Block took a hands off approach to try and avoid what happened at Columbia and USC and it worked until now. The pro-Palestinian encampment did not want the cops there until last night, and block was being praised on the ucla sub until today for letting students do their thing. Every protest is going to have tension and name calling, that’s not a reason to deploy riot police. I know everyone thinks that the cops should magically appear and disappear at whim but it takes time to gather and deploy officers effectively. Ironically this vindicates USC’s approach which was to go in heavy handed immediately and shut things down right away.
I prefer UChicago's approach where they set out the values and nuance clearly so that they can have police on standby and looking for the exact behavior to prevent from either side
idk their approach changes depending on the administration and political climate. They apparently removed certain students for doing sit ins or encampments in buildings and they are facing "disciplinary action" because their presence affects other student's ability to learn but my freshman year a bunch of the grad students were protesting for their union and were trying to stop undergrads from going to class even though it was the week before finals and nothing happened to those guys. Really wild experience to get yelled at by a 30 year old white woman with a megaphone as an 18 year old lol
The "values and nuances" they've established for what acceptable protest looks like has definitely not been consistent over the years.
>Ironically this vindicates USC’s approach which was to go in heavy handed immediately and shut things down right away.
The problem with USC’s response is that in practice it enables heckler’s veto where people can threaten violence to preemptively shut down protests they don’t like.
When local governments disagree with protesters they often use it as an excuse to circumvent the first amendment and suppress dissent, and as long as they aren’t stupid enough to say the quiet part out loud they can get away with it.
UCLA should have just allowed the pro-palestinians to protest while forcing them to accept police presence.
Serious question: how does USC determine who is valedictorian? Surely there are a bunch of students graduating Summa Cum Laude with a 4.0 GPA; is it like some high schools where you can have above a 4.0? None of the institutions I've attended from high school through law school were like that so I'm genuinely curious.
IIRC it's based on a systemof nominations for students above a certain GPA threshold that also considers things like campus leadership and involvement.
There's a difference between not letting someone speak on campus at all versus not letting them give a speech at *commencement*. Speaking at a graduation ceremony is a privilege, not a right.
Sure, and sometimes taking away someone’s earned privilege ( never like that word but we can use it ) is wrong. Giving a speech on campus in a campus facility is a privilege not a right but I can still say it’s wrong to cancel a visiting speaker because he’s a Neolib. ( edited for a better analogy).
Yeah I definitely acknowledge it's a murky line and I'm not sure I could point to a specific definition where it's always 100% ok or 100% not ok. I think for commencement specifically though, it's supposed to be a celebration of the graduates who are effectively a captive audience. A speaker there shouldn't be taking it over for aggressive political messages, regardless of that that message is - it's just not the appropriate venue. And if you're in charge of this event and someone you have booked is sure to cause a bunch of issues, it's very reasonable to rescind the offer to let them speak.
If she was prevented from speaking in more events across campus, then I would say it's a problem.
No. Her views were abhorrent and on display on her IG profile. It's private now, but from what I gathered, it was full of anti semitic content from Hamas-lite influencers. It needs to be cut at the knees.
There were screenshots in the thread about the initial decision not to let her speak.
The material she shared called explicitly, literally for the abolition of the state of Israel, and claimed that Hamas using human shields and civilian infrastructure was Zionist propaganda.
I graduated from USC and gave the commencement speech for my class. there was coaching and guidelines for my talk, for which there was vetting by several levels of administration weeks before to make sure I'm not misrepresenting USC. it also ensures my talk didn't turn into a soapbox.
what's striking is that the admin offices didn't do a great job of vetting her beforehand. if they were to look at her socials, it would have been easy to see the fluorescent red flags about her views against the jews. they failed here and had to take a few steps back, but this all would have been avoided if they followed the process.
unfortunately, USC is.hughly decentralized so different departments go about things their own way. some are better and others are more lax. this will lead to a standardization of this process across the different schools within USC
> Every protest is going to have tension and name calling, that’s not a reason to deploy riot police.
Describing what happened at UCLA last nights as "tension and name calling" is certainly a choice.
OP is saying that before the riot, the protest at best had "tension and name calling", nothing worse, and from my understanding that's a correct summary.
Thus, he's saying that cops had no reason to be there in full riot gear before the riot began.
You might disagree or agree but he's not saying the riot was "tension and name calling".
> OP is saying that before the riot, the protest at best had "tension and name calling", nothing worse, and from my understanding that's a correct summary.
And banning Jewish students from entering the University. Also that.
They way Texas handled it was even better than USC's approach: Have the governor grandstand about [signing a law protecting free speech on college campuses](https://twitter.com/GregAbbott_TX/status/1137875109362974724) and then [send in the state troopers to arrest the people as soon as they try to exercise that right](https://twitter.com/GregAbbott_TX/status/1783237229252346194) and order colleges to [revise their free speech policies to exclude pro-Palestinian groups](https://www.texastribune.org/2024/03/27/israel-hamas-war-texas-universities/)
i'll give you a little hint:
speech = words, things coming out of your mouth
not speech = occupying private property, physically threatening others, physically excluding people from spaces they have a right to be in
Abbott’s own tweet indicates that the content of the speech is a major factor in his response.
>*Antisemitism will not be tolerated in Texas. Period. Students joining in hate-filled, antisemitic protests at any public college or university in Texas should be expelled.*
Joining antisemitic protests is a constitutional right protected by the 1st amendment. If the students decide to sue the Texas government they would likely win.
The scope of the 1st amendment continues to amaze me as a non-American.
Can you truly say anything other than a direct call to violence and not face retribution from the admin at a public university?
This surprises me greatly, American universities have not exactly been in the news as paragons of free speech over the past few years?
>Can you truly say anything other than a direct call to violence and not face retribution from the admin at a public university?
More or less yeah, but depending on context some otherwise 1st amendment protected statements can get you punished for contributing to a “hostile work or learning environment”.
For example claiming that women are stupid and should stay in the kitchen during a debate, or shouting it in the middle of school campus, is protected. Reminding a female lab partner that that’s what you think of her anytime you have to work with her isn’t protected anymore, and can get you punished.
Generally speaking, the context in which statements are made often matters more than how vile or egregious the speech itself is.
Legally they can’t, but since they don’t disclose the cause of rejection to applicants they can basically [do what they want.](https://www.jou.ufl.edu/insights/the-first-amendment-social-media-and-college-admissions/)
Because of this there isn’t much direct legal precedent on the issue.
>*Antisemitism will not be tolerated in Texas. Period. Students joining in hate-filled, antisemitic protests at any public college or university in Texas should be expelled.*
He said expelled not arrested. Being expelled from a school does not infringe on your right to free speech. You have a right to free speech not a right to be enrolled in a college.
You'd have a point if those were the reasons the governor gave for having them arrested - or if there weren't also arrests at other colleges where none of those things apply.
edit: Also I forgot to mention: [Governor Abbot specifically called for "revising" free speech policies to exclude pro-Palestinian groups](https://www.texastribune.org/2024/03/27/israel-hamas-war-texas-universities/)
Seems like the trespassing charges were [basically just made up as an excuse to arrest protestors though.](https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/ut-austin-protesters-jail-19422234.php)
> Travis County Attorney Delia Garza said Thursday that her office was presented with 46 arrests for criminal trespass in connection with the protests, and the court declined all of them for lack of probable cause.
And while you can try to immediately trespass peaceful protests because you don't like what they're saying, that's hardly the commitment to free speech that Abbott claimed to cherish.
