I'm traveling and not able to post as often as usual, so please bear with me. Just keeping up with current events is impossible as developments in the global resistance to Israel's genocide in Gaza are constant and rapid these days.
A few of the items that stood out in my news feeds:
https://twitter.com/probablyreadit/status/1785427534898737304
This comment nails why I felt that this event in particular was significant. Taxpayers employ police to block a major New York City train station in order to preemptively silence 1st amendment protected political speech?
Here's another one that has stayed with me:
It is a companion to the many posts on social media right now by parents of high school seniors saying some version of: I see you called the police to violently attack peaceful student protesters on campus. We are crossing (Columbia, NYU, Emory, UT Austin, etc.) off our list.
What's that old saying, money talks and bullshit walks? Parents expressing these opinions are looking at shelling out a quarter to half a million dollars so their kids can earn degrees from these schools. Also, if they're white boomers like me they may remember when their own college protected students from police, not allowing cops on campus at will, and certainly not calling in stormtroopers to suppress dissent.
I don't know about President Roth of Wesleyan's conscience, but I do know a smart marketing move when I see one.
As I've noted before, commencements are going to be wild this year. I wish I was going to be back in time to post up at the University of Vermont in Burlington where students are planning to protest keynote speaker Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, for her complicity in no less than three vetoes of a ceasefire in Gaza.
You remember Burlington, right? That's where three Palestinian college students were gunned down last Thanksgiving weekend wearing keffiyehs and speaking Arabic while walking down a street (off campus).
Cue the constant corporate media stories about "Jewish" (they really mean Zionist) students claiming they feel unsafe on campus. Then maybe check out the news from UCLA where Zionist mobs descend at night to attack the encampment there while police stand by and watch.
Meanwhile, the U.S. House of Representatives in its wisdom just passed this mess. From Associated Press:
Several House committees will be tasked with a wide probe that ultimately threatens to withhold federal research grants and other government support to the universities, placing another pressure point on campus administrators who are struggling to manage pro-Palestinian encampments, allegations of discrimination against Jewish students and questions of how they are integrating free speech and campus safety.
Also, have you been wondering why pitching tents on the quad of so many universities is against regulations? To keep unhoused people out of course.
All these items add up to a sea change for post secondary education as we've known it, and that is fitting as a consequence of the genocidal horrors that our elected officials and university administrators and boards are supporting.
One last tweet with my prediction that Columbia can kiss being the "top journalism school" in the U.S. goodbye.
https://twitter.com/zdroberts/status/1785781719603273893
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