Over A Hundred Arrested at Columbia University Today

Send them to Gaza. They can stand in solidarity there.

Getting political ?

It is a little before my time, but it is my understanding that in the 1960s and early 1970s the US was engaged in a war in some far away place and people said the same thing about students who protested it. 

One MAJOR difference between then and Columbia's spectacle  (FWIW) is that there are  many Jewish students on campus who are subject to the antisemitic chants and signs (and confrontations). A hallmark of the pro-Palestine/anti-Israel crew on the ‘elite’ campuses of late.

Longsuffering's point (in bold) is well taken regarding the current issue. 

Off the topic but I don't think the pro-Palestine/anti-Israel 'protestors' grasp the meaning of their two favorite words ('genocide' and 'apartheid').

Former hippies can pat themselves on the back and think their protests ended the war in Vietnam…they didn’t. They lost the support of the average American, helped get Nixon elected and helped extend the war several years. These pro-Palestinian protestors are just a bunch of over privileged kids that should be ignored.

Uh, I think it went in the opposite direction. I watched Walter Cronkite stop supporting the war, then Tip O'Neill stop supporting the war, then my father stop supporting the war. It was like the Vietnam "Domino Effect" in reverse. I don't actually remember whether Cronkite or Tip went first but remember my father, a WWII veteran crediting Tip O'Neill as the reason he stopped supporting the Vietnam War.

There's a Bruce Springsteen song where he talks about his father always saying "wait until the Army gets ahold of you, that will straighten you out" or something similar. Then when Bruce got drafted but was medically rejected, his father quietly said "good."

I think the country gradually changed it's opinion against the war based on the 50,000 American Soldier deaths when the U.S. had not been attacked, so it wasn't possible for the protesters to have lost the support of the country because the country moved in their direction.

Not sure about your notion of “Shut up and go to the library”. (Longsuffering asked, “Why can't students at an academic institution respond to current events in an academic way by doing research, writing papers with new ideas, holding symposiums etc.?“ That would seem more productive than the tiresome and antisemitic signage and sloganeering in support of Palestine, Gaza, Hamas, etc., etc.)

We'll disagree whether recommending a student symposium is tantamount to saying "shut up and go to the library" relative to the matter at hand but, beyond that, we  witnessed antisemitism and trespass (not to mention intimidation and a climate of fear) at Columbia. Hence the reasonable request of the college president for the 100 NYPD arrests on campus.

That, of course, has nothing to do with lawful public demonstrations (and their value as public expression) writ large.

On a happier note, there is some entertainment in reading and hearing the protestor fantasy language regarding 'genocide' and 'apartheid'. Only topped by the inevitable 'Lesbians for Liberation" and Queers for Palestine" spotted in the Columbia protest encampment. Lets hope those weren't actual Columbia students and/or representative of the learning going on there.

Well, many more Palestinian Gazans than Israelis have been killed in the recent events.  (Whether that is due to Hamas' tactics of hiding amongst their own civilians or Israel's callous disregard for Palestinian civilian life is a different question.)  The military uses the word proportional (or disproportionate) in a different way.

In the context of urban warfare in very densely populated areas the balance of potential military gains versus likelihood of civilian deaths (proportionality) is a particularly  involved calculus. I have been part of that routine US decision cycle and believe Israel makes the same sort of analysis. (Certainly, Israel could completely destroy Palestine and kill all the civilians [and Hamas] rather easily if it really wanted to just as it could have refrained from any sort of Gazan incursion/bombing following the slaughter.)


 

White House statement on the situation at Columbia University:

“While every American has the right to peaceful protest, calls for violence and physical intimidation targeting Jewish students and the Jewish community are blatantly Antisemitic, unconscionable, and dangerous – they have absolutely no place on any college campus, or anywhere in the United States of America. And echoing the rhetoric of terrorist organizations, especially in the wake of the worst massacre committed against the Jewish people since the Holocaust, is despicable. We condemn these statements in the strongest terms.”