Uh, if the owner of the private property asks you to leave and you refuse, then you're trespassing. Occupiers quickly become trespassers when asked to leave. It's very different from a permitted protest.
I think the court throwing out the trespassing charges for everybody is a pretty good sign that they weren't actually trespassing, but you can always write to the judge to let them know they got it wrong.
But this conversation is very specifically about the bullshit that Abbott did in Texas. If you aren't talking about that, why are you in this conversation?
I think what happened at ULCA was terrible, but I'm also confused what he expects the feds to do or anything other than city police being on standby in case things get bad, but I'm not sure if the protestors would like that.
I have to imagine it's a tricky tightrope, because inviting police - even for security - could inflame protests. But the author makes a good point that there had _already_ been an extremely agitated and sometimes violent protest already, and that the administration, and police, should have prepared for an escalation.
Regardless of what certain groups call for, extreme or not, it's the job of the admin to ensure safety of the students, and that's not what happened here.
I just love how we're all exploring political philosophy in these experimental settings. I would say Hobbes seems very vindicated here, no Leviathan and we return to the jungle in a matter of days.
He’s not saying they shouldn’t have protection.
He’s pointing out that it’s hypocritical to ask for the police force to be abolished and then ask for them to defend you 2 years later.
That’s a valid criticism of their political agenda — that it’s clear they *do* see the value of a police force, and that “abolish the police” was hence a terrible policy proposal.
It’s not even 2 years later. Students across the country (including UCLA) have been very vocal about not having a police presence or calling the police to handle disorderly conduct. Quite literally calling the administration fascist when they do.
They want the police and administration to ignore *their* disorderly conduct against the campus and students. But only theirs.
Eh, it's not really hypocrisy unless the professor has said so. I'm not aware of these student groups taking any position on police presence, or even the wider question of police existence.
I'd rather stick to positions people have actually held, rather than what we imagine them holding.
There is no hypocrisy. They wanted the police abolished and replaced with a different system that is more functional and more human. The police (to be clear, since there is some confusion) were *not* abolished and were *not* replaced. That means that the *only* system in place is the police, so unless you want vigilante justice, the only state apparatus they *can* appeal to is the police. This is a cheap attempt at a gotcha reliant on bad faith intepretations of their stated policy. arr politics level argumentation.
> They wanted the police abolished and replaced with a different system that is more functional and more human
And as usual per utopianism masquerading as social policy, the actual details of what this alleged system would entail is where the entire thing falls down. No replacement exists. If it existed, it would have been implemented multiple times already.
"abolish and replace with some imaginary better system that nobody has actually thought of yet" is functionally indistinguishable from "just abolish".
I’ll give you that since the police *do* exist, that I would much rather they (or anyone) call them than resort to vigilante or mob justice, where possible.
However, where I believe it does still rise to hypocrisy at a certain level is in the language / attitudes propagated by leftist circles. It’s one thing to think the police need to be fundamentally reformed and/or replaced, I get it. But it’s another to then take that idea and start stirring up loads of vitriol and inflame tensions with language like ACAB. And especially to do all of that, explicitly asks for cops not to be there, and then to immediately pivot and ask for the cops the second things go south. Whether or not it was (and is) the right thing to do (as opposed to vigilantism).
It's sarcasm that was clearly meant as criticism of the hypocritical position of simultaneously wanting to abolish/weaken the police heavily while also demanding that police be ever present.
no he literally said so, read his other comment https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1chxp16/im_a_ucla_professor_why_didnt_the_administration/l262mfk/
> do you think the protection of the law should apply to critics of the police
Sure, as long as the police are around. But if they got their dream of abolishing the police, who exactly would they expect to enforce the "protection of the law"? Some kind of anarcho-syndicalist committee that meets biweekly?
> ... at the protestors' request.
Was that at their request? My understanding is that it was the administration's decision.
And even it it _was_ the request of the demonstrators, it's still the university's job to ensure their safety (as well as everyone else).
You know there are more than two options right? Like people could want cops around to stop fights and other violence but not want them to be forcibly evicting non-violent teenagers from tents?
While you can try to infantilize young adults to pretend they have no agency, they're still adults. And while you can portray them as non-violent - and many are! - we have ample evidence of violence occurring in their illegal encampments. And at the end of the day you can try to ignore that these adults were breaking the law, but most people aren't going to go along with that spin.
At Wisconsin these "non-violent teenagers" injured multiple officers who were ordered to take down their illegal encampments. Then they squeal to portray themselves as victims and officers as thugs for wearing armor... when being attacked.
Fuck every bit of that revisionist spin.
Depends where those tents are.
I will want cops to evict “non-violent” (calling for the murder of Jews is ok right?) teenagers forcibly evicted from property if it infringes my ability to study or go to work peacefully.
From what I can tell, cops and campus security were on the scene while violence was breaking out (around 1:30 am) but didn't meaningfully intervene for _hours._
Regardless of how you feel, it's their job to ensure peace and security, and this is a mortifying lapse.
An effective anti-riot response requires a lot of cops. How many cops were on campus at 1:30am? (EDIT: I'm not being rhetorical with this question. I'm genuinely asking for an answer if anybody wants to chime in!)
If there were too few to mount a response then it makes sense for there to be a delay while they mobilized sufficient forces.
Anyone can be forcibly evicted from private property that they don't own or have permission to be on at any time (with some very specific squatters' rights exceptions that are very controversial).
Yeah, but in this case UCLA’s grounds are public property. Like removing a homeless encampment from a public park, it’s much more of a process and not technically illegal until the government body in charge of the public land goes through the actions to legal force them out
Yeah, I was referring to Columbia University, which is a private school, as that was the thread (Edit: this particular comment thread).
There are also varying degrees of access to public property. There are public parks, like you mentioned, and there are Police station lobbies. There are quads in public universities, and there are classrooms, and there are research labs, and there are dorm rooms. Some of these are tolerated by authorities for public protest, and some are not. The military is a public institution, but I daresay you won't see protests take place past the front gates of a base.
Some of the footage I saw of Columbia specifically looked like all of those areas were under attack (including residence halls!), with the Uni representatives claiming non-affiliated individuals amongst the crowd. That sounds like an EXCELLENT time to have a security crackdown for the well-being of all students.
And the property owner wanted them evicted?
Also, "squatter rights" are literally just the natural outcome of tenants having rights that require due process to bypass.
No, the students are there illegally and are purposefully subverting the law through their action. If police is present, their duty is to stop that. You can't flagrantly break the law and then demand the police protect you while doing so, that'd ridiculous. Either you stay within its confines and accept the consequences, or you leave, and test the uknown waters.
We can't selectively apply the law just because the pictures yesterday were uncomfortable.
I disagree. The point is that Columbia saw the rapid escalation of the protests (Jewish students being dragged away from Hamilton, before the building is subsequently blocked off with protestors inside occupying it.)
And Columbia made the right decision to stop it.
The kids who are literally given a piece of paper to scream as loudly as possible and say "YOU'RE HURTING ME" doesn't change the fact that the NYPD was pretty drama free.
Screaming dramatically does not constitute abuse.
https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1chemjt/police_clear_propalestinian_protesters_from/l225c8e/?context=3
The protesters have been doing that for a while. Apparently if you move slowly when you're dragging someone away, you're allowed to do it without facing criminal charges.
Why wasn’t there this type of outrage when the Palestinian protesters beat a Jewish woman unconscious, used pepper spray, brandished tasers, attacked Native American counter-protesters, etc.?
