Robert, the destruction of one university as an example will not change the rest. The best case is we do what you suggest happen to Columbia to the worst 40% of universities and then look at the rest and say 'do you get it yet?'.
I personally believe the university system in this country should be completely shorn of all government funding from all levels of government (including research grants and student loans) and their non profit status eliminated. The marketplace (or The Gods of the Copybook Headings) would determine which survived.
The one-at-a-time destruction of 3 or 4 in sequence might have remarkable effects. Courage comes from being part of a phalanx -- and loneliness is a powerful source of cowardice. History is filled with such stories. From David Friedman in HIDDEN ORDER:
"The conflict of interest between the soldier as an individual and soldiers as a group is nicely illustrated by the account of the battle of Clontarf that appears in Njal Saga. Clontarf was an eleventh-century battle between an Irish army on one side and a mixed Irish-Viking army on the other side. The Viking leader was Sigurd, the Jarl of the Orkney Islands. Sigurd had a battle flag, a raven banner, of which it was said that as long as the flag flew, his army would always go for-ward, but whoever carried the flag would die.
Sigurd's army was advancing; two men had been killed carrying the banner. The jarl told a third man to take the banner; the third man refused. After trying unsuccessfully to find someone else to do it, Sigurd remarked, "It is fitting the beggar should bear the bag," cut the banner off the staff, tied it around his own waist, and led the army forward. He was killed and his army defeated. If one or two more men had been willing to carry the banner, Sigurd's army might have won the battle but the banner carriers would not have survived to benefit from the victory."
Let Columbia carry the banner. And then let Harvard, Berkeley, Stanford, etc. wonder who will be the designated banner-bearer. And unlike the story of Sigurd, the banner-bearer is chosen by the OTHER side.
Nothing to disagree with here. Columbia delenda est. There is no cost in terms of scholarship, as Columbia is so clearly no longer a place where scholarship reigns supreme. Any sound scholars could go to institutions where scholarship remains preeminent, and their careers and research would not be constrained by a cultural revolution.
From what I hear, many other elite institutions “ delenda est” such as Harvard, Penn, and MIT.(watch Eric Weinstein’s YouTube interview about “ taking MIT back”, for the backstory on MIT. )
Hat tip to Governor Ron DeSantis for swinging his axe in support of Jewish students at Columbia, and confronting the evil that has overrun Columbia. We need more governors with his courage and good eye.
Good essay Mr. Graboyes. Two Franciscan colleges came out right after Oct 7 and said they would expedite transfer of Jewish students who felt unsafe at their university- Franciscan of Steubenville, Ohio being one of them.
The campus riots of 1968 culminated in the riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago that year and the campus riots of 2024 will reappear at the Democratic Convention of 2024. Therefore, I predict that those who camp on the grounds of college campuses today and riot on behalf of Hamas will be camping in Chicago parks this year and will riot on behalf of Hamas. Conditions are different, of course. Mayor Daley ran a powerful political machine, while Mayor Johnson is a politically weak race hustler. Biden is running for re-election while President Johnson had dropped out of the election by the convention. The United States is not directly involved in the Gaza war and no longer has a military draft. We still have race riots, though, and widespread crime. My second prediction is that today's campus radicals will abandon their causes as hastily as the campus radicals of the Sixties and Seventies did and their agitation will be no more effective than Occupy Wall Street was.
Maybe. Just remember that the officials you're expecting all this to happen to are also capable of noticing historical patterns and parallels, and of acting to head them off.
The far left geniuses of 1968 - early 1970s wrecked the left for a generation. Between 1968 and 1992 there was a single, one-term, Democratic Party president. They also graduated from 'just assaulting people on campus' to domestic terrorism, and the same will happen with the so-called "pro Palestinian" movement. I expect anti-Jewish domestic terrorism to follow from this cauldron of stupidity and violent assault on Jewish students, organizations, and businesses.
The reason I find your argument convincing is that today's campus radicals are just as badly propagandized as those of the Sixties and Seventies. Most of the Weathermen, most of the white members of the Symbionese Liberation Army and most of Jim Jones's staff in his People's Temple had gone to college. Far from equipping them to think critically, the colleges of the time prepared them to be utterly fooled by charlatans like Jim Jones, Donald DeFreeze ("Field Marshal Cinque") and William Ayers. Jones's top lawyer, Timothy Stoen, was only a year out of Stanford Law when he was plotting to assassinate religious columnist Lester Kinsolving for writing critically of Jones. Unless I'm mistaken, as I have often been, today's colleges are preparing their students to be as badly fooled by Hamas as yesterday's students were fooled by the loony left of those times.
