I think you're right. I teach at a much smaller college in upstate New York which now has an active chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. They've created a little bit of disruption on campus - showing up at events for admitted students, holding signs and chanting. They have the usual demands. The college president met with them, and answered with the expected administrative non-answers that made it clear that she wasn't going to agree to their demands. She also said that they had the freedom to express their views on campus. Only about 15 students were involved in the activities. No one was arrested. So far the college seems to be following the playbook you outline. I think that if the president and administration continue to keep their cool, it will be fine for the rest of the semester.
It's like the old fairy tale "The Emperor Has No Clothes" but we're learning that the entire court has no clothes. How can so many people whose job is managing politics (and fundraising) be so bad at politics?
Excellent from a pragmatic perspective, Dave. But, fundamentally, this is what happens when you don’t have principles other than trying to keep your job and the money rolling in. That goes for Democrats, College Administrators, and the mainstream media.
You may be familiar with David Graeber's essay "A practical utopian's guide to the coming collapse". It's one of my favorites by him, and I think it applies to this situation:
"Under no conditions can alternatives, or anyone proposing alternatives, be seen to experience success ... whenever there is a choice between one option that makes capitalism seem the only possible economic system, and another that would actually make capitalism a more viable economic system, neoliberalism means always choosing the former."
Graeber was talking about capitalism, more specifically globalized corporate capitalism, but I think it's well to keep in mind that university executives now tend to have much the same mentalities as corporate executives*. And the definition of "success" here is quite broad: even getting someone in power to admit that some proposed alternative is worth talking about is too much to tolerate.
Not that I think you're mistaken about what would be a better strategy than the one fools like Shafik have adopted. The strategy you're advising seems rather obvious to me, and I haven't even read Schattschneider's book. What that suggests to me is that Shafik et al. aren't acting rationally. Instead, they're panicking, inadvertently exposing the weakness behind their facade of strength.
I suspect many powerful people are at least dimly aware that the arrangements over which they preside are so suffused with contradictions and corruption that they largely lack legitimacy in the minds of their subjects. Hence it's crucial to keep their subjects from contemplating alternatives.
*That certainly goes for two of the three university executives I've known to speak of. Those two were chancellors of campuses of the University of California, and one of them later became president of the whole system. The third, exceptional one was my maternal grandfather, and in retrospect - he's long since dead - he's instructive by comparison. He had been president of Bowling Green State University circa 1960. It didn't make him rich, as it would today (the salary of the current president is reportedly over $600,000 a year). It was a different country, worse in many ways but better in some.
Would it have just gone away, given Shai Davidai and his supporters were also doing their best to escalate? If it were only a matter of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment students in their tents shouting slogans into the void, waiting it out would make sense. But there are counter-protesters who really want to mix it up with the encampment protesters, which will also make headlines.
Also, this might sound a little harsh, but I thought an important element of civil disobedience was getting arrested at the end. Breaking rules in support of a cause also means accepting punishment in support of a cause. If your cause is just, the greater public will sympathize, and those in power have a difficult choice: don't enforce the rules, or enforce them and face the public's judgment.
Shafik had to weigh which outcome would incur greater public disapproval: calling in the police to clear out the encampment, or allowing it to continue in violation of university rules. Either is guaranteed to get you condemned by a lot of people. Glad I'm not her.
Ya know, you have this so completely, spectacularly right. But the usual suspects had her boxed in -- the nihilism of the usual suspects just make them better at this game.
Of course, on the other side of things, down the street I've got the Guv, who's an ambitious man, proving just how tough he is. He's proud of the chaos and trying to go after the actual legal authorities who are looking at the actual facts and going, "nah...."
"A State Department friend of mine once gave a briefing to [Lyndon] Johnson. The subject was a Latin-American country where it looked as if one of our military juntas was about to be replaced by a liberal non-Communist regime. Johnson was distraught. 'What, what,' he cried, 'can we do?' To which one of his advisors—whose name must be suppressed, though his wisdom ought to be carved over the White House door—replied, 'Mr. President, why not do nothing?'”
