As reported a few days ago, the College Republicans have been considering bringing Jim Gilchrist, co-founder and president of the Minuteman Project—a controversial group aiming to stop illegal immigration—back to speak at Columbia.

For those of you who don’t remember Gilchrist’s last visit to campus in October 2006, violence broke out between a group of protestors and some of Gilchrist’s supporters. The ensuing controversy dominated the national media for some time.

Now, Spec has spoken to Gilchrist, who has expressed a great deal of interest in returning. According to Gilchrist, he’s “been in touch with [the College Republicans], and they have given [him] an overture of interest but no formal invitation.” The topic of the speech would reportedly be a combination of immigration and free speech—the latter being relevant to Columbia, according to Gilchrist, because “free speech on the campus environment has been compromised by indoctrination.”

Gilchrist candidly remarks on the incidents that occurred during his last visit: “I expect next time will be less rabble-rousing and more interest in listening with mature debate and questioning.” In addition, Gilchrist himself (or at least whoever controls his Facebook account) left a lengthy comment on the Spectator article, included below.

Read Gilchrist’s comment

Look out!

The Columbia Republicans are considering bringing Minuteman founder Jim Gilchrist back to campus to promote free speech. We can’t help but wonder if they learned nothing from last time he was here. Well, it has been a while since we had a nationally-covered protest in this city… (Spec)

Oh wait except for that whole Occupy Wall Street business. Reporters Without Borders released their latest Press Freedom Index – a ranking of countries by how journalism-friendly they are – and the US has dropped 27 places due mainly to the arrests of journalists at Occupy protests. But we still beat North Korea! (Reporters Without Borders, Gothamist)

Following a student field trip to Death Valley led by Nicholas Christie-Blick (Frontiers in action!), a research team at the Columbia University Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory discovered that a volcano in the valley is younger than initially thought and will likely erupt soon-ish. It last erupted in 1200 and has an eruption cycle of 1000 years or less. Ruh-roh. (Daily Mail)

In an attempt to take this year’s title of most controversial frat scene, a tempest is brewing up in Hanover. A former Dartmouth student and SAE brother wrote an article listing some truly horrific things he had to do during rush. Bwog couldn’t read past the first quote, but we’re sure there’s going to be some problems with the administration. (IvyGate)

In lighter news, Scooter Hollis, All-State second team QB from Kentucky, has committed to Columbia. Meanwhile, Chad Ochocinco of the Patriots discovers politics. (Courier Journal, Politico)

Something blue via Wikimedia Commons

Bwog respects our heritage/amorous affair by posting each issue of The Blue & White. The latest issue, available this week, is a cornucopia of delights: a set of unimaginably raunchy personals for the staff (they’re anonymous), an account of a foray into the oft-forgotten Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook, and the story of that greenhouse on top of Milbank Hall (all available soon on Bwog). Here, staff writers and Bwog daily editors Brian Wagner, Conor Skelding, Grant D’Avino, and Peter Sterne (in that order) tell the tales of forgotten Columbia protests.

Illustration by Cindy Pan

Though many Columbia students take pride in the university’s history of student activism, a strange amnesia often strikes our collective memory of the years following the 1968 protests. We cannot and will not forget the newsmaking violence of the spring of ’68, but our glorification of “1968” is more than a fascination with those incidents. 1968 stands for a time when Columbia students were politically and socially opinionated, committed, and courageous. We forget, if we were ever told, that Columbia students have taken risks to make themselves heard dozens of times since 1968. They staged sit-ins, organized protested, disrupted university operations. And yes, they even took over buildings.

In the following pages, The Blue & White profiles four notable protests since 1968 and the students who led them. They have written the histories of student activism, outrage, and speech on campus for the past four decades, but as you turn these pages, dear readers, consider that the future is for you to write.

1983—Apartheid Divestment

To force an end to South Africa’s apartheid policies, the United Nations recommended throughout the 1980s that all national governments divest (remove all ties and investments) from companies doing business in that country. Students across America urged their schools to divest as well, and soon protests were erupting on dozens of campuses. At Columbia, the issue came into the spotlight once the university trustees rejected a University Senate proposal for divestment in 1983. Students took no direct action just then, but support for divestment grew gradually until, two years later, the students rose up in a collective action that the university could not ignore.

Illustration by Stephen Davan

In late March 1985, seven students began a hunger strike to pressure the university to remove all financial ties to South Africa. The administration had already frozen its investments in all firms doing business there, but the protesters would only settle for full divestment—the withdrawal of all funds from any activity connected to South Africa or apartheid laws. Students first rallied on Low Plaza in April, 150 of them then marched to Hamilton, chained the doors, and blockaded the front entrance. The protesters allowed a handful of professors access to Hamilton through an alternate entrance, but urged the professors to support them by not holding classes. Among others, Dewitt Clinton Professor of History Eric Foner and the late history professor James Shenton publicly showed support for the student movement. The protest also gained momentum from the visits of folk singer Pete Seeger and the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who praised the students’ “willingness to suffer for a principle.”