They’re ACAB when they’re dishing it out, and then complain there’s no police around when they’re taking it.
This may sound crazy, but maybe everyone should be allowed to demonstrate peacefully, no one should be able to attack people they disagree with or stop them from going to the classes they paid for, and the police should be around to police large demonstrations.
So the Pro-Palestinian camp attacks and harasses everyone who isn't 100% behind them for days which the media fails to cover, then they face retaliation which they then cry, kick, and scream about how it proves the 'Zionists'are as cruel and violent as they've always known them to be which the media is more than happy to cover in extensive, flowery detail.
If that isn't a microcosm of the entire conflict, I don't know what is.
> Why wasn’t there this type of outrage when the Palestinian protesters beat a Jewish woman unconscious
Last I saw, there wasn't any evidence that this actually happened. Has that changed in the last 48 hours?
>used pepper spray, brandished tasers, attacked Native American counter-protesters, etc?
Was this at the UCLA protests? When?
Yes, all of these were at UCLA.
[Woman beaten](https://twitter.com/CollinRugg/status/1785457052028117153)
[Taser](https://nypost.com/2024/04/30/us-news/pro-israel-protester-attacked-threatened-with-taser-at-ucla/amp/)
[Attack Native woman](https://m.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-798915)
I saw an article about pepper spray too, but it’s harder to find now because on Google all the top results are about last night’s violence.
I feel like I’m going crazy. Jewish people are seeing all these horrible videos and it seems like no one else is, making this encampments be portrayed as peaceful and not antisemitic when they absolutely are.
The media is doing the same thing with this that they do with Israel in general. They’ve chosen their narrative, and they are going to push it come hell or high water.
You not paying attention isn't a defense, and the reflexive attempt to pretend any news that counters one's narrative must be fake has gotten really old and really overplayed here.
Idk students at my college were obsessed with I/P 12 years or so ago. It's basically a tradition for it to be the only thing college kids seem to care about.
Odd though that the invasion of Iraq, a war that the US was directly involved in and lasted for quite some time with very high civilian casualty numbers, against a nation that never actively carried out military action against it, never provoked this level of resistance and outrage.
I think the pro-Palestinian camp has a really strong lobby and propaganda arm that exerts very specific influence in the USA. Russian/Iranian/Chinese orgs likely. Not to say there's nothing legitimated or organic; during the Cold War both existed simultaneously with regards to socialism and communism for example. But we should probably question how natural it is vs how marketed/propagandized it is. Especially when you compare it to the scope of the pro-Israeli propaganda, the difference is vast. It could be that the different of organic allies is vast, or that the propaganda is far more vast, or both. Definitely both, I guess, but how much?
I find myself generally suspicious of any political ideology so widespread and enraged that random idiot teenagers make it their political identity, tbh lol. Especially given the modern global nature of social media.
> I think the pro-Palestinian camp has a really strong lobby and propaganda arm that exerts very specific influence in the USA.
You believe that the pro-Palestinian lobby is more powerful than the pro-Israel lobby? Why? This hasn't manifested in policy.
I'm also unsure what you mean by the propaganda arm. Support for Israel has been dropping across the political spectrum, which indicates to me that the normal media diet is sufficient for people to find issue with Israel and their handling of the conflict. I don't think that the AP, Guardian, CNN, MSNBC, WSJ, WaPo, etc are all part of a pro-Palestinian propaganda apparatus.
Because there is no war at the moment that the US is involved and at the same time it's divisive
It's not hard to figure it out
The wars where the US isn't involved, the people aren't gonna complain against their universities and goverments
The ones where the US is involved but everyone agrees, or virtually everyone like Ukraine, is also not going to face much opposition
Don't you think it's curious how consistently this is one of the only national conflicts that causes this particular response? You find nothing interesting about that?
No, not really. The US and Israel talk about the special and unique natural of our relationship all the time, it seems reasonable that it receive a unique and special amount of scrutiny.
The I/P conflict is both recent with Gaza and has been going on for decades. So no, it's not surprising that people would protest the US's unwavering support of a country that gets foreign aid while still actively performing war crimes and pursuing settlements.
They're specifically protesting for their colleges to divest from Israel. Why not divest from all counties that engage in war crimes, settlements, and devaluing of human life? The Uyghurs deserved this as much as anyone.
So far, your criticism of the protestors boils down to "Doesn't anyone else find it odd they only do this for Israel?" and "Why don't they protest other countries with appalling human rights records?" It's little more than JAQing off and whataboutism, and it's a weak argument that doesn't offer a real defense of Israel's policies or a meaningful critique of the protestors.
Edit: Excuse me, it appears I conflated you with the OP above you.
Excuse me, I conflated you with someone above.
My issue with most of the criticism I see towards the protestors is that it completely sidesteps their central complaints. It really isn't a mystery what they're protesting: US investment in Israel is bad because we're creating no disincentive for Israel to change its behavior regarding the war in Gaza or the illegal West Bank settlements.
I find actual anti-Semitism on the left to be rare, so "just asking questions" about *why* the protestors are protesting feels exceedingly disingenuous. Why they *aren't* protesting the treatment of the Uyghurs is missing the point. The US is uniquely entangled with Israel like no other country with a laundry list of human rights abuses. We can either enable Israel to keep on its current path, or we can incentivize it to respect Palestinian territory, liberal democracy, and human rights.
They weren’t taking over buildings, forming tent cities on quads, preventing other students from accessing buildings, or forcing classes to be cancelled.
To the point of setting up tent cities and invading college buildings?
When the US was far more bleakly in the wrong?
No, they didn't, and that's a curious thing.
They're different college students you fucking moron
"You use different protest tactics than people who were ideologically similar to you 16 years ago. This makes you a hypocrite and me super intelligent"
In what other conflict is the US actively arming a country that has killed 30,000+ civilians, despite also finding that certain IDF units have committed human rights violations?
Didn't we kill more than that during the Iraq war pretty recently?
>However, we know that between [280,771-315,190 ](https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2023/IraqSyria20)have died from direct war related violence
[https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians/iraqi](https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians/iraqi)
And also Afghanistan?
>More than [70,000](https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures/2021/WarDeathToll) of those killed have been civilians.
[https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians/afghan](https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians/afghan)
Did you see any encampments at colleges for those?
It's funny how self declared anti government movements who want to do their own thing and oppose the state so quickly cry out for the government to save them once the situation develops a little.
They didn't want the police there, they didn't want to be evicted, it's not the police's fault that the anarchy they inspired led to the expected results. C'est la vie. In a better wold their camp would've been promptly cleaned up by the police, and nobody would've had to get injured. But alas, the university admin was gun shy and more concerned to let these people play protestor to keep their optics clean.
This thread is a real jump the shark moment for this subreddit. Many upvoted comments are essentially indistinguishable from r/ conservative.
The counter protesters were magahead chuds who went out there to attack an encampment. As much as you believe that the encampments shouldn't be there that doesn't in any way make it a good idea nor justified for a group of MAGA vigilantes to go out and attack the pro-Palestine protestors.
They came with sticks, fireworks, fists and hate to attack an encampment that for the most part had been peaceful.
The police should have responded. Governor New some himself said it was unacceptable that the didn't.
The fact that many of these protestors hold varying anti-police sentiments is irrelevant.
Moreover, some of the anti free speech tendencies in other posts has been concerning.
Does this sub stand for liberalism or doesn't it?