They will seek government jobs for several reasons. First, they are unsuitable for anything else. Second, it would discount their student loans. Third, it is one of the few employment sectors which is expanding. Fourth, the standard of achievement is low while the job security is unmatched. Fifth, it would give them the opportunity to coerce other people "for their own good."
> The university chose to shut down in-person classes rather than taking steps to assure the safety of Jewish students. Recognizing this, a rabbi associated with the university urged Jewish students to leave for the sake of their safety.
Where did they find such a cowardly rabbi?
Persecuted Jews, remember the Book of Esther! That was written down and preserved for thousands of years for a reason!
Thank you for your clear logic and writing. Our elected leaders have failed us and our educational leaders are cowards. It is time for citizens to provide fearless leadership and right the sinking ship.
Perhaps you have or can gain access to the alumni roles and make your essay available to each and every. Let Lighthouse Columbia rule the waves of spineless “Lo-T” administrators fleeing the Reformation to come.
While I believe Prof. Graboyes’ suggestion that Columbia be destroyed as an example to other institutions would be a good step, I’m left wondering what we should do with the actual protesters? Most of them, though young, are legally adults. (Whether they should be considered adults is another matter — I believe human brains, specifically the prefrontal cortex, continue to mature until about the age of 25. Throughout history people their ages or younger have fit in to their societies.)
I know my first few impulses amount to nothing more constructive than “kicking the dog for making a mess while I slept” — it may be momentarily satisfying, but will lead to remorse, and no one involved learns anything.
I truly believe, though, that many of these protesters have shown themselves unfit to be a part of our society. Certainly we should expel those who are not citizens, but what about the others? Do we just let them go on with their lives, knowing that very soon they, because of their wealth and social status, will be running the institutions that drive our society? Can we do that and remain who we are?
Right now my thoughts run to making them outcasts — collect and publish their names to potential employers and universities. Pass legislation to keep them from government jobs. Permanently blacklist them from ever being educators in any sense (something like the sex-offender registry). Maybe this is too harsh. Maybe my revulsion at their behavior is too strong for me to think constructively. I don’t know.
All good questions. And laying some of these folks low might also send a message to students elsewhere. Might even get through some of their TikTok-addled brains.
By all means, punish the offending universities, but they're only symptoms of something fundamental that's off the rails. I can't think of anything more self-evident than the evil of murder, torture, rape, and mutilation, and that should have been learned a long time before these people reached college age.
I have a preschooler grandson who, naturally, sometimes takes things that aren't his. At home and preschool this leads to a discussion of how to find ways to share, usually accompanied by Daniel Tiger songs, and though the peace is restored he still winds up with more than he started with. His father at that age would have been told, and forced if necessary, to give back what he stole and apologize. Is it possible that our current mess is the fault of Mr. Rogers?
The universities are NOT only symptoms. They are the source of the hateful ideology that has caused the thing that you say is “ something fundamental that's off the rails.”
These young people believe they are taking the morally just stand. Yes that is sick.
If a kid believes that siding with people who burn babies alive in ovens is taking moral high ground, there's something fundamentally wrong with that kid.
But to the initial point, he/she gets there based on the oppressor-oppressed ideology that is being taught - and celebrated - on these university campuses.
Oh, I don't deny the universities are fomenting the problem. And "symptom" is admittedly a misnomer -- maybe "catalyst" is better. To mix metaphors, they're sowing evil seed, but somehow we have produced fertile ground for it. All I know is that, probably no more than twenty or so years ago and certainly 40-50, a professor with these notions -- Israel was at war with her neighbors then, too -- would have been laughed out of class if not ridden out on a rail. At the very least there would have been a mad rush to drop or transfer out.
Universities are the indoctrination centers behind the current far left stupidity invading news media, the arts, corporations, and even government. The academic left is tiny, but spread their influence through a larger contingent of elite, well-placed progressive useful idiots.
Qatar invested $13B billions over less than twenty years to purchase the influence manifesting itself here and now. For starters, Jewish philanthropists and anyone opposed to far left politics should condition their donations with real measures and real influence. The Qataris and other totalitarian nations buy influence, they don't donate out of a love of the institution.
Similarly, tax payer assistance needs to come with real reform. It is insane that 47% of faculty are self-declared Marxists and other radical scum, while educating the kids (and drawing the funds) of a nation that looks nothing like that far-far left cohort.
When it comes to Qatar - and note I am *no* fan - methinks you are confusing cause and effect.
