needs to point a finger at whatever target du jour and a majority of Americans of every other group will turn on the unfortunate ones and seethe and yell and vote accordingly. We're a sick society, deeply miserable and confused, and we're easily riled up by any made up cause of that misery, even if it's a new one every week. Like puppets on the strings of TV and social media.
ReplyDeleteWell put, thank you.
ReplyDeleteSorry Neil, but you're wrong on this one. Columbia is totally out of control at this point. it has allowed multiple buildings to be taken over by pro-Hamas Jew haters, have caused a lot of physical damage to the buildings, not been punished by the school for the damage, many of whom are here on student visas & never should've even been allowed in, like that pile of shit that they're trying to deport.
ReplyDeleteBut then, Columbia was stupid enough to hire as its president, an Egyptian woman that obviously hated Jews!
She may be gone now, but the school's epidemic of hating Jews continues unabated, just as bad as before.
No other university in this country has anywhere near as much hatred for Jews as Columbia, not one!
Which is why you want the federal government to step in? You're swallowing the baited hook, Clark St. Antisemitism is this year's pedophilia, the extreme charge the Trumpies use to steamroll their opponents.
DeleteSomeone has to step in & fix Columbia, it's board & their alumni aren't doing a damned thing there.
DeleteThis is total institutional failure at the highest level.
The joint has become a toxic waste dump!
Plus the trumpies are all anti-Semites themselves! They love seeing Jews pushed around!
Clark, I am often told that I deal to much in certainties and absolutism. Though i can easily say Columbia may be in the top 25, but is nowhere close to taking the top spot for most hatred for Jews.
DeleteColleges like Wheaton College, Taylor University, Liberty University, BYU, Pepperdine, Grand Canyoon University, Abilene Christina, and Oral Roberts literally fund antisemitic orginizations and in some cases won't let jews through their doors.
Columbia is a large, well known, liberal, New York school. Any of its issues will be magnified by the media, it checks every box for the right's campaign against America. Was what happened there handled the best? no, but most things rarely are. That's why they are institutions of higher learning, not institutions of higher learned.
As Neil points out, Judaism is mostly about questioning. As a Jew I have spent a vast majority of the post Yitzhak Rabin Assassination questioning Isreal and its people. The only things more antisemitic right now than the right, Stephen Miller, Israel, and Netanyaho is the arrest and disappearance of Mahmoud Khalil.
Any Jew (or American) who is not calling for his immediate release and return are antisemitic, anti-American, against the constitution, traitors, and fascists. Not a single one deserves our respect, our acknowledgement, a say in our government, or a place in the government.
Hamas is bad. So is arresting this man. this alone should shut down the government on the 14th.
As a Jew, i will say it loud again and again, every day, because what we are witnessing is what happened in Nazi Germany and exactly what Pastor Martin Niemöller warns about in First They Came.
Read it here - https://hmd.org.uk/resource/first-they-came-by-pastor-martin-niemoller/ - because today it may not be you, but tomorrow it will be.
Clark St., I think you fail to understand Neil's argument as well as the 1st Amendment's freedom of speech tenet. Even accepting as 100% true your criticism of Columbia and the various denouncements of anti-Semitism by "pieces of shit," the government does not have the right to silence their right to speak, just because their opinions differ from yours (and mine). Nor to make a political point.
Deletejohn
clark st is not well. ive got the anger issues as well and been put on time out by our host a few times. clark doest have a filter or a governor . for some reason his ranting gets through
DeleteDouble B: First of all, those are all whack job Christian colleges, that bizarrely worship a dead Jew while hating the living ones. I have no use for any of them & neither does the overwhelming majority of the US population & that also includes most of the Christians in this country!
DeleteSecond, Khalil & his fellow travelers actually physically destroyed parts of Columbia's buildings, but have not been expelled, which for those on student visas means expulsion from the USA! Some of them were not even students there, as noted on their arrests by the NYPD.
This is where Columbia's administration has totally collapsed in the face of this assault on their buildings & has cowardly given in to them.
We are seeing a once great university self destruct before our eyes!
Even that many of its wealthiest donors have told it, no more money for you hasn't gotten them to wake up!
Clark,
DeleteDouble D's observations are more accurate.. I fear destruction from so many other people and places than the Columbia protestors.
