by Pa Rock
Free Speech Advocate
It has been a difficult and noisy couple of weeks on many American campuses as students rallied in generally peaceful protest demonstrations to help insure that the arc of the moral universe actually will bend toward justice - in spite of Bibi Netanyahu's war on the Palestinian people. As certain US politicians rushed to paint the protesters in broad strokes as being antisemitic and the dupes of foreign operatives, university administrators struggled with finding ways to retake control of their campuses short of calling in the police or the military and overtly trampling free speech.
Tuesday night, after losing control of one of their campus buildings, Columbia University officials invited a police takeover of their campus in order to end the student protests once and for all. I was out being entertained at a Kansas City theatre venue when the second police assault on Columbia took place, but a friend (a college political activist from the 1960's) called after the play and recapped the news of the evening for me. She described the NYPD's aerial assault on Hamilton Hall as "breathtaking."
(I don't care if the went in on a flying trapeze, they should not have been there!)
Today the Los Angeles Police Department is apparently storming UCLA and tearing down their encampment.
Columbia and UCLA: two big wins for the establishment and the status quo - at least for the time being. We'll see what happens in the fall if the slaughter in Gaza is continuing.
Brown University, an Ivy League school in Providence, Rhode Island, took an entirely different approach to dealing with student protesters and ending the encampment on their campus green. In a meeting this past Tuesday, Brown University administrators agreed to let five student protesters meet with five members of the university's governing board this month in order to present their case for the school to divest funds from its endowment that support companies which are benefiting off of the war in Gaza. The five board members will then make a recommendation to the full board in the fall for a final decision on the matter. In the meantime students have agreed to end their protests for the current school year.
Brown University treated the student protesters like the adults they are instead of stomping them down with the iron heel of authoritarianism. A smart move. Universities are smart places - they should employ smart moves.
(Personal note: I understand that my grandniece, who is a student at Barnard - the sister school of Columbia - and has been active in the protests, was not among those arrested on Tuesday night, but did spend the night outside of the police station in support of her friends who were inside under arrest. Lauren, Uncle Rocky is damned proud of you!)
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