OK now I feel smart because I never read this book but thought what you say was pretty obvious.
I assume this was all prompted by calls from angry donors--who appear to have insdvertently started a whole movement.
It also destroyed the right's original and so-far successful tactic, which was to isolate every president one by one and find particular student scapegoats to penalize, like they did at Harvard. This works less well when you have to go after every single president of every major university, and all the students come to see those scapegoats as brave (which they are).
Now many things that previously worked look incredibly stupid, and will enrage even more people, casting a spotlight on free speech restrictions in a very Streisand-effect way.
But that was probably inevitable.
I am sure they will come up with a new tactic but it's much more challenging now, and it was working before.
This is starting to remind me of the movie 'A Bug's Life.'
Yep. It’s obvious that students are angry now BECAUSE they’ve been ignored since last October.
How the administration of a major university didn’t see this coming in light of Israel’s continued bombing of “safe zones” is beyond belief but here we are.
So now not only do administrators have to deal with the original protesters, but also those offended by snipers(!) on rooftops.
I'm a veteran of the anti-apartheid/divestment battles in the late 1980s/early 1990s. We managed to get a limited divestment from Univ. of Florida. "Ignore" and "Just wait them out" pretty well describes the strategy of the university. They also collaborated with other universities facing their own divestment movements to come up with a set of tactics and talking points to use against the student activists. The universities had most of the advantages, one of biggest being the continuity of the players from one semester to the next - the student leaders were always turning over but the admins didn't.
I haven't seen any mention of it in the press, but the universities appear to have settled on the same tactics with regards student encampments now: respond as quickly as possible with overwhelming force by police not associated with the school. Same talking points, same tactics, same outcomes. Oddly, they seem to be responding to summons from bad actors in the GOP in the same way too, even if it isn't working well for them. I'd love to know what consulting companies or "crisis management" outfits are getting paid to provide all of this bad advice.
"But in the meantime, she called in the NYT to clear the encampment."
I'm guessing you meant that she called the NYPD, but if she really called the New York Times to get them to clear the encampment, that would be a truly interesting tale.
I don’t want to appear rude but your article is the type of sanitised view on power dynamics that work with two parties that operate from fundamentally the same paradigm view of power.
What do I mean by this? Well the University has a simple, effective but unused power that tomorrow will stop the demonstrations: every student caught will be automatically expelled.
The power of the students is because they are students in an elite institution. Stripping them of this will stop the demonstrations immediately. Some will revel in being expelled only to find the outside is very cold and unaccommodating as they try to repay their student loans. Yet the vast majority of students are actually conformists to the status quo of going to an elite institution to get a job while TikToking their obligatory Social Justice Warrior moment.
University administrators don’t use this power because they are uncomfortable with being in a position of authority. Students are also unwilling to take the protests to the next level (a la Kent State of Mai ‘68) because these protests are fundamentally performative art. They don’t want to go all the way because they don’t want to risk being kicked out of the very institutions they so desperately want to be part of.
The administrators are fake authority while the students are fake subversives.
"Oh no! What an awful thing, the protest against genocide is being effective at drawing attention! It's better if NOTHING happens and we just ignore both genocide and the protest"
Dave Karpf, grow a conscience, stop being such a Democrat and think for yourself. The expanding protest is a GOOD thing, being heard for once is a POSITIVE, and encampments expanding is a WIN
I remember the anti-apartheid protests at my college in the late 80s. It went exactly as you describe - the university made some bland statements and the protests eventually petered out by themselves. Go figure!
I think you're right. I teach at a much smaller college in upstate New York which now has an active chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. They've created a little bit of disruption on campus - showing up at events for admitted students, holding signs and chanting. They have the usual demands. The college president met with them, and answered with the expected administrative non-answers that made it clear that she wasn't going to agree to their demands. She also said that they had the freedom to express their views on campus. Only about 15 students were involved in the activities. No one was arrested. So far the college seems to be following the playbook you outline. I think that if the president and administration continue to keep their cool, it will be fine for the rest of the semester.