Franco, I also have the same short fuse, and have been repeatedly suspended and banned from a substantial number of websites and pages over the last quarter-century. Here at EGD, I've been reprimanded by Mr. S , and have been read the Riot Act about violent rhetoric. Which, given the zeitgeist of the mid-20s, could conceivably put this blog at risk.
DeleteAnd quite a few comments have ended up being seen only by the proprietor. Out of necessity, I am my own filter and my own governor, and regulate the ranting, the steam, and the emotions. Revise, rephrase, tone it down a notch.
Oh, I don't know Grizz — I think you're pretty much in the sweet spot. Yes, once I had to remind you that comments about passionately desiring the deaths of certain public personages can't be indulged — not only are they dangerous, given the current atmosphere but, really, what's the point? If hope isn't a strategy, then wishing certainly isn't. I try not to ban anyone — I considered no longer posting any of Franco's comments after he ridiculed a story of mine that I particularly loved. But I decided to put on my big boy pants and not be petty. There is one mentally ill reader who leaves comments in batches of 20 and 30, and those never, ever are posted, first not to encourage him, and second because I think they would puzzle and sadden everybody else. They don't bother me because I delete them unread.
DeleteOnce again I thank you, Mr. S, for all the leeway you have allowed me over the last seven years. And for indulging me when I tell the same stories I've told before. Some famous raconteur once said: "There are no new stories and jokes...just new audiences."
DeleteGotta tell ya, though, that when you finally pull the plug here, and close up shop, a major outlet for my self-expression will be lost, and EGD's demise will leave a big hole in my daily life that will be difficult to fill.
Began posting at private blogs and corporate message boards in 1999, when they were fast approaching their zenith. Not very many left now. Told my tales to a fairly diverse audience, at a much larger private venue, for 19 years. Then Covid took the owner.
EGD has always maintained high standards of excellence in both commentary and decorum,, thanks to its proprietor. It continues to be what the Sun-Times was once known as...The Bright One.
mr. Steinberg , did I do that? im really sorry. im a big fan of your work. I cant remember being so shitty. I trust I was. I also struggle with grace and kindness. sometimes im a real dick
DeleteYou suggested it seemed written by AI — which was odd, because it was the only story I ever worked on with a New Yorker editor. I'm usually fairly armored against criticism, but it did sting, coming from a regular. Plus you were the only person to say it sucked. But your apology means a lot, and I try to keep grudges back in 7th grade. I appreciate you reading.
DeleteI'll have to go back and read it again after I've had my morning cigarette I'm particularly testy in the morning
DeleteWe're one teensy, tiny Reichstag fire away from full dictatorship. The last thin mint these gangsters need to push us into darkness. And nearly half the country is on board with this. Like NS says, if they end up suffering they'll blame it on the people they hate.
ReplyDeleteWe're already there.
DeleteRepublican's silence proves it.
Republican's passing their CR proves it.
We don't need a fire, Khrushchev was right.
I was at a play reading this week in which a play hilariously poked at stick into the cage of MAGA lunacy. Sixty people laughed hysterically throughout. When it was over and a discussion began one guy interrupted the love fest by standing up and going berserk. He screamed that he voted for Trump 3 times and then screamed his Curriculum Vitae featuring the books he had written, the implication being that he was an accomplished person whose life had been wronged and Trump was his savior. He had a briefcase, he is a security guard, he was hyperventilating with anger and spittle and we all wondered if he was about to pull out a gun out of the briefcase and shoot those of us who laughed at his emperor. He couldn't have confirmed the play's thesis of MAGA madness any better had it been his intent. He scared the sh-t out of everyone there then ran off into the night, no rebuttal allowed. I wanted to tell him, had I not been afraid of being shot, that his harangue was more effective in the original German. Fortunately for my mortality that opportunity was missed. Krugman's piece today was about the madness inherent in MAGA. I saw it in the flesh this week.
ReplyDeleteIs it possible he could have been a plant? An actor? Sure sounds like it. If so, he appears to have played his part perfectly, and he scared the shit out of everyone. Maybe that was the plan.
DeleteBut unfortunately, it's more likely he was the real deal. There's a lot of that going around. All it may take is one guy, with one, gun, and one bullet...and the powder kegs in the powder factory go ka-boom. Think of the guy who shot the Archduke and touched off World War I.
