00:00:30.360What do you know about the protests at Columbia University?
00:00:33.080All I know is that none of the chants and none of the signs at any of the protests
00:00:37.520have made me as uncomfortable as recommending a song by Macklemore.
00:00:53.820I guess we have to frame this a bit up top because as we are recording,
00:00:58.540we're in the midst of a surge of student protests at universities across the country.
00:01:03.500Protests are about the Israeli attacks on Gaza, and more specifically,
00:01:07.940they are a call on universities to divest from companies and organizations that profit from
00:01:14.140Israeli war crimes. It's largely been my opinion and experience that the media coverage of this
00:01:21.160has been awful atrocious and in recent days we've gotten a heavy dose of police propaganda
00:01:28.180with a bunch of cameos from my boy eric adams who i've decided will be a recurring character
00:01:34.440on our podcast dude this pod this podcast is undefeated with like predicting moral panics
00:01:39.820in advance remember we did retail crime and then the actual retailers like retracted their number
00:01:45.880target actually sent me a gift card as an apology for that one and then now it's like we're talking0.96
00:01:50.640about all this like deranged propaganda and how these fucking police departments have like more0.98
00:01:55.980PR people than entire newsrooms. And we get a huge wave of propaganda immediately after these0.98
00:02:02.140crackdowns. If Eric Adams gets arrested in the next couple of months, I do think that we did it,
00:02:07.060even though we have never talked about his various actual crimes on this podcast.
00:02:11.400This podcast has goals. I wanted to limit this discussion to Columbia University for the most
00:02:17.660part because i think the fact that these protests have spread out across the country and have all
00:02:24.740sorts of sort of different valences in different areas it's made the coverage more confusing and i
00:02:31.040want to sort of do a case study so to contextualize this student protests obviously have been ongoing
00:02:37.160since october 7th when hamas first attacked and things recently escalated in april when the
00:02:45.300president of Columbia University, Manoush Shafiq, appeared before the Republican-controlled House
00:02:51.600Committee on Education and the Workforce in a hearing ostensibly about anti-Semitism on
00:02:58.880Columbia's campus. This is the same committee that Harvard President Claudine Gay and Penn
00:03:05.120President Liz McGill appeared before last December, where they were like peppered with
00:03:10.060bad faith questions and ultimately both of them had to resign why do people keep showing up in
00:03:17.380front of these like obviously bad faith committees this is by far the most baffling thing to me0.60
00:03:21.840yeah it feels like for university presidents this is some sort of mandatory psychosexual
00:03:28.180humiliation ritual it's like everyone who agrees to an interview with isaac chotiner
00:03:31.860where they're like look everybody else just got beclowned but it might work for us so i yeah
00:03:38.240Shafiq, I think she thought she was being crafty, right?
00:03:42.800She's like, I can learn from their mistakes and do the perfect testimony.
00:03:48.920So she like gets up there and she's actually very conciliatory toward the committee members.
00:03:55.280She did her best to like align her positions with theirs.
00:03:59.260She points out how many students Columbia has suspended over the past several months.
00:04:04.200Hell yeah. She was asked about professors who expressed what the committee members felt was support for Hamas's attack. One of them, she says, you know, he was fired and he will never teach at Columbia again. Another who had tenure, she committed on the spot when asked by Elise Stefanik to stripping him of a chairmanship in like a faculty group.
00:04:25.560I thought you were going to say committed seppuku on the spot, which also which I think is what they wanted.
00:04:57.860Probably not as well as you are, Congressman.
00:05:00.480Well, it's pretty clear. It was a covenant that God made with Abraham. And that covenant was real clear. If you bless Israel, I will bless you. If you curse Israel, I will curse you. And then in the New Testament, it was confirmed that all nations would be blessed through you. So you do not know about that.
00:05:27.640I have heard that now that you've explained it.
00:05:55.480Yeah. No. Being cursed by God. Yeah. No, I have heard of that.
00:05:59.080No, I really – I prefer not. Yeah. Also, he's doing the voice that if your friend did it like while doing an impression of a Republican senator, you'd be like, hey, dial it back. That's really offensive. Like don't do the cartoon redneck voice when you're pretending to be a Republican senator.
00:06:16.220That's why you can't – that's why you can't speed that up to 1.5 or something because you really lose the effect.0.57
00:06:21.240the thing is i was just about to do it but i was like no i people will yell at me if i do it right
00:06:28.360now it's like it's too offensive to do the voice i want to hear it mike look you can't be racist
00:06:35.720against like southern senators or whatever it's not it's not a thing god her like her like sad
00:06:41.200smile i'm not as familiar with that i don't want the campus to be cursed we live in hell peter so
00:06:48.920So when this hearing wraps up, at first it feels a little bit like a PR win.
00:06:53.980She is sort of complimented by one member of the committee that says she beat Harvard and Penn on this issue.
00:07:00.040So maybe she's feeling good at this point.
00:07:03.080But while she was testifying, pro-Palestinian protesters set up an encampment on a campus quad.
00:07:10.080Hundreds of students pitched about 50 tents, and they state that they will be occupying the space until Colombia divests from Israel.
