What Is Really Going On at Columbia University?

[Mossfern]

69. Another opinion that arrived in my inbox today

Last edited Tue Apr 23, 2024, 09:54 PM - Edit history (1)

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/columbia-university-protests-palestine/678159/?utm_campaign=atlantic-daily-newsletter&utm_content=20240423&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=The+Atlantic+Daily

The Unreality of Columbia’s ‘Liberated Zone’

What happens when genuine sympathy for civilian suffering mixes with a fervor that borders on the oppressive?
By Michael Powell

During my nine-hour visit, talking with student protesters proved tricky. Upon entering the zone, I was instructed to listen as a gatekeeper read community guidelines that included not talking with people not authorized to be inside—a category that seemed to include anyone of differing opinions. I then stood in a press zone and waited for Layla Saliba, a social-work graduate student who served as a spokesperson for the protest. A Palestinian American, she said she has lost family in the fighting in Gaza. She talked at length and with nuance. Hers, however, was a near-singular voice. As I toured the liberated zone, I found most protesters distinctly nonliberated when it came to talking with a reporter.

Earlier in the day, I interviewed a Jewish student on a set of steps overlooking the tent city. Rachel, who asked that I not include a surname for fear of harassment, recalled that in the days after October 7 an email went out from a lesbian organization, LionLez, stating that Zionists were not allowed at a group event. A subsequent email from the club’s president noted: “White Jewish people are today and always have been the oppressors of all brown people,” and “when I say the Holocaust wasn’t special, I mean that.” The only outward manifestation of Rachel’s sympathies was a pocket-size Israeli flag in a dorm room. Another student, Sophie Arnstein, told me that after she said in class that “Jewish lives matter,” others complained that her Zionist beliefs were hostile. She ended up dropping the course.