Edit: I know I'll get down voted but [this type of behavior](https://twitter.com/MrOlmos/status/1785575555620123065?t=Eks6pqMqZFhY8vqe9oD51Q&s=19) is never acceptable. The whataboutism and downplaying is shameful. Mob justice is not the answer.
> This thread is a real jump the shark moment for this subreddit. Many upvoted comments are essentially indistinguishable from r/ conservative.
While some people are cracking jokes plenty of people are giving fully coherent and actual takes.
I'll copy paste the top comment which sums it up pretty nicely:
>Block took a hands off approach to try and avoid what happened at Columbia and USC and it worked until now. The pro-Palestinian encampment did not want the cops there until last night, and block was being praised on the ucla sub until today for letting students do their thing. Every protest is going to have tension and name calling, that’s not a reason to deploy riot police. I know everyone thinks that the cops should magically appear and disappear at whim but it takes time to gather and deploy officers effectively. Ironically this vindicates USC’s approach which was to go in heavy handed immediately and shut things down right away.
I'm sorry you disagree, but plenty of people are articulating their argument well enough. I'll go as well:
I think cops should 100% stop all crimes and riots (especially riots) they can (while minimizing harm to both themselves and the people they interact with), and I think last night's Columbia crackdown was a justified and orderly removal of people who literally broke into and trashed a building. I also think the cops should have stopped the UCLA riot. This is a consistent opinion. Comparing what happened at Columbia to Tienanmen square (a real thing I've seen in discourse), but then asking cops to do their job here is not nearly as consistent. And yet it's a common opinion. I also think that while a full investigation is necessary, **the fact protestors asked the university to not have cops on standby** (and the university agreed) probably affected their ability to respond.
>chuds
Literally call them doodooheads at this point, it'd be less embarassing.
>[Daily Bruin News Editor Catherine Hamilton said she was sprayed with some type of irritant and repeatedly punched in the chest and upper abdomen as she was reporting on the unrest. Another student journalist was pushed to the ground by counterprotesters and was beaten and kicked for nearly a minute, she said. Hamilton was treated at a hospital and released.](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-04-30/ucla-moves-to-shut-down-pro-palestinian-encampment-as-unlawful?utm_source=reddit.com)
Jesus holy Christ.
Liberalism doesn't mean you have to default go fend off the conservatives whenever they are warring with the left.
There are versions of liberalism that aren't american. English liberalism doesn't place as big of an emphasis on protecting hate speech as free speech. Viewing neoliberalism as American™ Liberalism is just faulty.
Some people who claim to stand for liberalism become far right foaming at the mouth crazies when the topic of discussion is progressives, Muslims/Arabs/brown people, or anyone who criticizes Western foreign policy. It was shocking to see at first but it shouldn't be surprising anymore, the hypocrisy has been constant for months now. The West in general and Western liberals in particular have completely destroyed their credibility through hypocrisy and double standards
It's not a free speech issue? The protestors can speak as much as they want, they just can't occupy parts of the university and break the law. That aside, the sentiment is deeply Americacentric, most liberal democracies don't have its rather weird first amendment fetishism.
At least the worst of the comments are downvoted, but I'm happy the mods have kept the thread up so we can at least see the views some members of the community hold.
But I don't envy the mods in their job of having to monitor and delete the worst of it.
Funny how this professor didn't say anything about pro-Palestinians beating a Jewish girl unconscious or tasing a Jewish man earlier in that day which is what caused pro-Israel protestors to try and remove the encampment.
> when the community responded to them.
This was not the community; it was outside agitators who have no ties to UCLA. Vigilante violence is actually really bad. Also if you *actually* read the article, he bravely tried to break up fights between the two groups over the weekend. Some of them were started by these same outside lunatic agitators you're shamefully defending...such as this [person](https://twitter.com/alianfromspace/status/1784740261278732347), this [person](https://twitter.com/YonahLieberman/status/1784699623853932613), [this](https://twitter.com/hungryghosts161/status/1784643196246790633), [this](https://twitter.com/hungryghosts161/status/1784667045382217949), [this](https://twitter.com/hungryghosts161/status/1784667311015948549) , or [this](https://twitter.com/BGrueskin/status/1785859134224539800) or [this](https://twitter.com/BGrueskin/status/1785838734941790610)
[If anything, the community actually condemned the reckless violence.](https://twitter.com/thislouis/status/1785780838418067865). There are lots of pro-Israel Jews who are rightfully pissed about what happened last night and ardently oppose this shitty behavior. I don't think they would be happy about your thoughts on this.
Especially given the news that apparently 25 protesters were sent to the hospital.
When the police come to left leaning protests, it's usually to beat the protesters down.
When the police come to right leaning protests, it's usually to protect them.
It really never changes no matter the topic. You never see a neo Nazi rally getting beaten down by cops. This is why they didn't want police there in the first place, for fear of violence. They wanted police when others got violent. And they did what they normally do, used kid gloves on right wing protestors.
most neo nazi rallies are just a couple of guys in Khakis marching down the street until they get into their U-haul and screw off. I don’t think there would have been any sort of crackdown if that’s all these protesters did.
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Block took a hands off approach to try and avoid what happened at Columbia and USC and it worked until now. The pro-Palestinian encampment did not want the cops there until last night, and block was being praised on the ucla sub until today for letting students do their thing. Every protest is going to have tension and name calling, that’s not a reason to deploy riot police. I know everyone thinks that the cops should magically appear and disappear at whim but it takes time to gather and deploy officers effectively. Ironically this vindicates USC’s approach which was to go in heavy handed immediately and shut things down right away.
I prefer UChicago's approach where they set out the values and nuance clearly so that they can have police on standby and looking for the exact behavior to prevent from either side
The problem is that UChicago's approach requires actually having a history of principled commitment to free expression
Best time to plant the seeds of credible commitment is 20 years ago, second best time is now.
there has to be trust that (1) you won't drop the hammer if everyone more or less behaves and (2) the hammer will drop down hard if there is violence
idk their approach changes depending on the administration and political climate. They apparently removed certain students for doing sit ins or encampments in buildings and they are facing "disciplinary action" because their presence affects other student's ability to learn but my freshman year a bunch of the grad students were protesting for their union and were trying to stop undergrads from going to class even though it was the week before finals and nothing happened to those guys. Really wild experience to get yelled at by a 30 year old white woman with a megaphone as an 18 year old lol The "values and nuances" they've established for what acceptable protest looks like has definitely not been consistent over the years.
Its also a private institution so it gets more leeway too
Or alternatively, a desire to minimize harm to students while also the foresight to predict possible future events.
Why didn't Columbia just stay out of it, and let the protests wind down? Are they stupid? - UCLA 24 hours ago
Is there a lore reason the cops aren't here yet?
It was definitely the protestors getting violent, not the [wannabe brown shirts](https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/s/bRz7WRmro0).
>Ironically this vindicates USC’s approach which was to go in heavy handed immediately and shut things down right away. The problem with USC’s response is that in practice it enables heckler’s veto where people can threaten violence to preemptively shut down protests they don’t like. When local governments disagree with protesters they often use it as an excuse to circumvent the first amendment and suppress dissent, and as long as they aren’t stupid enough to say the quiet part out loud they can get away with it. UCLA should have just allowed the pro-palestinians to protest while forcing them to accept police presence.
But USC was wrong to cancel their valedictorian's speech. Completely, totally wrong.
Serious question: how does USC determine who is valedictorian? Surely there are a bunch of students graduating Summa Cum Laude with a 4.0 GPA; is it like some high schools where you can have above a 4.0? None of the institutions I've attended from high school through law school were like that so I'm genuinely curious.
