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.
They already begun expelling 22 students
I demand Trump be punished for all his crimes
Dr Shafiq’s case was a great example of how one should (not) to deal with MAGA. She literally did everything the GOP demanded of her. Then Mike Johnson still went on to demand her resignation. She called cops on students (HUGE mistake), fueled the flames of nationwide protests… Yet she ended up resigning. In contrast Dr Claudine Gay did not budge so she was academically assassinated and then they made her resign. UPenn’s president Dr Liz Magill was pressured to resign too. Which is telling how the free speech absolutist party suddenly uniformly got 3 ivy league university presidents resign/removed regardless of them doing what was demanded or not.
And this is what will lead to the demise of trumpism: they make resistance way more worthwhile than compliance.
well the thing is, libs are physically incapable of thinking about resisting. they can only do aesthetics and vibes and murdering the poor. no amount of evidence will change their behavior-if it did, we wouldn’t be in this mess.
would love to see what happens when they try to pressure someone who’s not a lib in shit though.
Great job by leadership who thought that not standing up for student protestors would somehow protect them from reprisals.
I hope other universities are paying attention
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.
I mean… It kinda shows how bullshit and soulless it has become. It’s like when regular Americans that aren’t on the right act like our entire American culture isn’t to blame for where we are today.
Individualism and exceptionalism in a society that can’t be supported without the efforts of countless others and subsidized by the poorer living conditions of people who don’t even live there sounds kind of silly to me.
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.
and most of the donors tend to be backed by israeli groups too, hence the reason why university protests over gaza was crushed so easily
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.
most of them gave up thier specific fields to be nothing more than a c-suite, or MBA person would. they probably couldnt hack it in thier field so they end up as a administrator. the PHD is irrelevant if your not actually using it for its intended purposes.
Current interim President:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katrina_Armstrong
As an assistant professor of medicine and epidemiology in the Division of General Internal Medicine at UPenn, Armstrong co-developed and directed the first and second-year medical course “Clinical Decision Making.” In recognition of her teaching, she received the 2003 Leonard Berwick Award, awarded to “a member of the medical faculty who in his or her teaching most effectively fuses basic science and clinical medicine.”
While continuing her research into cancer control, genetic testing for cancer susceptibility, and racial disparities in cancer outcomes, she earned the Samuel Martin Health Evaluation Sciences Research Award for “her research program that seeks to elucidate the complex relationships among the social environment, health care use, and health outcomes.” In 2006, Armstrong was elected to the American Society of Clinical Investigation for her records of scholarly achievement in biomedical research.
By 2011, Armstrong and Mitchell Schnall received a five-year, $7.5 million grant from the National Cancer Institute to create the Penn Center for Innovation in Personalized Breast Cancer Screening.
they probably couldnt hack it in thier field so they end up as a administrator.
Sure, Jan. Also, it’s “couldn’t” and “their.”
We don’t have to exaggerate and make shit up to justify how we feel. That’s what the MAGA fucktards do.
I’m not making shit up, this is just my experience dealing with academia (and not in the US to be clear). But thanks for informing me that the situation is different at Columbia University.
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.
that is true, some wash out from thier field even with a PHD and become a c-suite as the only resort.
I think you read that wrong.
First they came for Columbia, but it wasn’t my football team.
It’s no one’s football team. Even the alumni 😅
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.
Are the people who abstained from voting because of the war in Palestine happy now?
Trump doesn’t care about Palestinian protests. He cares about people not being able to protest HIM. This is the trial run.
How are you guys not marching on Washington yet?
Bro I can’t even physically get to my state’s capital. It’d be like a four hour train ride, and a few hundred dollars. Maybe if there was funding for busses there could be higher turnout, but the only people who want to resist are the ones who are already poor and desperate. Things are still fine for the people who’ve always been comfortable.
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.
Seattle, WA to DC is over 2750mi (~4425km).
Europeans really don’t understand how spread out we are over here. And then there’s the whole “I could lose my job and housing if I take a day off work” thing that most people have going on.
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.
Because they thrive on the attention and it is expensive, dangerous, and a complete waste of time.
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.
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.
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).
Trump: Do it or I’ll fire you… revoke your… sue you… investi… pull your funding! Wait, who is this again?