One correction to your timeline: Shafik called in the NYPD from a "war room" at her DC lawyers' offices. She had not yet returned to NYC to see the situation for herself. See https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/23/nyregion/columbia-university-campus-protests.html?unlocked_article_code=1.nU0.ej7k.saTgE3fSXwYL&smid=url-share
It's like the old fairy tale "The Emperor Has No Clothes" but we're learning that the entire court has no clothes. How can so many people whose job is managing politics (and fundraising) be so bad at politics?
Excellent from a pragmatic perspective, Dave. But, fundamentally, this is what happens when you don’t have principles other than trying to keep your job and the money rolling in. That goes for Democrats, College Administrators, and the mainstream media.
You may be familiar with David Graeber's essay "A practical utopian's guide to the coming collapse". It's one of my favorites by him, and I think it applies to this situation:
"Under no conditions can alternatives, or anyone proposing alternatives, be seen to experience success ... whenever there is a choice between one option that makes capitalism seem the only possible economic system, and another that would actually make capitalism a more viable economic system, neoliberalism means always choosing the former."
(https://www.davidgraeber.org/wp-content/uploads/2013-A-practical-utopians-guide-to-the-coming-collapse.pdf)
Graeber was talking about capitalism, more specifically globalized corporate capitalism, but I think it's well to keep in mind that university executives now tend to have much the same mentalities as corporate executives*. And the definition of "success" here is quite broad: even getting someone in power to admit that some proposed alternative is worth talking about is too much to tolerate.
Not that I think you're mistaken about what would be a better strategy than the one fools like Shafik have adopted. The strategy you're advising seems rather obvious to me, and I haven't even read Schattschneider's book. What that suggests to me is that Shafik et al. aren't acting rationally. Instead, they're panicking, inadvertently exposing the weakness behind their facade of strength.
I suspect many powerful people are at least dimly aware that the arrangements over which they preside are so suffused with contradictions and corruption that they largely lack legitimacy in the minds of their subjects. Hence it's crucial to keep their subjects from contemplating alternatives.
*That certainly goes for two of the three university executives I've known to speak of. Those two were chancellors of campuses of the University of California, and one of them later became president of the whole system. The third, exceptional one was my maternal grandfather, and in retrospect - he's long since dead - he's instructive by comparison. He had been president of Bowling Green State University circa 1960. It didn't make him rich, as it would today (the salary of the current president is reportedly over $600,000 a year). It was a different country, worse in many ways but better in some.
Would it have just gone away, given Shai Davidai and his supporters were also doing their best to escalate? If it were only a matter of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment students in their tents shouting slogans into the void, waiting it out would make sense. But there are counter-protesters who really want to mix it up with the encampment protesters, which will also make headlines.
Also, this might sound a little harsh, but I thought an important element of civil disobedience was getting arrested at the end. Breaking rules in support of a cause also means accepting punishment in support of a cause. If your cause is just, the greater public will sympathize, and those in power have a difficult choice: don't enforce the rules, or enforce them and face the public's judgment.
Shafik had to weigh which outcome would incur greater public disapproval: calling in the police to clear out the encampment, or allowing it to continue in violation of university rules. Either is guaranteed to get you condemned by a lot of people. Glad I'm not her.
Ya know, you have this so completely, spectacularly right. But the usual suspects had her boxed in -- the nihilism of the usual suspects just make them better at this game.
Of course, on the other side of things, down the street I've got the Guv, who's an ambitious man, proving just how tough he is. He's proud of the chaos and trying to go after the actual legal authorities who are looking at the actual facts and going, "nah...."