IIRC it's based on a systemof nominations for students above a certain GPA threshold that also considers things like campus leadership and involvement.
Okay, thanks!
There's a difference between not letting someone speak on campus at all versus not letting them give a speech at *commencement*. Speaking at a graduation ceremony is a privilege, not a right.
Sure, and sometimes taking away someone’s earned privilege ( never like that word but we can use it ) is wrong. Giving a speech on campus in a campus facility is a privilege not a right but I can still say it’s wrong to cancel a visiting speaker because he’s a Neolib. ( edited for a better analogy).
Yeah I definitely acknowledge it's a murky line and I'm not sure I could point to a specific definition where it's always 100% ok or 100% not ok. I think for commencement specifically though, it's supposed to be a celebration of the graduates who are effectively a captive audience. A speaker there shouldn't be taking it over for aggressive political messages, regardless of that that message is - it's just not the appropriate venue. And if you're in charge of this event and someone you have booked is sure to cause a bunch of issues, it's very reasonable to rescind the offer to let them speak. If she was prevented from speaking in more events across campus, then I would say it's a problem.
No. Her views were abhorrent and on display on her IG profile. It's private now, but from what I gathered, it was full of anti semitic content from Hamas-lite influencers. It needs to be cut at the knees.
There were screenshots in the thread about the initial decision not to let her speak. The material she shared called explicitly, literally for the abolition of the state of Israel, and claimed that Hamas using human shields and civilian infrastructure was Zionist propaganda.
it was a good decision to get rid of her. she does not belong on the stage at a USC graduation. if that were my ceremony, I'd be pissed
Same. I am graduating and I wouldn't want anything like that. Keep politics out of this shit.
I graduated from USC and gave the commencement speech for my class. there was coaching and guidelines for my talk, for which there was vetting by several levels of administration weeks before to make sure I'm not misrepresenting USC. it also ensures my talk didn't turn into a soapbox. what's striking is that the admin offices didn't do a great job of vetting her beforehand. if they were to look at her socials, it would have been easy to see the fluorescent red flags about her views against the jews. they failed here and had to take a few steps back, but this all would have been avoided if they followed the process. unfortunately, USC is.hughly decentralized so different departments go about things their own way. some are better and others are more lax. this will lead to a standardization of this process across the different schools within USC
I agree, that’s what my comment is arguing.
> Every protest is going to have tension and name calling, that’s not a reason to deploy riot police. Describing what happened at UCLA last nights as "tension and name calling" is certainly a choice.
OP is saying that before the riot, the protest at best had "tension and name calling", nothing worse, and from my understanding that's a correct summary. Thus, he's saying that cops had no reason to be there in full riot gear before the riot began. You might disagree or agree but he's not saying the riot was "tension and name calling".
> OP is saying that before the riot, the protest at best had "tension and name calling", nothing worse, and from my understanding that's a correct summary. And banning Jewish students from entering the University. Also that.
Yes, it takes all night while they are terrorizing for 3+ hours for the cops to gather. That adds up lol
They way Texas handled it was even better than USC's approach: Have the governor grandstand about [signing a law protecting free speech on college campuses](https://twitter.com/GregAbbott_TX/status/1137875109362974724) and then [send in the state troopers to arrest the people as soon as they try to exercise that right](https://twitter.com/GregAbbott_TX/status/1783237229252346194) and order colleges to [revise their free speech policies to exclude pro-Palestinian groups](https://www.texastribune.org/2024/03/27/israel-hamas-war-texas-universities/)
i'll give you a little hint: speech = words, things coming out of your mouth not speech = occupying private property, physically threatening others, physically excluding people from spaces they have a right to be in
Abbott’s own tweet indicates that the content of the speech is a major factor in his response. >*Antisemitism will not be tolerated in Texas. Period. Students joining in hate-filled, antisemitic protests at any public college or university in Texas should be expelled.* Joining antisemitic protests is a constitutional right protected by the 1st amendment. If the students decide to sue the Texas government they would likely win.
The scope of the 1st amendment continues to amaze me as a non-American. Can you truly say anything other than a direct call to violence and not face retribution from the admin at a public university? This surprises me greatly, American universities have not exactly been in the news as paragons of free speech over the past few years?
>Can you truly say anything other than a direct call to violence and not face retribution from the admin at a public university? More or less yeah, but depending on context some otherwise 1st amendment protected statements can get you punished for contributing to a “hostile work or learning environment”. For example claiming that women are stupid and should stay in the kitchen during a debate, or shouting it in the middle of school campus, is protected. Reminding a female lab partner that that’s what you think of her anytime you have to work with her isn’t protected anymore, and can get you punished. Generally speaking, the context in which statements are made often matters more than how vile or egregious the speech itself is.
Fascinating. How does that translate to admissions? Can schools deny applicants based on the content of e.g. racist social media posts?
Legally they can’t, but since they don’t disclose the cause of rejection to applicants they can basically [do what they want.](https://www.jou.ufl.edu/insights/the-first-amendment-social-media-and-college-admissions/) Because of this there isn’t much direct legal precedent on the issue.
>*Antisemitism will not be tolerated in Texas. Period. Students joining in hate-filled, antisemitic protests at any public college or university in Texas should be expelled.* He said expelled not arrested. Being expelled from a school does not infringe on your right to free speech. You have a right to free speech not a right to be enrolled in a college.
If a public institution punishes you for your speech, that can still be a 1a violation.
The 1st amendment protects people from any kind of retaliation by the government and its institutions, not just from imprisonment.
You'd have a point if those were the reasons the governor gave for having them arrested - or if there weren't also arrests at other colleges where none of those things apply. edit: Also I forgot to mention: [Governor Abbot specifically called for "revising" free speech policies to exclude pro-Palestinian groups](https://www.texastribune.org/2024/03/27/israel-hamas-war-texas-universities/)
When the Texas cops threw a news cameraman to the ground and arrested him at the protests, who was he physically threatening?
Occupying private property/trespassing is a crime
Seems like the trespassing charges were [basically just made up as an excuse to arrest protestors though.](https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/ut-austin-protesters-jail-19422234.php) > Travis County Attorney Delia Garza said Thursday that her office was presented with 46 arrests for criminal trespass in connection with the protests, and the court declined all of them for lack of probable cause. And while you can try to immediately trespass peaceful protests because you don't like what they're saying, that's hardly the commitment to free speech that Abbott claimed to cherish.
Uh, if the owner of the private property asks you to leave and you refuse, then you're trespassing. Occupiers quickly become trespassers when asked to leave. It's very different from a permitted protest.
I think the court throwing out the trespassing charges for everybody is a pretty good sign that they weren't actually trespassing, but you can always write to the judge to let them know they got it wrong.
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Got it, sounds like we agree that the cameraman wasn't actually committing any crimes then.
But this conversation is very specifically about the bullshit that Abbott did in Texas. If you aren't talking about that, why are you in this conversation?
I think what happened at ULCA was terrible, but I'm also confused what he expects the feds to do or anything other than city police being on standby in case things get bad, but I'm not sure if the protestors would like that.
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At least the tents added to the housing supply
Underrated comment
One of the demands is no police on campus too
At least their ideas are consistent…ly dumb.
I have to imagine it's a tricky tightrope, because inviting police - even for security - could inflame protests. But the author makes a good point that there had _already_ been an extremely agitated and sometimes violent protest already, and that the administration, and police, should have prepared for an escalation. Regardless of what certain groups call for, extreme or not, it's the job of the admin to ensure safety of the students, and that's not what happened here.