These universities are not doing what they are doing out of love for Qatar or Qatar’s money. They’re doing it because it is their ideology. Given that it is their ideology, Qataris are happy to fund it.
And I agree with the other comment that liberal American donors - Jews and gentiles alike - should be held much more responsible. They far more than foreign donors influence and enable these administrations.
I think your suggestions are good as far as they go - but, per Alinsky, shouldn’t Americans start making the connection between the anti-colonialist message of Hamas and the anti-colonialism message of the campus protesters? Jew hatred is just the tip of their spear - they are coming for the rest of us next. I think Columbia wants us all dead or dhimmified. Time to personalize this behavior, indeed.
I agree that Columbia would be a good place to start. In addition I wonder if after removing all Federal funding due to assault of Jewish student and removal from the US all participants with student visas could all the funders of the rioters be held responsible under RICO?
I fully agree with your premise and conclusions. My alma mater (not Columbia, but a similarly misguided Ivy) is wholly unrecognizable to me now. Activism has supplanted free inquiry and discovery as the primary axis the entire entity revolves around. The charter is broken and it's time to actively close one down which may spark reform vs. watching the slow, careful, managed decay of the Universities under the neglect of its core values. Telling that something like "American studies" departments are now fully engulfed by Oikophobia and explicitly anti-American. My degree is in the hard sciences, and even these areas are now infected by issues of "decolonization", "equity", and identity.
Robert, the destruction of one university as an example will not change the rest. The best case is we do what you suggest happen to Columbia to the worst 40% of universities and then look at the rest and say 'do you get it yet?'.
I personally believe the university system in this country should be completely shorn of all government funding from all levels of government (including research grants and student loans) and their non profit status eliminated. The marketplace (or The Gods of the Copybook Headings) would determine which survived.
The one-at-a-time destruction of 3 or 4 in sequence might have remarkable effects. Courage comes from being part of a phalanx -- and loneliness is a powerful source of cowardice. History is filled with such stories. From David Friedman in HIDDEN ORDER:
"The conflict of interest between the soldier as an individual and soldiers as a group is nicely illustrated by the account of the battle of Clontarf that appears in Njal Saga. Clontarf was an eleventh-century battle between an Irish army on one side and a mixed Irish-Viking army on the other side. The Viking leader was Sigurd, the Jarl of the Orkney Islands. Sigurd had a battle flag, a raven banner, of which it was said that as long as the flag flew, his army would always go for-ward, but whoever carried the flag would die.
Sigurd's army was advancing; two men had been killed carrying the banner. The jarl told a third man to take the banner; the third man refused. After trying unsuccessfully to find someone else to do it, Sigurd remarked, "It is fitting the beggar should bear the bag," cut the banner off the staff, tied it around his own waist, and led the army forward. He was killed and his army defeated. If one or two more men had been willing to carry the banner, Sigurd's army might have won the battle but the banner carriers would not have survived to benefit from the victory."
Let Columbia carry the banner. And then let Harvard, Berkeley, Stanford, etc. wonder who will be the designated banner-bearer. And unlike the story of Sigurd, the banner-bearer is chosen by the OTHER side.
Nothing to disagree with here. Columbia delenda est. There is no cost in terms of scholarship, as Columbia is so clearly no longer a place where scholarship reigns supreme. Any sound scholars could go to institutions where scholarship remains preeminent, and their careers and research would not be constrained by a cultural revolution.
From what I hear, many other elite institutions “ delenda est” such as Harvard, Penn, and MIT.(watch Eric Weinstein’s YouTube interview about “ taking MIT back”, for the backstory on MIT. )
Hat tip to Governor Ron DeSantis for swinging his axe in support of Jewish students at Columbia, and confronting the evil that has overrun Columbia. We need more governors with his courage and good eye.
Good essay Mr. Graboyes. Two Franciscan colleges came out right after Oct 7 and said they would expedite transfer of Jewish students who felt unsafe at their university- Franciscan of Steubenville, Ohio being one of them.
Indeed they did! When that happened, I circulated the articles among friends.
Catholics ain't been Christian for a long time...
I will leave that question to my Catholic friends.
