This Is How You Get More Ants

Student protests and college administrators

So last weekend I traveled to Columbia to see the aftermath of the protests there.

That was kind of a bust, really.  The campus was closed off, and all the entrances were guarded, and they weren’t admitting visiting law professors or bloggers.

I couldn’t take a picture of the encampment through the bars, as I did at Harvard, because it had already been removed.  All I saw was lots of security.  Not only around the Main Lawn, which is the part of Columbia that gets shown in brochures and movies, but also in front of the numerous dorms and other buildings scattered around Morningside Heights.  (The Columbia campus, overall, is kind of notional.)

The pro-Israel people weren’t backing down, though:

There were a lot of these hostage stickers, which Hamas supporters apparently gave up on tearing down.

There was also the “collective liberation” sticker, which calls the hypocrisy of the left into clear question.

And on a cheerier note:

The Chabad people – more hardcore than most older Jewish organizations – weren’t backing down.

But there wasn’t much to see.  Commencement was cancelled, the students were mostly gone, and other than guards scattered around, there wasn’t much sign that anything had happened.  The Hamas crowd seemed way behind in the sticker wars, though I did see this:

It’s not much of a “genocide,” since there are vastly more Palestinians than there were when their first effort to exterminate the Jews in Israel failed in 1948, which is what’s remembered in the “Nakba” reference.  If the Israelis wanted a genocide, they’d have one.  But they don’t want one,  it’s just that words don’t mean anything to the left.  And why should they?  They get away with murder, both linguistically and literally.

Anyway, give Columbia some credit.  They got rid of the encampment, they’re – allegedly –disciplining students who misbehaved, and they have peace.

Contrast that with Harvard, which basically capitulated in order to get the protesters to leave before commencement.  Amnesty and promises of divestment talks.  Once you pay the Danegeld, you’re never rid of the Dane.

A great man once said:

You want more lawless student protests?  This is how you get more lawless student protests.

The Democrats are no doubt relieved to have this kind of thing out of the news over the summer, but it’ll probably be back in the fall, and it will serve them right if it is.  Spoiled, privileged, entitled children on a rampage is a good metaphor for leftist politics in general, and don’t think people aren’t noticing.

UPDATE: A Harvard friend says that I’m overstating Harvard’s capitulation here. I was going by this story from the Crimson, which I blogged last week: “Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine announced early Tuesday morning that it would peacefully end the encampment in Harvard Yard, bringing an anticlimactic end to Harvard’s most high-profile pro-Palestine protest this year and paving the way for Commencement to proceed as planned. The decision to peacefully end the encampment came after University President Alan M. Garber ’76 and HOOP organizers negotiated a peaceful end to the protest. Garber’s administration agreed to promptly begin reinstating at least 22 students from involuntary leaves of absence and offered protesters a meeting with members of the University’s governing boards about divestment.”

My friend comments: “You’re not really wrong, in the sense that Harvard’s response wasn’t as strong as Columbia’s. But people were punished. And the protesters initially rejected Garber’s offer. They voted to accept it like a week later, after the dorms and dining halls started to close for summer. Can also confirm at least one unionized staff member was fired and two more are on the chopping block for their participation.”

There’s more in this story from late today: Harvard Corporation Rejects FAS Effort to Let 13 Pro-Palestine Student Protesters Graduate. “The Harvard Corporation rejected an effort by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences to confer degrees on 13 seniors facing disciplinary charges for participating in the pro-Palestine encampment, an unprecedented veto that opens a new front in the internal battles that have convulsed Harvard for the past year. The Corporation, the University’s highest governing body, deliberated late into the night on Tuesday as it stared down an impossible decision: render Harvard College’s disciplinary processes toothless by approving the FAS-amended list or undercut the authority of the University’s largest faculty by declining to uphold their amendment.”

So it’s not quite as toothless a response as I had suggested. Happy to update and make that clear!