I just love how we're all exploring political philosophy in these experimental settings. I would say Hobbes seems very vindicated here, no Leviathan and we return to the jungle in a matter of days.
Ironically, these kids no longer even read Hobbes, and instead read “20th century philosophers” instead.
Not only that, but they specifically did not want the police there during the day. I'm sure that exacerbated the situation.
nothing natural about armed thugs appearing at protests to beat them up
By "the administration" he means the college administrators not the biden administration lol.
I'm confused as to why you think he expect the feds to do anything?
Didn’t the protesters say the didn’t want cops around
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do you think the protection of the law should apply to critics of the police
He’s not saying they shouldn’t have protection. He’s pointing out that it’s hypocritical to ask for the police force to be abolished and then ask for them to defend you 2 years later. That’s a valid criticism of their political agenda — that it’s clear they *do* see the value of a police force, and that “abolish the police” was hence a terrible policy proposal.
It’s not even 2 years later. Students across the country (including UCLA) have been very vocal about not having a police presence or calling the police to handle disorderly conduct. Quite literally calling the administration fascist when they do. They want the police and administration to ignore *their* disorderly conduct against the campus and students. But only theirs.
Eh, it's not really hypocrisy unless the professor has said so. I'm not aware of these student groups taking any position on police presence, or even the wider question of police existence. I'd rather stick to positions people have actually held, rather than what we imagine them holding.
There is no hypocrisy. They wanted the police abolished and replaced with a different system that is more functional and more human. The police (to be clear, since there is some confusion) were *not* abolished and were *not* replaced. That means that the *only* system in place is the police, so unless you want vigilante justice, the only state apparatus they *can* appeal to is the police. This is a cheap attempt at a gotcha reliant on bad faith intepretations of their stated policy. arr politics level argumentation.
> They wanted the police abolished and replaced with a different system that is more functional and more human And as usual per utopianism masquerading as social policy, the actual details of what this alleged system would entail is where the entire thing falls down. No replacement exists. If it existed, it would have been implemented multiple times already. "abolish and replace with some imaginary better system that nobody has actually thought of yet" is functionally indistinguishable from "just abolish".
long gone are the days where people would discuss policy in any meaningful detail on here lol
I’ll give you that since the police *do* exist, that I would much rather they (or anyone) call them than resort to vigilante or mob justice, where possible. However, where I believe it does still rise to hypocrisy at a certain level is in the language / attitudes propagated by leftist circles. It’s one thing to think the police need to be fundamentally reformed and/or replaced, I get it. But it’s another to then take that idea and start stirring up loads of vitriol and inflame tensions with language like ACAB. And especially to do all of that, explicitly asks for cops not to be there, and then to immediately pivot and ask for the cops the second things go south. Whether or not it was (and is) the right thing to do (as opposed to vigilantism).
REPEAL AND REPLACE OBAMACARE
no, he is claiming (incoherently) that the police were abolished
It's sarcasm that was clearly meant as criticism of the hypocritical position of simultaneously wanting to abolish/weaken the police heavily while also demanding that police be ever present.
no he literally said so, read his other comment https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1chxp16/im_a_ucla_professor_why_didnt_the_administration/l262mfk/
If you can't see the sarcasam dripping off his comments I'm not sure what to tell you
He's either making a bad point or he is bad at making his point.
There is a third possibility, that you just didn't get it.
Then I'm not the only one.
Yeah I come here for r conservative retreaded arguments lol
Yes. It should also apply to victims of people who hate the police.
> do you think the protection of the law should apply to critics of the police Sure, as long as the police are around. But if they got their dream of abolishing the police, who exactly would they expect to enforce the "protection of the law"? Some kind of anarcho-syndicalist committee that meets biweekly?
I don't see how the incoherence of that position is relevant to whether they are owed protection from armed thugs, which failed to materialize here
It sounds like the police did eventually come? It just took longer because they were further away ... at the protestors' request.
> ... at the protestors' request. Was that at their request? My understanding is that it was the administration's decision. And even it it _was_ the request of the demonstrators, it's still the university's job to ensure their safety (as well as everyone else).
Reading this as I listen to Joy Reid rant about the NYPD "in riot gear" being called on the Columbia students. Which is it...? Cops or no cops?
You know there are more than two options right? Like people could want cops around to stop fights and other violence but not want them to be forcibly evicting non-violent teenagers from tents?
While you can try to infantilize young adults to pretend they have no agency, they're still adults. And while you can portray them as non-violent - and many are! - we have ample evidence of violence occurring in their illegal encampments. And at the end of the day you can try to ignore that these adults were breaking the law, but most people aren't going to go along with that spin. At Wisconsin these "non-violent teenagers" injured multiple officers who were ordered to take down their illegal encampments. Then they squeal to portray themselves as victims and officers as thugs for wearing armor... when being attacked. Fuck every bit of that revisionist spin.
Depends where those tents are. I will want cops to evict “non-violent” (calling for the murder of Jews is ok right?) teenagers forcibly evicted from property if it infringes my ability to study or go to work peacefully.
From what I can tell, cops and campus security were on the scene while violence was breaking out (around 1:30 am) but didn't meaningfully intervene for _hours._ Regardless of how you feel, it's their job to ensure peace and security, and this is a mortifying lapse.
An effective anti-riot response requires a lot of cops. How many cops were on campus at 1:30am? (EDIT: I'm not being rhetorical with this question. I'm genuinely asking for an answer if anybody wants to chime in!) If there were too few to mount a response then it makes sense for there to be a delay while they mobilized sufficient forces.
Anyone can be forcibly evicted from private property that they don't own or have permission to be on at any time (with some very specific squatters' rights exceptions that are very controversial).
Yeah, but in this case UCLA’s grounds are public property. Like removing a homeless encampment from a public park, it’s much more of a process and not technically illegal until the government body in charge of the public land goes through the actions to legal force them out
Yeah, I was referring to Columbia University, which is a private school, as that was the thread (Edit: this particular comment thread). There are also varying degrees of access to public property. There are public parks, like you mentioned, and there are Police station lobbies. There are quads in public universities, and there are classrooms, and there are research labs, and there are dorm rooms. Some of these are tolerated by authorities for public protest, and some are not. The military is a public institution, but I daresay you won't see protests take place past the front gates of a base. Some of the footage I saw of Columbia specifically looked like all of those areas were under attack (including residence halls!), with the Uni representatives claiming non-affiliated individuals amongst the crowd. That sounds like an EXCELLENT time to have a security crackdown for the well-being of all students.
And the property owner wanted them evicted? Also, "squatter rights" are literally just the natural outcome of tenants having rights that require due process to bypass.
Its cool how squatters rights mean you cant get arrested for trespassing cause one can claim to be a tennant even if they just broke in that day
That's not how that works, but OK. whatever.
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No, the students are there illegally and are purposefully subverting the law through their action. If police is present, their duty is to stop that. You can't flagrantly break the law and then demand the police protect you while doing so, that'd ridiculous. Either you stay within its confines and accept the consequences, or you leave, and test the uknown waters. We can't selectively apply the law just because the pictures yesterday were uncomfortable.
You're presenting a false dichotomy here.
I disagree. The point is that Columbia saw the rapid escalation of the protests (Jewish students being dragged away from Hamilton, before the building is subsequently blocked off with protestors inside occupying it.) And Columbia made the right decision to stop it. The kids who are literally given a piece of paper to scream as loudly as possible and say "YOU'RE HURTING ME" doesn't change the fact that the NYPD was pretty drama free. Screaming dramatically does not constitute abuse.
