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NYTimes - I’m a Columbia Professor. The Protests on My Campus Are Not Justice.
Posted on 4/29/24 at 7:47 pm
Posted on 4/29/24 at 7:47 pm
By John McWhorter
Opinion Writer
Last Thursday, in the music humanities class I teach at Columbia University, two students were giving an in-class presentation on the composer John Cage. His most famous piece is “4'33",” which directs us to listen in silence to surrounding noise for exactly that amount of time.
I had to tell the students we could not listen to that piece that afternoon because the surrounding noise would have been not birds or people walking by in the hallway but infuriated chanting from protesters outside the building. Lately that noise has been almost continuous during the day and into the evening, including lusty chanting of “From the river to the sea.” Two students in my class are Israeli; three others, to my knowledge, are American Jews. I couldn’t see making them sit and listen to this as if it were background music.
I thought about what would have happened if protesters were instead chanting anti-Black slogans or even something like “D.E.I. has got to die,” to the same “Sound Off” tune that “From the river to the sea” has been adapted to. They would have lasted roughly five minutes before masses of students shouted them down and drove them off the campus. Chants like that would have been condemned as a grave rupture of civilized exchange, heralded as threatening resegregation and branded as a form of violence. I’d wager that most of the student protesters against the Gaza war would view them that way. Why do so many people think that weekslong campus protests against not just the war in Gaza but Israel’s very existence are nevertheless permissible?
Although I know many Jewish people will disagree with me, I don’t think that Jew hatred is as much the reason for this sentiment as opposition to Zionism and the war on Gaza. I know some of the protesters, including a couple who were taken to jail last week, and I find it very hard to imagine that they are antisemitic. Yes, there can be a fine line between questioning Israel’s right to exist and questioning Jewish people’s right to exist. And yes, some of the rhetoric amid the protests crosses it.
Conversations I have had with people heatedly opposed to the war in Gaza, signage and writings on social media and elsewhere and anti-Israel and generally hard-leftist comments that I have heard for decades on campuses place these confrontations within a larger battle against power structures — here in the form of what they call colonialism and genocide — and against whiteness. The idea is that Jewish students and faculty should be able to tolerate all of this because they are white.
The rest here....
LINK
Posted on 4/29/24 at 7:50 pm to Eurocat
Have you been arrested in your tent yet?
Posted on 4/29/24 at 7:58 pm to Eurocat
Why doesn't he just fail the protesters in his classes?
Posted on 4/29/24 at 7:59 pm to Eurocat
What bothers me the most is that this is another “the current thing” and the polarized people get the most attention.
What Israel is doing is sad. What Hamas did was horrible. Retaliation was expected, but to what degree?
People ought to be able to be upset with Bibi blowing all this stuff up and not be “pro-Palestine,” and people ought to be able to defend Israel’s actions without being called Zionists.
However, chanting “from the river to the sea” is clearly attached to Palestinian desires to destroy Israel, and people need to understand that before they bleat like sheep.
The polarization needs to stop. It’s been going for four years straight and is tearing the world apart.
What Israel is doing is sad. What Hamas did was horrible. Retaliation was expected, but to what degree?
People ought to be able to be upset with Bibi blowing all this stuff up and not be “pro-Palestine,” and people ought to be able to defend Israel’s actions without being called Zionists.
However, chanting “from the river to the sea” is clearly attached to Palestinian desires to destroy Israel, and people need to understand that before they bleat like sheep.
The polarization needs to stop. It’s been going for four years straight and is tearing the world apart.
Posted on 4/29/24 at 8:02 pm to Eurocat
These protests are fake. They are all a bunch of broken (and broke) college kids making $25/hour to pretend they are outraged about an event that they don’t have a fricking clue about
It’s the only way dems can disrupt normal life.
It’s the only way dems can disrupt normal life.
Posted on 4/29/24 at 8:03 pm to Eurocat
quote:
His most famous piece is “4'33",” which directs us to listen in silence to surrounding noise for exactly that amount of time.
Wtf.
Posted on 4/29/24 at 8:31 pm to Eurocat
He teaches music humanities? Hope he enjoys educating the future Starbucks workers of America.
Posted on 4/29/24 at 8:58 pm to Eurocat
Maybe these dumbasses should be protesting that they’ll never be able to afford to buy a house or retire.
Posted on 4/30/24 at 6:32 am to Eurocat
McWhorter is linguist with a focus on Creolist language. He's a classical liberal who finds BLM to be an obnoxiously racist group, the climate change crowd to be analogous to a radical religion (and has written a book on it) and has spoken on and written extensively on how what the black community needs to focus on isn't "muh white privilege" but the death of the black, nuclear family and lack of positive black, male role models.
He does a weekly podcast with Glenn Loury (a black economist), usually on race issues. Most here would agree with the vast majority of their stances (especially Glenn, who is a conservative).
I can't read the rest of the OpEd because of the paywall, but having read and listened to his works for years I seriously doubt he's agreeing with the protestors.
He does a weekly podcast with Glenn Loury (a black economist), usually on race issues. Most here would agree with the vast majority of their stances (especially Glenn, who is a conservative).
I can't read the rest of the OpEd because of the paywall, but having read and listened to his works for years I seriously doubt he's agreeing with the protestors.
Posted on 4/30/24 at 6:35 am to Eurocat
quote:This is already underway (Thank God).
“D.E.I. has got to die,”
Posted on 4/30/24 at 6:50 am to Eurocat
quote:
His most famous piece is “4'33",
I didn’t know I could copyright a blank sheet of music filled with rests P’s all over it.
A P in music means soft for you non musical nerds out there.
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