At Columbia, Cut Off the Oxygen

At Columbia University and on other campuses roiled by pro-Palestinian (some would say pro-Hamas) protests, administrators are in a tough spot.

If they allow protesters to camp out on their malls, occupy their buildings, disrupt normal campus operations and, in their worst moments, intimidate Jewish students, they’ll be criticized for their inaction. They may take heat (and take a hit) from big donors, and Republicans in Congress will have a field day.

On the other hand, if they move to shut down the encampments they risk ugly, made-for-television-and-You Tube scenes. And it’s those Kodak moments (Kodak… they made film… film was used in cameras.. really… go look it up) that the protesters want.

So, it’s a tough call but I suspect the best strategy is to leave them alone. Let them howl into the night. Drama is the oxygen of protest. Cut it off and eventually everybody drifts back to study for finals or they go off to the summer job on Wall Street or — this is Columbia — to the Hamptons.

This morning the latest news is that the Columbia protesters have now occupied Hamilton Hall, which is apparently the designated Occupation Hall on campus, the way Bascom Hall is at the UW. (I believe there’s a sign in Bascom declaring it the Official Occupation Building. You can scan a helpful QR code and get tips on things that rhyme with “ho.” Full disclosure: I was an occupier of a building once on the UW campus. It was 1980 and I was protesting in favor of the TA’s right to form a union and sympathetic students occupied Peterson Hall for some damn reason, which was a mistake because it didn’t have the panache of Bascom. Also, the floors were very hard, whereas the wooden floors in Bascom are more forgiving.)

One thing Columbia, and any other school where this happens, should do is punish faculty members who aid and abet actions that violate campus rules. So, the professors who stood in the way of… something… it wasn’t clear what… around the encampment as a way, I suspect, of getting on television, You Tube and in the New York Times, should get whatever discipline is possible under campus policies… which I suppose isn’t much.

But slap their wrists as hard as you can. It’s one thing to be young and obnoxious. We grow up. We become taxpayers and this makes us more sensible. But when you’re all grown up you should be more sensible already. When kids are breaking rules set by your bosses and, more importantly, disrupting the education (remember, education, the thing you’re supposed to be providing for all that tuition?) of students who just want to go to class, the last thing a faculty member should be doing is aiding the disruption. I’d cut the students some slack. Not so much for people who are supposed to be adults.

Anyway, the semester will end soon enough and all this will go away until the Democratic convention, which by the way, should be cancelled. I mean, what’s the point? We’ve already got our ticket, such as it is, and nothing will be accomplished accept to give the Columbia protesters a chance to fly in from the Hamptons and make really bad scenes for Biden. Seriously, folks. What’s the point of a convention in the first place? To make your party look good on national television. But the press cannot resist a “Chicago ’68 – Chicago ’24” story. By holding a convention the Democrats will be creating a made-for-television opportunity to repulse most of the country.

It’s tempting to see all this as the obsession of a relative handful of students on distant campuses, but there’s a serious point to all of it: this whole thing is a real danger for Biden and, if you don’t like what’s going on in Gaza now, wait until you get four more years of Donald Trump. How this is handled from the campus quads to Chicago is no small matter. I think the central point is to do all that can be done to cut off oxygen to the protests.

And on a related matter… what took them so long? Protesters here at the UW finally got around to putting up their tents on campus mall yesterday. They vowed to stay as long as it takes. No they won’t. They’ll fold their tents in less than two weeks after finals. Leave ’em alone and they’ll go away.