"Expelling them, on the other hand, would instill the lesson that acts carry consequences and would send a message to others that rules need to be respected."
No offense to the excellent authors, but the next time any American college admin or prof "instill(s) the lesson that acts carry consequences" will be the first time this century. The new purpose of American universities is to instill the opposite idea, which is that if your intentions are supposedly noble, if you claim you're fighting for Justice or "to make the world a better place" etc, then you should be exempt from all rules or consequences.
American academia has reached its pitiful postrational post-Enlightenment Feelings Over Facts laughing-stock state because of this weird Commissar/Red Guard symbiosis between the incredibly useless admin/trustee class and their spoiled ignorant charges, who only grow more deranged, thus needing more admin oversight, thus keeping the scam cycle alive.
The campus INFANTADA is the perfect manifestation of American rot, where angry children egged on by their minders chant about a fictional genocide while marching for a real one. And, once again, despite all our wealth and knowledge of History, despite all the decades of Never Again, we've arrived in the same old place: where Utopia is bound to arrive once we kill enough Jews.
Alas, I agree with your assessment of the current state of academia... But perhaps we can turn this ship around? Enforcing rules could be one small step towards the reboot.
Faculty at USC are in a difficult position if the institution will not fulfill its obligations. One thing faculty should consider doing is making class attendance mandatory. That way, any student who is not in class for a demonstration can be sanctioned by the faculty member, including, if set up correctly, removal from the course or an F in the course. It may come to faculty to have to fail out the chronic protesters to change their behavior/remove them from the community.
There was a protest yesterday starting at BU and then walking all the way to join a rally @ MIT. I only know about this because I have started checking in on all the local affiliate SJP Instagram accounts at the many colleges and universities in our neighborhood to make sure and avoid these gatherings when they happen. I don’t know how big but was but I suspect not as big as the ones from the Spring.
Also - is it just le or is it only because of these protests in particular that they have had to figure out new rules? Other groups don’t seem to have created this problem when protesting?
How much confidence can we have in DEI "social justice" administrators and their DEI political commissars (notoriously antisemitic) to enforce rules uniformly or enforce rules at all? Most administrators seem to want to virtue signal and otherwise to have peace through inaction.
Our schools, universities, regulatory bodies, and funding agencies are thoroughly corrupted. Can this be corrected short of tearing it all down and starting again? Some state legislatures, which are the funders of state universities, have initiated reforms and appear to be ready to police them. New governments that hold more traditional values would stop supporting far left corruption. If that works, there is some hope. Otherwise, the U.S. and Canada are finished.
Here is how Daily Trojan and Annenberg media cover this:
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/09/13/protesters-organize-walkout-for-palestine/
https://www.uscannenbergmedia.com/2024/09/13/student-protest-demands-usc-divest-from-israel/
They talk about SJP as if it were a legitimate student organization and completely ignore the fact that this protest violates USC rules.
"Expelling them, on the other hand, would instill the lesson that acts carry consequences and would send a message to others that rules need to be respected."
No offense to the excellent authors, but the next time any American college admin or prof "instill(s) the lesson that acts carry consequences" will be the first time this century. The new purpose of American universities is to instill the opposite idea, which is that if your intentions are supposedly noble, if you claim you're fighting for Justice or "to make the world a better place" etc, then you should be exempt from all rules or consequences.
American academia has reached its pitiful postrational post-Enlightenment Feelings Over Facts laughing-stock state because of this weird Commissar/Red Guard symbiosis between the incredibly useless admin/trustee class and their spoiled ignorant charges, who only grow more deranged, thus needing more admin oversight, thus keeping the scam cycle alive.
The campus INFANTADA is the perfect manifestation of American rot, where angry children egged on by their minders chant about a fictional genocide while marching for a real one. And, once again, despite all our wealth and knowledge of History, despite all the decades of Never Again, we've arrived in the same old place: where Utopia is bound to arrive once we kill enough Jews.
This is a shameful moment for our country.
Alas, I agree with your assessment of the current state of academia... But perhaps we can turn this ship around? Enforcing rules could be one small step towards the reboot.
I defer to you, as you are the one down on the battlefield while i am just a random ranter yelling from a safe distance.
I don't know if you saw this, but it also contains some great advice about how to (maybe) restore some sanity:
https://quillette.com/2024/09/09/a-stupid-cartoon-and-the-university-ideology-hamas-gaza-fanon-carmichael/
sorry if i'm adding to your reading pile!
best wishes and much appreciation for all your work...
Faculty at USC are in a difficult position if the institution will not fulfill its obligations. One thing faculty should consider doing is making class attendance mandatory. That way, any student who is not in class for a demonstration can be sanctioned by the faculty member, including, if set up correctly, removal from the course or an F in the course. It may come to faculty to have to fail out the chronic protesters to change their behavior/remove them from the community.
There was a protest yesterday starting at BU and then walking all the way to join a rally @ MIT. I only know about this because I have started checking in on all the local affiliate SJP Instagram accounts at the many colleges and universities in our neighborhood to make sure and avoid these gatherings when they happen. I don’t know how big but was but I suspect not as big as the ones from the Spring.
Also - is it just le or is it only because of these protests in particular that they have had to figure out new rules? Other groups don’t seem to have created this problem when protesting?
How much confidence can we have in DEI "social justice" administrators and their DEI political commissars (notoriously antisemitic) to enforce rules uniformly or enforce rules at all? Most administrators seem to want to virtue signal and otherwise to have peace through inaction.
Our schools, universities, regulatory bodies, and funding agencies are thoroughly corrupted. Can this be corrected short of tearing it all down and starting again? Some state legislatures, which are the funders of state universities, have initiated reforms and appear to be ready to police them. New governments that hold more traditional values would stop supporting far left corruption. If that works, there is some hope. Otherwise, the U.S. and Canada are finished.