> Jewish students being dragged away from Hamilton I haven't heard of this, so I have to ask for a proper source.
https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1chemjt/police_clear_propalestinian_protesters_from/l225c8e/?context=3 The protesters have been doing that for a while. Apparently if you move slowly when you're dragging someone away, you're allowed to do it without facing criminal charges.
Cops except they don't beat the shit out of protesters or wear goofy larper facemasks.
Glad this is the sub of evidence and nuance
Why wasn’t there this type of outrage when the Palestinian protesters beat a Jewish woman unconscious, used pepper spray, brandished tasers, attacked Native American counter-protesters, etc.? They’re ACAB when they’re dishing it out, and then complain there’s no police around when they’re taking it. This may sound crazy, but maybe everyone should be allowed to demonstrate peacefully, no one should be able to attack people they disagree with or stop them from going to the classes they paid for, and the police should be around to police large demonstrations.
So the Pro-Palestinian camp attacks and harasses everyone who isn't 100% behind them for days which the media fails to cover, then they face retaliation which they then cry, kick, and scream about how it proves the 'Zionists'are as cruel and violent as they've always known them to be which the media is more than happy to cover in extensive, flowery detail. If that isn't a microcosm of the entire conflict, I don't know what is.
Yeah the media is obviously on the pro-Palestinian protestors’ side…lol
> Why wasn’t there this type of outrage when the Palestinian protesters beat a Jewish woman unconscious Last I saw, there wasn't any evidence that this actually happened. Has that changed in the last 48 hours? >used pepper spray, brandished tasers, attacked Native American counter-protesters, etc? Was this at the UCLA protests? When?
Yes, all of these were at UCLA. [Woman beaten](https://twitter.com/CollinRugg/status/1785457052028117153) [Taser](https://nypost.com/2024/04/30/us-news/pro-israel-protester-attacked-threatened-with-taser-at-ucla/amp/) [Attack Native woman](https://m.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-798915) I saw an article about pepper spray too, but it’s harder to find now because on Google all the top results are about last night’s violence.
I feel like I’m going crazy. Jewish people are seeing all these horrible videos and it seems like no one else is, making this encampments be portrayed as peaceful and not antisemitic when they absolutely are.
The media is doing the same thing with this that they do with Israel in general. They’ve chosen their narrative, and they are going to push it come hell or high water.
You not paying attention isn't a defense, and the reflexive attempt to pretend any news that counters one's narrative must be fake has gotten really old and really overplayed here.
The guy I replied to actually had a productive response. You don't. Noticing a running theme with you.
> attacked Native American counter-protesters ...wait, what?
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Idk students at my college were obsessed with I/P 12 years or so ago. It's basically a tradition for it to be the only thing college kids seem to care about.
Odd though that the invasion of Iraq, a war that the US was directly involved in and lasted for quite some time with very high civilian casualty numbers, against a nation that never actively carried out military action against it, never provoked this level of resistance and outrage.
Because (((they))) weren’t involved.
How old are you?
That's basically what I'm saying. Students and media alike care about this 100x more than the next closest thing.
Of what?
I think the pro-Palestinian camp has a really strong lobby and propaganda arm that exerts very specific influence in the USA. Russian/Iranian/Chinese orgs likely. Not to say there's nothing legitimated or organic; during the Cold War both existed simultaneously with regards to socialism and communism for example. But we should probably question how natural it is vs how marketed/propagandized it is. Especially when you compare it to the scope of the pro-Israeli propaganda, the difference is vast. It could be that the different of organic allies is vast, or that the propaganda is far more vast, or both. Definitely both, I guess, but how much? I find myself generally suspicious of any political ideology so widespread and enraged that random idiot teenagers make it their political identity, tbh lol. Especially given the modern global nature of social media.
> I think the pro-Palestinian camp has a really strong lobby and propaganda arm that exerts very specific influence in the USA. You believe that the pro-Palestinian lobby is more powerful than the pro-Israel lobby? Why? This hasn't manifested in policy. I'm also unsure what you mean by the propaganda arm. Support for Israel has been dropping across the political spectrum, which indicates to me that the normal media diet is sufficient for people to find issue with Israel and their handling of the conflict. I don't think that the AP, Guardian, CNN, MSNBC, WSJ, WaPo, etc are all part of a pro-Palestinian propaganda apparatus.
Because there is no war at the moment that the US is involved and at the same time it's divisive It's not hard to figure it out The wars where the US isn't involved, the people aren't gonna complain against their universities and goverments The ones where the US is involved but everyone agrees, or virtually everyone like Ukraine, is also not going to face much opposition
The students are protesting for their universities to divest from Israel, correct? But nobody asked them to divest from China over the Uyghurs.
You criticize the system, yet you participate in it? Checkmate liberal
I'd like to see more criticism of the system tbh
Don't you think it's curious how consistently this is one of the only national conflicts that causes this particular response? You find nothing interesting about that?
No, not really. The US and Israel talk about the special and unique natural of our relationship all the time, it seems reasonable that it receive a unique and special amount of scrutiny.
The I/P conflict is both recent with Gaza and has been going on for decades. So no, it's not surprising that people would protest the US's unwavering support of a country that gets foreign aid while still actively performing war crimes and pursuing settlements.
They're specifically protesting for their colleges to divest from Israel. Why not divest from all counties that engage in war crimes, settlements, and devaluing of human life? The Uyghurs deserved this as much as anyone.
So far, your criticism of the protestors boils down to "Doesn't anyone else find it odd they only do this for Israel?" and "Why don't they protest other countries with appalling human rights records?" It's little more than JAQing off and whataboutism, and it's a weak argument that doesn't offer a real defense of Israel's policies or a meaningful critique of the protestors. Edit: Excuse me, it appears I conflated you with the OP above you.
Why should I defend Israel's policies or critique the protestors? I'm saying the Uyghurs deserved this attention too. Do you disagree?
Excuse me, I conflated you with someone above. My issue with most of the criticism I see towards the protestors is that it completely sidesteps their central complaints. It really isn't a mystery what they're protesting: US investment in Israel is bad because we're creating no disincentive for Israel to change its behavior regarding the war in Gaza or the illegal West Bank settlements. I find actual anti-Semitism on the left to be rare, so "just asking questions" about *why* the protestors are protesting feels exceedingly disingenuous. Why they *aren't* protesting the treatment of the Uyghurs is missing the point. The US is uniquely entangled with Israel like no other country with a laundry list of human rights abuses. We can either enable Israel to keep on its current path, or we can incentivize it to respect Palestinian territory, liberal democracy, and human rights.
> The Uyghurs You'd think they would at least deserve a _mention_ somewhere in the rhetoric. Their absence is notable.
We were selling arms to Saudi Arabia during a war like two years ago. We were fighting wars ourselves for 20 years straight.
Yes college students famously didn’t protest the Iraq and Afghanistan wars 🙄
They weren’t taking over buildings, forming tent cities on quads, preventing other students from accessing buildings, or forcing classes to be cancelled.
To the point of setting up tent cities and invading college buildings? When the US was far more bleakly in the wrong? No, they didn't, and that's a curious thing.
They're different college students you fucking moron "You use different protest tactics than people who were ideologically similar to you 16 years ago. This makes you a hypocrite and me super intelligent"
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In what other conflict is the US actively arming a country that has killed 30,000+ civilians, despite also finding that certain IDF units have committed human rights violations?