The administration, hesitant to call the police, sought to resolve the conflict through legal action. They filed a case against the Hamilton Hall protesters in the State Supreme Court in Manhattan for illegally occupying private property. Read more…

In the interest of keeping tabs: we missed the news from last Tuesday, but because most of you have been in holes for the whole week anyway, it’s worth re-mentioning that  Minutemen founder and Columbia bogeyman Jim Gilchrist (who is now being gender-neutral!) has endorsed GOP golden boy Mike Huckabee for president. Apparently, Gilchrist’s support shows that Huckabee won’t be soft on immigration.

Just like people with AIDS. 

- LBD

And raising the drawbridge.

…which obviates this post, in which College Republicans Director of Operations Lauren Steinberg admits: “Personally, I really hope he’s not coming. I mean, it was a fun time last year, but I don’t need it to happen again.”

Agreed! 

Minutemen, minutemen. What heady times those were. Stages were rushed, lives changed,  definitions for “Kulawiking” determined. Indeed, it was only after many long and trying months of op-eds, town hall meetings and general soul-searching that we were finally able to go about the difficult business of trying to move on with our lives.

Or did we? Via Spec, at least one person is nostalgic for Minuteman-mania, and who can blame him? I think we’d all agree that Minuteman didn’t receive get enough attention around here. It’s not like it wasn’t discussed ad nauseum for months on end, or covered top-to-bottom in the campus and national media. Hell, it’s about time we were reminded of the mayhem that went down last year. Maybe Bill O’Reilly could do a one-year anniversary special this October 4th? Pretty please?

As for the invitee: he’s kept himself busy the last six months trashing our dear president, appearing on Lou Dobbs, and taking on everything from Mexican trucking to his fellow Minutemen. Gilchrist might have been cast out of the Minutemen in disgrace, but Bwog suspects he’s still got plenty of fans here at Columbia…

The 2006-07 school year has contained multitudes. In fact, it may just be the most eventful year Columbia’s had since… well, the year before. Remember Matthew Fox? The Chung-Diamond “scandal”? “Don’t Be a Pussy”? “Epilogue to Our Crime & Punishment: A Petition“? Bwog certainly does, so step into the Wayback machine – you’re about to relive nine months of Columbia in a single post.

August

First-years move in. Orientation yields a legendary (to Bwog’s mind, at least) week-long burst of posting. Addison Anderson went to a bunch of bars in the name of “journalism.” Most literary post: “And now for some disorientation,” which reads like early Bret Easton Ellis, if he knew about Koronet’s. Orientation week was the best.

 

September

Facebook went literally insane. Then calmed down somewhat. Harvard abandoned ED; Columbia did not. Columbia Football had as-yet uncrushed high hopes, later crushed. Seth Flaxman declared victory. Best villains: Zuckerberg! Murphy! Ahmadinejad! You know, one of those.

October

Everything was coming up roses for Mark Modesitt. 1968 spirit was invoked by Jim Gilchrist. The fallout was immense – shady disciplinary letters, “news” coverage of all sorts (Jon Stewart, Fox News). Even Bwog had an opinion. But October wasn’t all about relevant television coverage of Columbia issues with high production values – we also had “The Gates”!

Best correspondence to Bwog: “Subject: terrorists. your worse then the mooselums who flew the planes into the buildings” Read more…

The Chicano Caucus has just issued a statement regarding the verdicts on the seven stage rushers (will this story never end?), endorsed by four other cultural groups plus SPEaK, declaring that the group “must conclude that bias affected the decisions.” It’s considerably more diplomatic than Karina & Co.’s hit piece, but makes no bones about what it means to censure two Chicano students and let the white kids off easy.

Also in cultural group news: United Students of Color Council elections are tonight (Tuesday). So are CPU elections.  And Student Organization of Latinos, and Barnard Organization of Soul Sisters. Guess you’re not supposed to hold positions in any of those at the same time…

UPDATE, Tuesday, 1:45 PM – Elections have been shifted around to not conflict. BOSS elections will take place tonight at 9:00 PM, SOL on Friday at 6:00, and USCC next Monday at 7:00. CPU elections took place last night. Read more…

Check newsstands tomorrow, and you’ll see something familiar: a shiny New York Magazine cover story digesting the last 40 years of crazy activism at Columbia, featuring glamour shots of David Judd, Chris Kulawik, Karina Garcia and a smattering of other rabblerousers. Take a seat, because it’s a doozy, reaching back to the SDS protests of the 60s, racing through Minutemen, and parsing every protest and meeting since then for a larger point about College and the Left (it is New York Mag, after all).

Here are the takeaway points, in case you’re too mired in papers to read the whole thing: Radical kids today don’t have the energy of Mark Rudd & Co. Career-oriented Democrats don’t have the energy of the radicals. Kulawik doesn’t need energy, because he’s got skillz. Columbia has historically been riven by identity politics–mostly around Israel-Palestine–but now the lines are starting to blur.