00:07:18.260So is this related to the congressional hearing or is this just a total coincidence?
00:08:15.760So she responds by writing a public letter to NYPD.
00:08:23.480She says, I write with regard to the encampment on Columbia University's campus that began before dawn on the morning of Wednesday, April 17th, 2024.
00:08:32.240As discussed, more than 100 individuals are currently occupying the South Lawn of Columbia University's Morningside Heights campus.
00:08:39.160This group has been informed numerous times and in writing that they are not permitted to occupy this space, are in violation of the university's rules and policies, and must disperse.
00:08:48.660I have determined that the encampment and related disruptions pose a clear and present danger to the substantial functioning of the university.
00:08:56.840With great regret, we request the NYPD's help to remove these individuals.
00:09:01.380We trust that you will take care and caution when removing any individual from our campus.
00:09:05.360The thing is, I also read that letter, and she mentioned that this has the potential to ruin John Cage's 433. So it's interesting you didn't read that excerpt. I think we need to focus on the real victims.
00:09:15.560So Columbia is a private university on private property. They have an agreement with NYPD that NYPD won't intervene on campus unless asked to. So this letter is the president saying, hey, NYPD, come on in. This is something that has not happened since 1968 when there were student protests and NYPD intervened.
00:09:36.880And it was largely considered to be a big clusterfuck.
00:09:40.640So legally, they are within their rights here.0.93
00:09:43.740They can basically tell anyone, students included, hey, we want you off this lawn.
00:09:48.900And if the students refuse, they are trespassing and can be removed, right?
00:09:53.860It is very funny that this whole thing is literally kids get off my lawn.
00:10:05.920That's when you know that nothing has happened, that they were just being arrested because they were irritating people.
00:10:10.480I also want to talk about some weird language in this statement.
00:10:13.560She says that students present a, quote, clear and present danger to the substantial functioning of the university.
00:10:20.780This is like very crafty phrasing because at a glance, it seems like she's saying they're dangerous in like the general sense of the word.
00:10:28.560But she's saying they are dangerous to the substantial functioning of the university.
00:10:33.260which doesn't seem like it's actual danger you know it's this combination of high stakes and
00:10:39.180low stakes right because like you could say that about anything you could say that like
00:10:42.000you working from home poses a clear and present danger to my ability to watch the legend of cora
00:10:47.860all day like it doesn't it doesn't mean anything so also as a lawyer i kind of perked up when i
00:10:53.460saw clear and present danger because that's like an antiquated legal standard from the world war
00:10:59.580one era that has been overruled. So now the First Amendment test is inciting imminent lawless action
00:11:07.780and like the clear and present danger thing that that hasn't been the First Amendment law since
00:11:12.300the 60s. Yeah. But there was that Harrison Ford movie in the 90s. And so everybody thinks everybody
00:11:16.920thinks it's real. I was sort of like, why is she using this language? And apparently it's in
00:11:22.400Columbia's policies. Like I went digging through their policies and apparently they use this like
00:11:26.560clear and present danger standard, presumably because it's like broader and vaguer, which is
00:11:31.520why it was overturned to begin with. But it like sort of still sounds like it's legalese, right?
00:11:36.500I also will flag that Columbia policy says that in order to bring in NYPD, the president has to
00:11:42.540consult with, quote, a majority of a panel established by the university senate's executive
00:11:48.220committee. The executive committee said that they were not consulted. The Columbia spectator,
00:11:54.020the student paper, which, by the way, has done the best reporting on this by such a wide margin
00:11:59.160that it's remarkable. They asked the school about this, and the school responds that Shafiq,
00:12:04.020quote, consulted with the Senate chair, comply with the consultation requirement.
00:12:08.760But the requirement is that she consult with a majority of a panel established by the committee.
00:12:14.660So it seems pretty clear that she just ignored the policy to bust up this protest as quickly
00:12:19.160as possible. It's also funny because like like breaking the procedure of like how to tell the
00:12:25.040protesters to disperse is like kind of silly. Right. It's a sort of technical procedural thing,
00:12:29.660which like nobody really cares about. Right. But the whole thing is that the entire argument for
00:12:34.740breaking this up is a little tiny procedural thing, too. It's like they're trespassing on
00:12:38.980campus. No, it's it's even less than that. Columbia's real justification, like what they're
00:12:43.300putting forward is that these students were basically violating the protest rules.
00:12:48.960So the president also sends a letter to Columbia writ large and says, we updated our protest
00:12:54.440policy to allow demonstrations on very short notice and in prime locations in the middle
00:12:58.660of campus while still allowing students to get to class and labs and libraries to operate.
00:13:02.820The current encampment violates all of the new policies, severely disrupts campus life
00:13:07.920and creates a harassing and intimidating environment for many of our students.0.86
00:13:11.900But then if like if we're such fucking sticklers for policies, you're also not following your own policies and the procedure for doing this.0.93
00:13:18.540So it's like, are we sticklers or are we not?0.93
00:13:20.500I don't think people really care about this procedural stuff, but it's very clear that there's like a huge double standard.
