I don't get it.

Dr. Kristina Armstrong, interim President of Columbia, is a doctor. Her husband is also a doctor. It seems like they wouldn’t become homeless if she lost her job. Why did she cave, in such cowardly fashion, to Trump’s bulldozing of the institution of which she’s charged, an attack whose success guarantees a full-out war on higher education?

“Columbia is folding and the other universities will follow suit,” Christopher Rufo, right-wing Nazi grifter gloated, after Columbia acquiesced to administration demands in return for $500 million in federal funds (Columbia has billions in endowments).

The university promised to adopt the administration’s insane — insane! — definition of antisemitism, which encompasses any protest of Israel’s genocide. They’ve agreed to hire a security force that can arrest students and professors. And they’ve placed the institution’s Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies Department under the oversight of a provost, which means they will no longer exist, because you can’t honestly engage in academic work in these subject areas with some shitty bureaucrat threatening to starve content that’s critical of the West.

I don’t get it. Is a three figure salary worth agreeing to McCarthyism on steroids? We live in an attention economy. The first person that pulls a “Have you no decency, sir!?” will get a lot of attention. They’ll get famous. They’ll get a book deal. Maybe there’ll be a movie.

Even the bad people are not on board with the crackdown on university protests. Ann Coulter—Ann Coulter!— has spoken out against the detention of Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khailil. “There’s almost no one I don’t want to deport, but unless they’ve committed a crime, isn’t this a violation of the First Amendment?” Coulter said on Twitter. Bill Maher, too, smug lip smack, has said that he finds Trump’s detention of Khalil at odds with free speech principles.

"I don't agree with his point of view, but you know what? If you're an honest person, you have to defend him if you believe in free speech, because that's what free speech means," Maher said. "I say it all the time when it's on the other foot, and I can't change because it's now this guy. It's defending the dirt bags you hate."

I mean, if you hate Khalil, by all accounts a wonderful husband, friend, soon-to-be father, and a peaceful, brave, and diplomatic presence at the protests, that’s reprehensible, but whatever, my point is that the first person to pull a “Have you no decency, sir!” will enjoy very wide popularity among pretty much anyone that’s not Alan Dershowitz or an Israeli bot. So. I don’t get it. Explain it to me like I’m 5 in the comments, thanks!