Is there a more craven, unintelligent group than Uni presidents? An investigation.

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Well, “centrist” Democrats, but still.

Columbia’s president Nemat Shafik just announced that she has asked the NYPD to clear a protest encampment on campus.

“Out of an abundance of concern for the safety of Columbia’s campus, I authorized the New York Police Department to begin clearing the encampment from the South lawn of Morningside campus that had been set up by students in the early hours of Wednesday morning,” Shafik wrote.

What? During Occupy, it was a huge thing for the Mayor to direct the NYPD to clear out Zuccotti (Liberty 😢) Square. The encampments stayed for months. Don’t get me wrong, the NYPD acted like animals—Ah! When white girls discovered cops would enthusistically rough them up too under the right circumstance !—but sending them in to dismantle the encampment was seen as a huge step that everyone hoped to avoid because of the optics. There were all these false alarms and pullbacks when it was deemed too controversial to have the NYPD kick protestors out. Then, too, there was talk of how “disruptive” the encampment was. It was a public park. Where would finance people eat their salads?! Normal humans loved it. Tourist buses diverted there usual routes, so people could see the encampment and they cheered and clapped as the busses rode by. Every halal cart in the city descended on the square, and the vendors cheered, both the energy, politics and captive market. Famously, the manager of a nearby McDonald’s let people use the bathroom. All hours of the day, dozens of protestors, some on the grubby side, waited in line. All of that was “disruptive.” That was the point.

“I took this extraordinary step because these are extraordinary circumstances,” Columbia’s president added in a statement released at 1:21 today. She lists the extraordinary circumstances. These are: the students were told they’d face suspension for violating “a long list of rules and policies.” What are they? Are they throwing Molotov cocktails? Flipping over cars? Starting fires? I kind of doubt they could get that much done in a day.

The administration also “tried through a number of channels to engage with their concerns and offered to continue discussions if they agreed to disperse.”

“I regret that all of these attempts to resolve the situation were rejected by the students involved. As a result, NYPD officers are now on campus and the process of clearing out the encampment is underway.”

I regret that university presidents are wholly beholden to wealthy donors and only care about keeping their jobs. Also, fuck her for just dropping this notice right when the NYPD raid is happening, to ensure maximum punishment for the protestors and that no reporters will likely get there in time to document the scene.

In the past six months, as the world was subjected to unimaginable horror from Gaza, protests on college campuses have exposed the craven cynicism of University administrations.

The thing is, though, it always backfires!

There are 49,500 students at USC. Let’s say then their senior class… is roughly 12,000. Of 12,000 graduating students, Asna Tabassum, a biomedical engineering major, was picked class valedictorian. Then, some creeps sifted through her whole social media history, and unearthed a single Instagram “like” they found offensive, brought it to the administration, which promptly cancelled her speech, citing security concerns. The USC President, Andrew Guzman, didn’t even bother being polite about it, curtly writing that speaking at graduation was not a “free speech” issue.

Well, great job guys. Even pro-Israel people I follow on social media were appalled. The incident even blew through Bari Weiss’s wall of hypocrisy and the Free Press published a story decrying the suppression of speech (of course, the story makes Tabassum sound like a terrorist, but still—usually Bari merrily ignores attacks on free speech if she disagrees with the person’s politics).

So what happened? Did Tabassum frantically apologize and quietly reflect on her terrible misdeed? No she’s fucking famous now, having appeared on CNN and CBS, where she calmly, stoicly, and eloquently, with a 1,000 watt smile, stuck to her guns and explained that her position on the Israel-Palestine conflict is rooted in her strongly held belief that human rights should be universal.

Who looks small and who looks big here, re: going down in history?