00:13:25.540Right. I want to pause before we continue, because as this story goes on, it gets messier.
00:13:30.420I want to be clear that at this point, there have been no credible allegations of like anti-Semitism or offensive statements or violence from any of these protesters.
00:13:40.300Right. When Colombia brought in the NYPD to clear the encampment, they claimed that the protesters were creating a harassing and intimidating environment, but they didn't provide any examples.
00:13:52.600And I think to this day, there is really no evidence that anyone within this actual encampment did anything of the sort.
00:13:59.140So it really seems like what happened here is that Shafiq was coming off of her testimony to Congress and then confronted with this dilemma. Do I back up my tough talk or do I sort of let them stay? She calls in the cops. Right. So you get this initial round of media coverage that's relatively mild, but you start to see some sort of weird tendencies.
00:14:23.040So the New York Times says, and they're talking about the clearing of the encampment, they say many in the crowd watched with a sense of disbelief or anger.
00:14:31.940Some students, though, those who had felt harassed by the chants and actions of the pro-Palestinian students, said they were glad that the university had finally agreed to follow its rules.
00:14:41.420Again, they're not specifying what the harassing chants or actions were.
00:14:46.140It's just sort of stated, which is not necessarily to say that it's fictional as much as that this is just bad reporting.0.99
00:14:51.740This is not how you should be reporting on this sort of shit.0.98
00:14:54.240You can't tell from this whether the complaint here is that they don't like pro-Palestinian0.99
00:14:58.920chants or that they are actually being directly targeted for harassment by protesters.
00:15:03.600And that's a pretty important distinction, right?0.95
00:15:05.700Basically, is it a normal ass protest or is it genuinely something like rowdy and harassing0.59
00:15:10.300and something that a university should really do something about?0.93
00:15:12.640Like, that's the entire point is like, is this OK or is this not?
00:17:26.680One guy is recorded shouting that there would be 10,000 October 7th.
00:17:31.080I know about all those because I read about them on Barry Weiss's substack.
00:17:34.780That's the thing is you've probably heard all of these because the media coverage of each of them has been extensive.
00:17:39.560There's also that poor woman who lost an eye in one of the protests is my understanding.
00:17:44.340R.I.P. No, I think she passed. Yeah, she didn't survive.
00:17:49.680It just sounds like we're being very insensitive to someone who's not familiar with that story.
00:17:54.780You had pro-Israel demonstrators shouting, go back to Gaza at student protesters, calling them terrorists.
00:18:00.740there are some minor scuffles, nothing serious, people grabbing flags from one another,
00:18:05.700things like that. Almost all of these incidents occurred off campus. And from the reporting I've
00:18:11.540seen, none of them have been traced to actual Columbia students. It's pretty clear that most
00:18:17.440of this, if not all of this, is from non-students. God, in any large protest, someone is going to
00:18:23.120yell something fucking stupid. Like one out of every 500 signs is going to be, it's going to1.00
00:18:28.320have something problematic on it like you remember the anti-war protests in 2003 yeah there was some0.99
00:18:32.820like hella dumb shit being said there and some dumb chants and some dumb signs and they were0.97
00:18:38.260still right this whole time i've just been like why are we fucking talking about this well the1.00
00:18:43.980question is when you see one asshole do you want to say to yourself that guy's an asshole or do you0.99
00:18:49.680want to say to yourself this is emblematic of a broader trend within the pro-palestinian movement1.00
00:18:55.520Right. That's that's the choice you're being confronted with. And the media chooses the second one every single time.
00:19:02.260It's also so fucked up because it's it's like very clearly a distraction from something that is like the the actual fucking bombing of Gaza is so indefensible.0.99
00:19:12.640Tens of thousands of people dead. There's like literally children starving.1.00
00:19:15.900It's like it could not be clearer what the right thing to do is and like who the fucking heroes and villains are.0.99
00:19:22.500And yet we're still talking about like, oh, was this chant bad or not?0.95
00:19:26.660The vague implications of your of the metaphor in your rhyming chant are a little bit disturbing to me.0.99
00:19:35.320So social media posts of these like anti-Semitic incidents and sort of like violence endorsing incidents, if they're not anti-Semitic, go viral.1.00
00:19:44.040And very quickly, the tenor of the media coverage changes dramatically.
00:19:48.280The New York Times writes a piece headlined, some Jewish students are targeted as protests continue at Columbia, citing some of these incidents.
00:19:56.900The piece also does include quotes from Jewish students who are protesting for Palestine and say they feel perfectly safe, which some media outlets have just completely ignored.
00:20:42.580Yeah, I think you're sort of like imagining what a good faith discussion might look like.
00:20:46.800But what's really happening here is that reactionaries are just sort of sensing an opportunity to smear the left and also shift the conversation away from what's happening in Gaza and toward what's happening on American campuses.
00:21:11.640The New York Post has run nonstop stories about this.
00:21:14.660I would like for you to guess the number of stories in the New York Post between April 18th and the end of the month referencing the Columbia encampment.
00:21:26.180I'm thinking of, remember, we did every single story in the New York Times about Hillary Clinton's emails in one month.