What A Day: Quad help us | Crooked Media
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What A Day: Quad help us

Pro-Palestinian supporters set up a protest encampment on the campus of Columbia University in New York as seen on April 22, 2024. All classes at Columbia University have been held virtually today after school President Minouche Shafik announced a shift to online learning in response to recent campus unrest. Protest from Columbia University spreads to other universities like Yale, New York University and others. (Photo by Lev Radin/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images)

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Pro-Palestinian supporters set up a protest encampment on the campus of Columbia University in New York as seen on April 22, 2024. All classes at Columbia University have been held virtually today after school President Minouche Shafik announced a shift to online learning in response to recent campus unrest. Protest from Columbia University spreads to other universities like Yale, New York University and others. (Photo by Lev Radin/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images)

NOTES ON CAMPUS

Student protests at Columbia University in New York City continued over the weekend, even after the administration called in the NYPD last week. Now, the demonstrations have spread to other schools.

What A Day

These protests have sparked national outrage on both sides of the issue, as well as larger conversations about institutional responsibility.

  • At the center of each of these protests is not just the war itself, but demands from students that their universities divest from companies profiting from the Israeli military campaign in Gaza. Columbia, for example, has an endowment of almost $14 billion. The school’s Student Elections Board announced on Monday that a divestment referendum had overwhelmingly passed in a vote of over 2,000 undergraduate students. The referendum has no direct bearing on University policy, but functions as a barometer of campus sentiment. The referendum’s results, with 76.5 percent of students voting in favor, marked a 15 percent increase in undergraduate support for divestment since Columbia College held its last referendum on the topic four years ago. The University’s Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investing rejected a divestment proposal in February, citing lack of consensus on the issue, according to the University’s newspaper.

  • Conservative outrage over the student protests has hit a boiling point. Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) called on President Biden to send in the National Guard to Columbia. Almost four years ago, Cotton wrote an Op-Ed in the New York Times similarly calling for the use of military force against Black Lives Matter protesters (an argument so indefensible it led to the resignation of the paper’s editorial page editor). Anti-Defamation League Director and CEO Jonathan Greenblatt also suggested that the National Guard should be deployed to the campus “before it’s too late.”

Pro-Palestinian protests coming off the heels of a conservative backlash to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives on college campuses has led to politicians exerting significant pressure on institutions of higher learning. This political climate may be leading to a rightward lurch among university administrations

NEWS NEWS NEWS

Israel has not provided evidence to support allegations that many employees of the main United Nations agency that helps Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, are members of terrorist organizations, according to an independent review commissioned by the UN that was released on Monday.

The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to take up the Biden administration’s appeal over the regulation of so-called “ghost guns.” 

The Times of London sent one of their reporters to ride the New York City subway for a full 24 hours to see if it was really dangerous. She found that the people who were the most afraid of crime were tourists and people who don’t regularly take the subway, and that everyday riders feel it’s safe. She also interviewed a retired NYPD officer who said he thinks more cops in the subway are not the answer for the relatively low crime there. Damn, who could have predicted these results, except everyone who has ever ridden the NYC subway more than once.

Over 70 percent of the world’s workforce is exposed to excessive heat on at least one day every year, according to a new report from the International Labor Organization. The figure is expected to rise with global temperatures if climate change continues on its current trajectory.

The White House is weighing potential avenues to provide temporary legal status and work permits to undocumented immigrants who are married to American citizens.

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