Well, now everyone else knows.

- LBD

Charlow’s loathsome acts, subsequent “eyebrow raising”

Numbers for your ego

Teetotalers at Columbia are people too

Read this: Minutemen protesters rebuff charges against them

Staff beats around the big ol’ bush

More on Charlowheist:

The New York Times’ coverage

What’s going on at UT, And at USC

And the clincher: “Lenders also paid for trips for financial aid officers and their spouses to resorts including Pebble Beach in California, Cuomo said.”

Protesting sure has taken an interesting turn at American colleges recently. Let’s start here at Columbia. As of 6 pm, there were five protestors outside the main gates, protesting about the Minuteman protest which occured six months ago today.  What about it?  Three prim women, from New Yorkers for Immigration Control and Enforcement, are upset that the students haven’t been punished more severely.  Interestingly, their flyer claims “only three of nine students investigated       

have been charged with simple violations.”  In reality, three were charged with simple violations and three more were censured, a harsher punishment.  Also, their sign reading “Bollinger Stop Columbia Cover-Up,” is puzzling, as covered-up stories generally don’t have an inordinate amount of news coverage on major networks. 

Factual inaccuracies aside, NYICE are an interesting bunch.  They told Bwog Editor Lydia DePillis that they estimate their numbers around 100, and that some of them were present at Ground Zero over the weekend protesting the illegal presence of some of the hijackers in the U.S..  They also had a few colorful quotes, protesting both the mortality of socialist thinkers (“that’s Marxist talk…Marx died!”) and the nationality of those near them (“You’re French, oh my God, I’m dealing with French people”).  They did, however, draw more press than people–ISO President David Judd, who tipped Bwog off to the story, remarked “I wish my 5-person ‘rallies’ could get coverage like this” and says to watch tomorrow’s Spec for statements from the Columbia protestors on their punishment.

Protests elsewhere in the country after the jump! 

Read more…

In the last installment of the Friendly Fire series–which earlier brought in the Village Voice’s Nat Hentoff, the New York Post’s Bob McManus, and Columbia’s own Karina Garcia–moderator David Eisenbach talked Monday evening with pundit and failed gubernatorial candidate Arianna Huffington about speech, the press, and that mysterious attack ad.

There are few things more charming than Arianna Huffington, at first. The coiffed but swingy hairdo. The round tones of her accent (Greek). Her pronouncement that she and her 17-year old daughter “absolutely loved” their campus tour. “The stories, you have so many stories,” she rhapsodized. “The Eisenhower story, the dollar bill story…I’m sure some of them are apocryphal.”

But if there’s anything more well known about Huffington than her graceful wit, it’s her biting brand of liberalism, on display in her popular blog, the Huffington Post. Eisenbach had his hands full this evening with the former Cambridge debate captain, who took on Hillary, Ann, and the mainstream media during her hourlong stint in the Faculty House’s elegant auditorium.

The conversation began with the premise of the speech series: who was right on Ahmedinejad and the Minutemen? Huffington came down in the center, saying she would neither have invited said speakers nor attended the events, but also would not have protested their invitation. As better form of protest, she cited the New School student speaker who revised her remarks to preempt John McCain’s cookie-cutter commencement speech (she didn’t have to say it: the art kids kicked our butts on that one). Read more…

Let the spin-doctoring begin: “It’s a victory for free speech and anti-racism.”

Kind farewell to Lisa Anderson: “Being in SIPA next to the law school is like living in Mexico on the border of the U.S.”

JTS decides to admit gays and lesbians. In other news, sky does not fall.

SGB ”combats social injustice” by…recognizing groups that will do it for them

Inside the university’s rules procedure: where’s Kafka when you need him?

Minutemen Cry, CU Gives Blanket Apology (but Gilchrist won’t get a cent – he’s hanging out on his cross)

BC Health Services Slightly Homophobic

Space on VI: The Final Frontier in Lerner

This Is What Bwog Is For

Solidarity Forever, Solidarity Forever, Solidarity Forever, Solidarity For Never.. OOHHH snap

The awesome EyePoke, later as usual – JDC

Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minuteman Project, has been brought down, not by protestors rushing the stage but by internal strife in his own organization, and is now fighting to regain his power. According to current Minuteman leadership, Gilchrist improperly used the organization’s funds for his own purposes, illegally sent mail at nonprofit rates without filing for nonprofit status, and has not accounted for up to $400,000 in Minuteman funds. According to Gilchrist, bitches set him up. The LA Times reports that Gilchrist accused his accusers of being motivated by “a greed for power and a false perception of an endless stream of money.” Meanwhile, they are upset with their former leader using Minuteman funds to pay his court fees in his case against them. Gilchrist’s replacement? Marvin Stewart, his opening speaker at Columbia. Minutemen: we know they hate themselves, or at least each other. – DHI