Luther Ray Abel of National Review Online reports on an Ivy League administration’s disappointing actions.
While pretending that “negotiations” are anything other than an obvious and galling stalling tactic, Columbia University has surrendered to activists. As the academic year ends during the week of May 6, the calendar may provide the resolution to their pusillanimous predicament. There is no guarantee, however, that the anti-Israel rabble will pack things up. In fact, they appear to get more comfortable by the day.
From the New York Post:
Anti-Israel protesters are singing and celebrating as Columbia University squashed rumors of looming campus lockdowns and mass evictions over the ongoing “tent city” demonstration.
The school administration, which has been slammed for repeatedly bowing to protesters, said that negotiations with the students are moving forward despite the Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine group claiming that the university was threatening to lay down the hammer.
“We want to be clear: There is no truth to claims of an impending lockdown or evictions on campus,” the administration said in a statement Saturday night.
While all of this is going on, the number of copycat efforts at other universities trebles, and the calculus for administrators elsewhere becomes complicated by the various degrees of capitulation exhibited at the nation’s top schools. Columbia, a school that sells itself as “one of the world’s most important centers of research,” hasn’t the stones to tell this ululating minority of its campus (mixed with street organizers) that their actions are impeding world-bettering research and education.
After this chapter concludes, no one should look to Columbia for anything other than how to most effectively transform a beautiful institution into a Victorian midden in as short a span as possible. To expedite the collapse of one’s authority so efficiently would make even the 1919 White Sox gape (a group with a Columbia man on the side of the angels, it so happens).