The campus riots of 1968 culminated in the riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago that year and the campus riots of 2024 will reappear at the Democratic Convention of 2024. Therefore, I predict that those who camp on the grounds of college campuses today and riot on behalf of Hamas will be camping in Chicago parks this year and will riot on behalf of Hamas. Conditions are different, of course. Mayor Daley ran a powerful political machine, while Mayor Johnson is a politically weak race hustler. Biden is running for re-election while President Johnson had dropped out of the election by the convention. The United States is not directly involved in the Gaza war and no longer has a military draft. We still have race riots, though, and widespread crime. My second prediction is that today's campus radicals will abandon their causes as hastily as the campus radicals of the Sixties and Seventies did and their agitation will be no more effective than Occupy Wall Street was.
Maybe. Just remember that the officials you're expecting all this to happen to are also capable of noticing historical patterns and parallels, and of acting to head them off.
Officials capable of noticing historical patterns???? What a planet that would be!! :)
The far left geniuses of 1968 - early 1970s wrecked the left for a generation. Between 1968 and 1992 there was a single, one-term, Democratic Party president. They also graduated from 'just assaulting people on campus' to domestic terrorism, and the same will happen with the so-called "pro Palestinian" movement. I expect anti-Jewish domestic terrorism to follow from this cauldron of stupidity and violent assault on Jewish students, organizations, and businesses.
The reason I find your argument convincing is that today's campus radicals are just as badly propagandized as those of the Sixties and Seventies. Most of the Weathermen, most of the white members of the Symbionese Liberation Army and most of Jim Jones's staff in his People's Temple had gone to college. Far from equipping them to think critically, the colleges of the time prepared them to be utterly fooled by charlatans like Jim Jones, Donald DeFreeze ("Field Marshal Cinque") and William Ayers. Jones's top lawyer, Timothy Stoen, was only a year out of Stanford Law when he was plotting to assassinate religious columnist Lester Kinsolving for writing critically of Jones. Unless I'm mistaken, as I have often been, today's colleges are preparing their students to be as badly fooled by Hamas as yesterday's students were fooled by the loony left of those times.
And many arrived at college pre-ruined by K-12 indoctrination.
My worry is for the next decade--what jobs will these radicals hold? Unless we follow plans such as this and change what colleges our elites come
from, the next decade will be particularly ugly.
They will seek government jobs for several reasons. First, they are unsuitable for anything else. Second, it would discount their student loans. Third, it is one of the few employment sectors which is expanding. Fourth, the standard of achievement is low while the job security is unmatched. Fifth, it would give them the opportunity to coerce other people "for their own good."
> The university chose to shut down in-person classes rather than taking steps to assure the safety of Jewish students. Recognizing this, a rabbi associated with the university urged Jewish students to leave for the sake of their safety.
Where did they find such a cowardly rabbi?
Persecuted Jews, remember the Book of Esther! That was written down and preserved for thousands of years for a reason!
The rabbi's admonition has been challenged by others.
We have never had a shortage of Jews who would rather not fight. They end up in the crematoria too.
Thank you for your clear logic and writing. Our elected leaders have failed us and our educational leaders are cowards. It is time for citizens to provide fearless leadership and right the sinking ship.
Thanks!
Perhaps you have or can gain access to the alumni roles and make your essay available to each and every. Let Lighthouse Columbia rule the waves of spineless “Lo-T” administrators fleeing the Reformation to come.
I wouldn't know how to reach such rolls. Hoping others will send it around.
as a graduate of p and s i am also horrified. where is the jdf when we need it?
Sorry. Thought I had responded to you. Does "p and s" refer to penn and stanford? And does "jdf" refer to the Jewish Defense League (JDL)?
sorry. p and s is columbia physicians and surgeons. the medical school. i did mean jdl. thanks
Ah! I did know that but forgot.
S grad here, and yes to sending these universities a message. If this takes destroying one to set an example, then so be it.
Stanford?
Yes
While I believe Prof. Graboyes’ suggestion that Columbia be destroyed as an example to other institutions would be a good step, I’m left wondering what we should do with the actual protesters? Most of them, though young, are legally adults. (Whether they should be considered adults is another matter — I believe human brains, specifically the prefrontal cortex, continue to mature until about the age of 25. Throughout history people their ages or younger have fit in to their societies.)
I know my first few impulses amount to nothing more constructive than “kicking the dog for making a mess while I slept” — it may be momentarily satisfying, but will lead to remorse, and no one involved learns anything.
I truly believe, though, that many of these protesters have shown themselves unfit to be a part of our society. Certainly we should expel those who are not citizens, but what about the others? Do we just let them go on with their lives, knowing that very soon they, because of their wealth and social status, will be running the institutions that drive our society? Can we do that and remain who we are?
