Protests are continuing at Columbia University on Wednesday as school officials are at a loss about what to do. Another tent city has arisen after cops tore down the first one on Monday.
Columbia's President Minouche Shafik made the tactical blunder of agreeing to negotiate with the troublemakers. By doing this, she's already lost. Her surrender is imminent.
It's either that or send in the riot police again. Given the desire for martyrdom on the part of the Palestinians, any police action is likely to get bloody.
The protests are spreading to Texas and California. Before long, the entire nation will be engulfed in protests. They may start as protests against the Gaza War. But soon, the calls to end capitalism, stop using oil, free pot, "criminal justice reform," and any other radical left, cockamamie idea that enters the Utopian minds of young people will be added to the list of "demands."
"Negotiations" are useless because you're not dealing with grown-up, rational minds. These are children, if not in age then in emotional maturity. Treating them like adults delights them and emboldens them to keep moving the goalposts so that agreement becomes harder and harder.
They don't want a settlement. They want confrontation.
As a sign that the protesters are winning, the deadline to remove the tent encampment at Columbia has been pushed back 48 hours, according to a school spokesperson, because "important progress" had been made. This was after the student negotiators walked out citing threats to call in the riot police. The "important progress" appeared to be the walk-out by negotiators and not any movement by either side.
“There seems to be very little room in terms of where the university wants to meet the students and the students want to meet with the university. It doesn’t seem that there’s much room in terms of compromise,” said Isabella Ramirez, editor-in-chief of the Columbia Spectator, Tuesday night.
The very act of negotiating is a sign of weakness. And students are taking advantage of it.
Tensions are high, especially as Jewish students, faculty and staff celebrate the Passover holiday. Elected officials from the mayor of New York through President Joe Biden have commented, with leaders of the House of Representatives issuing statements on both sides of the aisle.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said he planned to visit Jewish students at Columbia on Wednesday and hold a press conference “regarding the troubling rise of virulent antisemitism on America’s college campuses,” according to his office.
As the national spotlight has fallen on Columbia, similar encampments are growing at other schools, and officials nationwide are grappling with a response to what has become a coast-to-coast disruption.
Where's the paddle when you need it?
This isn't about ending an unjust war or winning civil rights for the oppressed. This is about preventing the state of Israel from defeating a relentless, terrorist enemy who has sworn to kill every Jew in Israel. The inability of American children to differentiate between the truth and Palestinian/Hamas propaganda reflects very badly on the education these kids have been getting from the time they enter the American public school system until the present when their minds are being filled with hatred for the Jews by radical professors.
“Jewish students have had enough, and it’s gotten to the point that we feel safer off campus than on it,” Jacob Schmeltz, a senior at Columbia, said.
At least 53 students arrested at Columbia attend Barnard College, a women's college affiliated with Columbia. They were suspended following their arrest and the school is eager to wipe the slate clean as long as the women behave themselves.
“Last night, the college sent written notices to these students offering to lift the interim suspensions,” Barnard President Laura Rosenbury wrote, “and immediately restore their access to college buildings, if they agree to follow all Barnard rules during a probationary period.
“If these students choose this path, neither the interim suspension nor the probationary period will appear on the students’ academic transcripts,” Rosenbury said in the memo, her first communication to students since Thursday’s mass arrests.
If 10% of the women who have their records expunged don't return to the protests, I'll be very surprised.
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