The way things are now, that might be the scenario that starts the whole shebang...with an emphasis on the second syllable. Especially if that guy turns out to be Jewish.
Grizz- my initial reaction was the same.... was this guy part of the performance? Who knows? The effect was the same, regardless.
DeleteToo me this arrest is a bridge too far.
ReplyDeleteThe train has stopped. Despite the doors not being opened, i can see through the gaps in the slats the terrifying specter of the past and present.
The American experiment lies dead on the floor. Unless someone resuscitates it, it will never come back.
If you can't see that, you don't have eyes.
If you can't understand that, you are uneducated.
if you haven't called you representatives every day since January 19th, you are ok with the end, since you are responsible for it.
Right-wingers have been pissy about academia for a long time. William F. Buckley's first book was "God and Man at Yale," an extended whine about how the faculty at Yale was all a bunch of godless liberals. For decades, they've been complaining about polls that show percentages of conservative college professors in the single digits.
ReplyDeleteHey fellows: When the smartest, best-educated and most erudite people in the world reject your politics consistently and en masse, maybe the problem isn't with them.
The White House is the biggest offender of promoting anti-Semistism! When is someone going to sue them and the tech support space nazi?
ReplyDeleteIf the administration was serious about eliminating antisemitism, they wouldn't employ proponents of the replacement theory as spokespersons and to carry out their policies.
ReplyDeletethe folks who staged the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil seem to have committed a more radical act than they originally intended. thinking they'd revoke a student visa, then escalating it to revoke a green card, instead. And as most everyone has already underscored, this isn't about eradicating anti-semitism. If that were true, Elon Musk would already be in jail. With Steve Bannon as his cell-mate.
ReplyDeleteThis was posted on FB by Alt National Parks today. (no one expected the National Parks staff to take a leading role in the rebellion, yet here we are).
ReplyDelete"Imagine this: On the evening of March 8, you and your spouse unlock the door to your apartment building. As you step inside, two men—not in uniform—push their way in behind you. They tell you your visa has been revoked and that they are there to deport you. When your eight-months-pregnant spouse, who is an American citizen, protests, they threaten to arrest them too if they don’t stay silent and go inside.
When you demand to see a warrant, one of the men holds up a phone and shows you a picture of a document. You know that’s not how warrants work, but there’s no time to argue. The men are already closing in.
For the entire next day, your spouse and lawyer search frantically for you—but there is no record of your arrest, no information on where you’ve been taken. You have effectively been disappeared.
Only after relentless efforts do they finally locate you. You’re being held in a privately owned ICE detention center—one that has been flagged by human rights organizations for severe medical neglect, as well as both physical and sexual assault. The facility is notorious, yet it remains operational, profiting from the suffering of those trapped inside.
You are the first person this administration has disappeared for political reasons. The choice is deliberate. Defending you would come at a political cost—one they believe your university, your community, or any opposition party is unwilling to pay. So far, they’re right. No one is coming. No headlines, no statements, just silence.
And then, you’re gone.
This is how authoritarian regimes test the waters. The first disappearance is a warning. If no one fights back, the next one comes easier. And the one after that. Until fear replaces resistance.
Now, imagine this happening to you. Would anyone fight for you?
We believe that all people—regardless of nationality, immigration status, or political affiliation—deserve equal rights and due process under the law. The Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees that “No person shall be… deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The Fourteenth Amendment reinforces this by stating that “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
These rights are not conditional. They are fundamental. And when they are violated for one person, they are threatened for all of us.
We uphold the Constitution. That is why we speak up."
WBEZ interviewed an Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security, who defended the arrest by stating that Mahmoud had violated the terms of his visa by supporting a terrorist group, but wouldn't state how he had done that and kept referring to a violation of the provisions of his visa, even though the reporter tried to tell him that Mahmoud had a green card and was married to an American citizen. And this guy wasn't even a newbie, having been an assistant secretary in Trump's first disaster as President.
Deletejohn
Amendment I
ReplyDeleteCongress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
This has been happening in various scenarios since 9-11 and the insane approval of the creation and extension of Homeland Security. Like now, only a minority spoke up against it and its draconian reach. We've been feeding this monster for years but we're surprised it's eating us alive?
ReplyDelete