Right now my thoughts run to making them outcasts — collect and publish their names to potential employers and universities. Pass legislation to keep them from government jobs. Permanently blacklist them from ever being educators in any sense (something like the sex-offender registry). Maybe this is too harsh. Maybe my revulsion at their behavior is too strong for me to think constructively. I don’t know.
All good questions. And laying some of these folks low might also send a message to students elsewhere. Might even get through some of their TikTok-addled brains.
We would need a bunch of Reagans for these kind of responses, and we don’t seem to have any.
A bit more fiesty than the usual measured responses I see here. I like it and agree 100%.
Thanks!
By all means, punish the offending universities, but they're only symptoms of something fundamental that's off the rails. I can't think of anything more self-evident than the evil of murder, torture, rape, and mutilation, and that should have been learned a long time before these people reached college age.
I have a preschooler grandson who, naturally, sometimes takes things that aren't his. At home and preschool this leads to a discussion of how to find ways to share, usually accompanied by Daniel Tiger songs, and though the peace is restored he still winds up with more than he started with. His father at that age would have been told, and forced if necessary, to give back what he stole and apologize. Is it possible that our current mess is the fault of Mr. Rogers?
The universities are NOT only symptoms. They are the source of the hateful ideology that has caused the thing that you say is “ something fundamental that's off the rails.”
These young people believe they are taking the morally just stand. Yes that is sick.
If a kid believes that siding with people who burn babies alive in ovens is taking moral high ground, there's something fundamentally wrong with that kid.
On this we are wholly in agreement.
But to the initial point, he/she gets there based on the oppressor-oppressed ideology that is being taught - and celebrated - on these university campuses.
Oh, I don't deny the universities are fomenting the problem. And "symptom" is admittedly a misnomer -- maybe "catalyst" is better. To mix metaphors, they're sowing evil seed, but somehow we have produced fertile ground for it. All I know is that, probably no more than twenty or so years ago and certainly 40-50, a professor with these notions -- Israel was at war with her neighbors then, too -- would have been laughed out of class if not ridden out on a rail. At the very least there would have been a mad rush to drop or transfer out.
Universities are the indoctrination centers behind the current far left stupidity invading news media, the arts, corporations, and even government. The academic left is tiny, but spread their influence through a larger contingent of elite, well-placed progressive useful idiots.
Qatar invested $13B billions over less than twenty years to purchase the influence manifesting itself here and now. For starters, Jewish philanthropists and anyone opposed to far left politics should condition their donations with real measures and real influence. The Qataris and other totalitarian nations buy influence, they don't donate out of a love of the institution.
Similarly, tax payer assistance needs to come with real reform. It is insane that 47% of faculty are self-declared Marxists and other radical scum, while educating the kids (and drawing the funds) of a nation that looks nothing like that far-far left cohort.
Why should not gentile donors also carry some of the burden?
When it comes to Qatar - and note I am *no* fan - methinks you are confusing cause and effect.
These universities are not doing what they are doing out of love for Qatar or Qatar’s money. They’re doing it because it is their ideology. Given that it is their ideology, Qataris are happy to fund it.
And I agree with the other comment that liberal American donors - Jews and gentiles alike - should be held much more responsible. They far more than foreign donors influence and enable these administrations.
Probably two-way causality.
I think your suggestions are good as far as they go - but, per Alinsky, shouldn’t Americans start making the connection between the anti-colonialist message of Hamas and the anti-colonialism message of the campus protesters? Jew hatred is just the tip of their spear - they are coming for the rest of us next. I think Columbia wants us all dead or dhimmified. Time to personalize this behavior, indeed.
Gotta start somewhere!
Well said.
I agree that Columbia would be a good place to start. In addition I wonder if after removing all Federal funding due to assault of Jewish student and removal from the US all participants with student visas could all the funders of the rioters be held responsible under RICO?
I like the cut of your jib!
That man has one fine jib cut, that’s for sure.
I fully agree with your premise and conclusions. My alma mater (not Columbia, but a similarly misguided Ivy) is wholly unrecognizable to me now. Activism has supplanted free inquiry and discovery as the primary axis the entire entity revolves around. The charter is broken and it's time to actively close one down which may spark reform vs. watching the slow, careful, managed decay of the Universities under the neglect of its core values. Telling that something like "American studies" departments are now fully engulfed by Oikophobia and explicitly anti-American. My degree is in the hard sciences, and even these areas are now infected by issues of "decolonization", "equity", and identity.
Do Northwestern too. I'm done with them.
Medill isn't a Journalism school.
It's an advocacy center overrun with marxists and lazy administrators.
I've put Northwestern on the list. :)