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And I’m not eating until Columbia changes the names engraved on Butler Library!
Meetings with Professor Philip Kitcher and the Committee on CC vs. not eating. Yup, similar tactics.
There are people starving in Africa who aren’t getting so much media coverage.
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@I don't care about the actual post.
That ferret is fucking adorable.
Are they legal in NYC yet?
@all these links are broken. : (
@blah I read a similar piece of oral flatulence on Spec last month in which some overly-sensitized douche claimed that the initial graffiti in SEPA proved quite irrevocably that Columbia was, in its totality, an unsafe environment filled with hate blah blah blah. When commentators dared point out the straw-maniness of this claim, another protest-sympathizer just came along and claimed that said comments were also “further proof” of the initial claim of Columbia’s den-of-hate status. In other words, protesters are able to make as many mountains out of molehills as they want and the lack of diversity of discourse on this campus has merely created a surrealistic space in which debate itself has become “hate.” This, I argue, is the most ironic aspect to what has become a carnival atmosphere on campus: opposing viewpoints, posited as rational debate, are now also utilized as evidence of “hate” despite the fact that this is an institution whose basic purpose is ostensibly to provide young people with the ability to intelligently debate and process ideas, conflicts and issues that effect us all. These protesters do not want to broaden or modernize the mission of the university, they want to completely transform it into a political reeducation facility where even the slightest derivation in thought from the radical ethos of its creators is punishable by rhetorical annihilation with no regard to scale, plausibility or actual reality. I for one will not allow such fascist hypocrisy to deprive me of an education or the right to value my individuality above all else.
@hear hear if you disagree with the protesters, you’re racist. if you attack their logic, you’re a slave to the system. because insistence on rational discourse and adherence to the rules of logic is oppressive to those who want to “think” “freely.” right.
@ummmm Could they please stop? They’re ruining everything.
@The Stink Lizard Whenever someone mentions greater resources for Comparative Ethnic Studies and the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, I wonder how many people would actually major in the former or even take classes. While it’s all well and good to have the department, we need to look at its viability before making any plans to hire permanent faculty for it. Lots of people support new programs, but how many are actually involved in them? Think of this as academia’s version of “sustainable development.”
Besides, I’ve found that even without taking ethnic studies, half of my classes at Columbia inevitably ended up turning into arguments about racism / colonialism / oppression, anyway.
@quickeye? or quickspec, bwog? jeez.
@just sayin... what i want to know, and still haven’t heard from anyone involved with these protests, is what, SPECIFICALLY, they want the university to do about the recent hate crimes. they call for a “stronger response” but that means precisely nothing. i don’t exactly disagree with the notion that statements and verbal condemnations are insufficient, but going on a hunger strike in order to “force” the administration to take an ill-defined course of action is completely senseless.
@"Stronger response" means snipers on the rooftops, a la Putin visit, ready to prevent any hate crines from occurring.
@ridiculous i like how, in that spec article, victoria ruiz manages to link the core, hate crimes, and manhattanville expansion all in one sentence. to imply that any of those things are related to one another is just ludicrous.
@ree victoria ruiz is awesome, no matter what.
@wow freakin cute ferret
@anonymous Columbia students don’t have to stop eating to be heard. They just have to say something worth listening to.
In the marketplace of ideas (they make you read this stuff in the core, right?), these people have lost out. They couldn’t provide convincing arguments to sway people to their side – they failed.
The respectable thing to do when you fail in this way is to accept defeat. It certainly is childish to pull stunts like a hunger strike with the intent of forcing people to accept ideas they have already rejected.
The childish arrogance of these strikers is a real concern here. They think that their extremist views should be enforced despite the fact that most people did not find those ideas adequately convincing. If everyone had this attitude, we would be in real trouble.
@k. marx benighted lad, didn’t you read my works in the core as well? can’t you see most of the world is blinded by the superstructure ideology of the monopoly capitalists? that’s why all those petty bourgeois liberal humanists get more space on the syllabus but me. students of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your appetites!
@asterisk more space on the syllabus THAN me