"A State Department friend of mine once gave a briefing to [Lyndon] Johnson. The subject was a Latin-American country where it looked as if one of our military juntas was about to be replaced by a liberal non-Communist regime. Johnson was distraught. 'What, what,' he cried, 'can we do?' To which one of his advisors—whose name must be suppressed, though his wisdom ought to be carved over the White House door—replied, 'Mr. President, why not do nothing?'”
-Gore Vidal, interview, 1969
OK now I feel smart because I never read this book but thought what you say was pretty obvious.
I assume this was all prompted by calls from angry donors--who appear to have insdvertently started a whole movement.
It also destroyed the right's original and so-far successful tactic, which was to isolate every president one by one and find particular student scapegoats to penalize, like they did at Harvard. This works less well when you have to go after every single president of every major university, and all the students come to see those scapegoats as brave (which they are).
Now many things that previously worked look incredibly stupid, and will enrage even more people, casting a spotlight on free speech restrictions in a very Streisand-effect way.
But that was probably inevitable.
I am sure they will come up with a new tactic but it's much more challenging now, and it was working before.
This is starting to remind me of the movie 'A Bug's Life.'
Yep. It’s obvious that students are angry now BECAUSE they’ve been ignored since last October.
How the administration of a major university didn’t see this coming in light of Israel’s continued bombing of “safe zones” is beyond belief but here we are.
So now not only do administrators have to deal with the original protesters, but also those offended by snipers(!) on rooftops.
Unreal.
I'm a veteran of the anti-apartheid/divestment battles in the late 1980s/early 1990s. We managed to get a limited divestment from Univ. of Florida. "Ignore" and "Just wait them out" pretty well describes the strategy of the university. They also collaborated with other universities facing their own divestment movements to come up with a set of tactics and talking points to use against the student activists. The universities had most of the advantages, one of biggest being the continuity of the players from one semester to the next - the student leaders were always turning over but the admins didn't.
I haven't seen any mention of it in the press, but the universities appear to have settled on the same tactics with regards student encampments now: respond as quickly as possible with overwhelming force by police not associated with the school. Same talking points, same tactics, same outcomes. Oddly, they seem to be responding to summons from bad actors in the GOP in the same way too, even if it isn't working well for them. I'd love to know what consulting companies or "crisis management" outfits are getting paid to provide all of this bad advice.
"But in the meantime, she called in the NYT to clear the encampment."
I'm guessing you meant that she called the NYPD, but if she really called the New York Times to get them to clear the encampment, that would be a truly interesting tale.
I don’t want to appear rude but your article is the type of sanitised view on power dynamics that work with two parties that operate from fundamentally the same paradigm view of power.
What do I mean by this? Well the University has a simple, effective but unused power that tomorrow will stop the demonstrations: every student caught will be automatically expelled.
The power of the students is because they are students in an elite institution. Stripping them of this will stop the demonstrations immediately. Some will revel in being expelled only to find the outside is very cold and unaccommodating as they try to repay their student loans. Yet the vast majority of students are actually conformists to the status quo of going to an elite institution to get a job while TikToking their obligatory Social Justice Warrior moment.
University administrators don’t use this power because they are uncomfortable with being in a position of authority. Students are also unwilling to take the protests to the next level (a la Kent State of Mai ‘68) because these protests are fundamentally performative art. They don’t want to go all the way because they don’t want to risk being kicked out of the very institutions they so desperately want to be part of.
The administrators are fake authority while the students are fake subversives.
"Oh no! What an awful thing, the protest against genocide is being effective at drawing attention! It's better if NOTHING happens and we just ignore both genocide and the protest"
Dave Karpf, grow a conscience, stop being such a Democrat and think for yourself. The expanding protest is a GOOD thing, being heard for once is a POSITIVE, and encampments expanding is a WIN
I thought the Harvard president did resign. Plagiarism isn't a faux scandal, though it doesn't make much difference to an administrator.
I remember the anti-apartheid protests at my college in the late 80s. It went exactly as you describe - the university made some bland statements and the protests eventually petered out by themselves. Go figure!