The Fora: A Higher Education Community

I just found out that a former colleague attended a Puddles Pity Party concert.

Primary sources may be outside your scope, but our library has an online archive, Creation of Israel: British Foreign Office Correspondence on Palestine and Transjordan, 1940-1948 (Module 43), that you might find useful. More info: https://proquest.libguides.com/historyvault/israel1940

Quote from: Volhiker78 on Today at 06:57:01 PMI went to my 45th Reunion and had a good time.  I'm introverted but made an effort to talk to people that I knew and also introduce myself to people I didn't know.  I think 🧐 general rules like staying away from hot topics (politics) in conversations,  watching your alcohol intake, and not expecting too much in regards to emotional connections apply. 

45th makes sense for an academic. No academic wants to attend their 10th reunion, because who wants to say that they are still in school.

I went to my 45th Reunion and had a good time.  I'm introverted but made an effort to talk to people that I knew and also introduce myself to people I didn't know.  I think 🧐 general rules like staying away from hot topics (politics) in conversations,  watching your alcohol intake, and not expecting too much in regards to emotional connections apply. 

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on Today at 10:59:52 AMMore on T1, will finish reading for my referee report.

Did a good chunk of the first, managed the second by the skin of my teeth.

The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.

Quote from: jimbogumbo on Today at 12:10:29 PMDid I mention the snipers? Yes, State Police head Carter has confirmed that over the two days this "action" was undertaken there were in fact police snipers on rooftops. All to combat a protest which featured no violence, no destruction and in fact little (if any) disruption of campus activities.

Holy shit. What the ever-living fuck?! Talk about making 'some' students feel unsafe on campus.

Different topic, but an interthread connection (first two paragraphs): https://prospect.org/education/2024-05-02-many-faces-of-campus-activism/

It is simler in this way also. Administrators always overreact, contrary to Fox News headlines.


I asked someone once about a student I suspected of lying about an instructor. All I to my source was I'm going to say a name, tell me what you think. Her response: " He lies, he lies all the time. He can't help himself. He lies even when the truth would be better for him."


That was definitely the case at IU, and AZ, and WI etc etc. The response simply makes things worse for the campus. In the IU case, yes they could ask the police in (albeit under a shady pretext), but it wasn't in the administration's best interest. They did it anyway.


Even if justified to have police get students to disperse, batons, let alone snipers, rubber bullets or chemical gas is unjustified for peaceful gatherings. Almost all of these were peaceful UNTIL cops started busting.


No matter whether the students are justified, ill-informed or pawns, the institutional response is often counter productive.


And in case you think I'm over reacting, in two days it will be May 4, followed soon by May 15. We've done it before, and learned nothing.

In some ways the situation is much simpler than any of that.

The students are occupying government property designated for a specific activity, not camping, or private property that is designated for whatever, but not camping.

If administration tells students they have to go, it is a lawful command.  Same with the cops.  If the students do not leave, the cops can lawfully use reasonable force (and before we vilify them too much, police are not breaking heads or using chokeholds, they are wrestling students and sometimes a professor into handcuffs and then escorting them off campus----hardly the treatment Palestinians are subject to).

Should police not enforce lawful orders simply because the complaints against Israel are justifiable?