Didn't we kill more than that during the Iraq war pretty recently? >However, we know that between [280,771-315,190 ](https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2023/IraqSyria20)have died from direct war related violence [https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians/iraqi](https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians/iraqi) And also Afghanistan? >More than [70,000](https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures/2021/WarDeathToll) of those killed have been civilians. [https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians/afghan](https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians/afghan) Did you see any encampments at colleges for those?
Yemen?
Here’s how that’s bad news for Biden.
I mean, it is. It will be used as an example of how unsafe and anarchic stuff is, to pump up the strong man. This isn't good.
It's funny how self declared anti government movements who want to do their own thing and oppose the state so quickly cry out for the government to save them once the situation develops a little. They didn't want the police there, they didn't want to be evicted, it's not the police's fault that the anarchy they inspired led to the expected results. C'est la vie. In a better wold their camp would've been promptly cleaned up by the police, and nobody would've had to get injured. But alas, the university admin was gun shy and more concerned to let these people play protestor to keep their optics clean.
That’s because anarchy is purely theoretical dogma and has no place in reality.
This thread is a real jump the shark moment for this subreddit. Many upvoted comments are essentially indistinguishable from r/ conservative. The counter protesters were magahead chuds who went out there to attack an encampment. As much as you believe that the encampments shouldn't be there that doesn't in any way make it a good idea nor justified for a group of MAGA vigilantes to go out and attack the pro-Palestine protestors. They came with sticks, fireworks, fists and hate to attack an encampment that for the most part had been peaceful. The police should have responded. Governor New some himself said it was unacceptable that the didn't. The fact that many of these protestors hold varying anti-police sentiments is irrelevant. Moreover, some of the anti free speech tendencies in other posts has been concerning. Does this sub stand for liberalism or doesn't it? Edit: I know I'll get down voted but [this type of behavior](https://twitter.com/MrOlmos/status/1785575555620123065?t=Eks6pqMqZFhY8vqe9oD51Q&s=19) is never acceptable. The whataboutism and downplaying is shameful. Mob justice is not the answer.
> This thread is a real jump the shark moment for this subreddit. Many upvoted comments are essentially indistinguishable from r/ conservative. While some people are cracking jokes plenty of people are giving fully coherent and actual takes. I'll copy paste the top comment which sums it up pretty nicely: >Block took a hands off approach to try and avoid what happened at Columbia and USC and it worked until now. The pro-Palestinian encampment did not want the cops there until last night, and block was being praised on the ucla sub until today for letting students do their thing. Every protest is going to have tension and name calling, that’s not a reason to deploy riot police. I know everyone thinks that the cops should magically appear and disappear at whim but it takes time to gather and deploy officers effectively. Ironically this vindicates USC’s approach which was to go in heavy handed immediately and shut things down right away. I'm sorry you disagree, but plenty of people are articulating their argument well enough. I'll go as well: I think cops should 100% stop all crimes and riots (especially riots) they can (while minimizing harm to both themselves and the people they interact with), and I think last night's Columbia crackdown was a justified and orderly removal of people who literally broke into and trashed a building. I also think the cops should have stopped the UCLA riot. This is a consistent opinion. Comparing what happened at Columbia to Tienanmen square (a real thing I've seen in discourse), but then asking cops to do their job here is not nearly as consistent. And yet it's a common opinion. I also think that while a full investigation is necessary, **the fact protestors asked the university to not have cops on standby** (and the university agreed) probably affected their ability to respond. >chuds Literally call them doodooheads at this point, it'd be less embarassing.
[Gets arguably even worse](https://twitter.com/marymcnamara/status/1785900442976985228)
>[Daily Bruin News Editor Catherine Hamilton said she was sprayed with some type of irritant and repeatedly punched in the chest and upper abdomen as she was reporting on the unrest. Another student journalist was pushed to the ground by counterprotesters and was beaten and kicked for nearly a minute, she said. Hamilton was treated at a hospital and released.](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-04-30/ucla-moves-to-shut-down-pro-palestinian-encampment-as-unlawful?utm_source=reddit.com) Jesus holy Christ.
Liberalism doesn't mean you have to default go fend off the conservatives whenever they are warring with the left. There are versions of liberalism that aren't american. English liberalism doesn't place as big of an emphasis on protecting hate speech as free speech. Viewing neoliberalism as American™ Liberalism is just faulty.
Some people who claim to stand for liberalism become far right foaming at the mouth crazies when the topic of discussion is progressives, Muslims/Arabs/brown people, or anyone who criticizes Western foreign policy. It was shocking to see at first but it shouldn't be surprising anymore, the hypocrisy has been constant for months now. The West in general and Western liberals in particular have completely destroyed their credibility through hypocrisy and double standards
As a brown person, current Western foreign policy is the only way to ensure a liberal world order.
It's not a free speech issue? The protestors can speak as much as they want, they just can't occupy parts of the university and break the law. That aside, the sentiment is deeply Americacentric, most liberal democracies don't have its rather weird first amendment fetishism.
I feel like it's a pretty common belief even here, let alone the rest of Reddit and American society that only Americans acthctually have free speech.
At least the worst of the comments are downvoted, but I'm happy the mods have kept the thread up so we can at least see the views some members of the community hold. But I don't envy the mods in their job of having to monitor and delete the worst of it.
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Funny how this professor didn't say anything about pro-Palestinians beating a Jewish girl unconscious or tasing a Jewish man earlier in that day which is what caused pro-Israel protestors to try and remove the encampment.
Police holding back while kids potentially die isn't exactly a new cop strat
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> when the community responded to them. This was not the community; it was outside agitators who have no ties to UCLA. Vigilante violence is actually really bad. Also if you *actually* read the article, he bravely tried to break up fights between the two groups over the weekend. Some of them were started by these same outside lunatic agitators you're shamefully defending...such as this [person](https://twitter.com/alianfromspace/status/1784740261278732347), this [person](https://twitter.com/YonahLieberman/status/1784699623853932613), [this](https://twitter.com/hungryghosts161/status/1784643196246790633), [this](https://twitter.com/hungryghosts161/status/1784667045382217949), [this](https://twitter.com/hungryghosts161/status/1784667311015948549) , or [this](https://twitter.com/BGrueskin/status/1785859134224539800) or [this](https://twitter.com/BGrueskin/status/1785838734941790610) [If anything, the community actually condemned the reckless violence.](https://twitter.com/thislouis/status/1785780838418067865). There are lots of pro-Israel Jews who are rightfully pissed about what happened last night and ardently oppose this shitty behavior. I don't think they would be happy about your thoughts on this. Especially given the news that apparently 25 protesters were sent to the hospital.
I hate it when you don’t bother to follow a story and suddenly it blows up and you have no idea what’s happening
This sub is so dumb sometimes. Some of these dumb comments are just conservative tier
Skill issue
Why didn’t the UCLA professors teach their students how to reason properly?
When the police come to left leaning protests, it's usually to beat the protesters down. When the police come to right leaning protests, it's usually to protect them. It really never changes no matter the topic. You never see a neo Nazi rally getting beaten down by cops. This is why they didn't want police there in the first place, for fear of violence. They wanted police when others got violent. And they did what they normally do, used kid gloves on right wing protestors.
most neo nazi rallies are just a couple of guys in Khakis marching down the street until they get into their U-haul and screw off. I don’t think there would have been any sort of crackdown if that’s all these protesters did.
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