am i the only one who thinks this entire thing is ridiculous?

Being a student at Columbia University gives you the privilege to be a part of the protest or quietly sit as a spectator. During last year's uproar over alleged racism in one of the Fed's cartoon's you could sit back and understand why many were outraged and we could sympathize. This year we have another campus implosion, turning Columbian against Columbian. We have the New York Sun doing play by play on our every move, actively trying to paint our University with a dark secret: anti-Semitism and then we have the New York Times adding their two-cents every now and then.

As a spectator, am I the only one that finds the allegations of anti-Semitism absolutely ridiculous? This is where our story begins. Ding. Turn the page.

Allegations of anti-Semitism. Students who believed they were being intimidated by the professors in the MEALAC department decide to take part in a documentary put together by The David Project. They claim to be trying to present an objective view of academic freedom in the classroom, but all you really hear about are accusations of he did this and he did that. Granted, I wasn't in the classroom, what really happened remains in the confines of the minds of the professors and those in the classroom. [now that I think about it, wouldn't it be easily verified what statements were made? theses classes must have at least 20-30+ people in them, surely more than the alleged victims would be able to remember a story that in context is blatantly offensive]. The story has become a circus. Everybody and their mother has their own opinion about what happened and what should happen in the MEALAC dept. because the Sun and the David Project have turned the situation into a medieval crusade... or a witch hunt. The ad-hoc committee’s report was released today, no anti-Semitism, but the grievance policy is terrible.

Our story continues. I was sitting in image processing reading the Spec's articles and as soon as I finished the articles last sentence I think something in my brain snapped.

"I was disturbed because we wanted so badly to heal the Columbia community and get past this and we think at the very least the people that see that report would be the Columbia students."- Bari Weiss '07"

There had been something that had disturbed me about this entire anti-Semitism "scandal" and I could never really put my finger on it till now.

Heal the Columbia Community... I realize that there are students on this campus that feel like they were hurt somehow. I don't mean the portions of the Jewish community and others who have been following the proceedings and have taken a stance on it in their own detached sort of way, I mean the people that were in the classrooms, the ones that asked a question and had a wake up call answer that they probably didn't expect to be thrown at them. Perhaps I'm being insensitive, but I don't exactly feel like this has rocked Columbia to the foundation of its being.

Every semester I sit at my desk and with my advisors I pick about 5 classes to take. I believe the reason we go to university and take classes is for the purpose of learning. We go to university to get a deeper perspective on issues, to question beliefs that we have held all our lives that have not yet been subject to rigorous intellectual debate.

It struck me while I was reading the newspaper that everyone that has been mentioned as having grievances with MEALAC has been Jewish and in a class pertaining to the Arab world. I had to ask myself, why are you in that class. I believe that everyone's motive was to get an alternative perspective to the world that is adjacent to what they hold dear to their hearts (Israel); they want to know about Arabs and Palestine. I think that is a worthy cause, find the root of all the controversy; why has the hatred and fighting become so ingrained in the modern consciousness of both involved parties. The deviation I believe that occurred with those making the majority of grievances is that while they allowed themselves to listen to an alternative perspective, they did not allow themselves to give any consideration to the opposition view.

The problem with academic freedom is not between the student and the teacher; it is within the student.

I am going out on a limb but it seems logical that while enrolled in Massad's class, some of his students could not accept or at least give consideration to what he was teaching. Prejudice is a difficult barrier to get past. There is an over used adage that says that you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink from it, this couldn't be closer to the truth.

Students in this conflict claim they have been verbally intimidated in the classroom. It would be virtually impossible, especially at a school of prestige at Columbia for a professor to circle the room and pick somebody out for intimidation. Massad did not go around the room and look for a Jewish person to get into heated debate with. Tomy Schoenfeld did not ONLY tell Massad that he had served in the Israeli army to illicit a response of "Well if you served in the military, then why don't you tell us how many Palestinians have you killed?" I don't understand why the context of the question was left out. I don't want to go so far as to say these students brought it upon themselves. That is unfair and wrong, what they did bring upon themselves is a sharp response from most likely an equally sharp question, an answer that was probably meant to make them think about their beliefs.

"Criticizing professors does not violate their academic freedom or stifle debate. It only adds to it. Professors can think and say and write whatever they wish. But they do not have the right to be free from criticism." -Bari Weiss

You're right Bari, they aren't free from criticism. What is appalling though is that sheltered Columbia students think they ARE free from criticism, that they came voice dissenting opinions and expect professors to baby them and say, "You know what, I’ve studied this for 2 decades and lived directly in the heart of the conflict, you know... you have a good point". This entire issue is blown greatly out of proportion. I wish Lee Bollinger spent more time doing other things than writing me emails so I feel like I'm not being alienated.

america doesn't care pt. 2

president george w. bush has decided that the state of the union... or the economy is not strong. he realizes that while he was accusing john kerry of proposing to spend a lot of money, he himself was actually spending a lot of it.

how shameful does this become when the things that the president used to get re-elected (see education) he very quickly has proposed to cut. department of education "he would kill 48 of its programs worth $4.3 billion and cut two others.". sure you could say, oh hogwash, these are programs that were useless and just wasting money anyways. that'd be completely legitimate, except that if you look at the 48 programs most of them are pretty legitimate sounding to me.

oh...
adult education state grants
teacher quality enhancement program
supported employment
projects with industry
vocational rehan
some scholarships
elementary and secondary school counseling
literacy programs for prisoners
women's educational equity
arts in education
civic education
interest subsidy grants
foreign language assistance
dropout prevention program
drug free school grants
interest subsidy grants
tech prep state grants
there's more and more and more and more and more

tell me mr. bush, you went to my town in front of a large crowd and talked about how community colleges were a pillar. how our economy requires people to get 21st century education for 21st century jobs. touted grants and scholarships, touted tons of things that are just proposed to be cut.

what's the best part.
america doesn't care. america elected him because they thought he was the real deal. he was pedro, he offered them their wildest dreams, and a statue of santa anna.

now the fairy tale is over and who's going to care. tommorow's conservative talking points.
-bush did what he had to do.
-bush is decisive, he saw our economy was in trouble and he made necessary cuts despite everyone's wearyness to do so.
-bush is realistic.

what is realistic though? fine i won't blame bush completely for sending the economy down the shithole. dennis schmelzer can post-election ass kiss all he wants to give reasons for economic craptasticness. what i will blame him for is for spending so much when he knew he couldn't do it. he wants to join hands and bring the nation back to fiscal responsibility?

what about spending so much money on everything? republicans touted how much of an increase education had when he was elected. war in iraq... yea that costs a lot. tax cuts... yea that costs a lot too. we forget that although the government is taking less out of our pockets, now the government has less money to do things. things that cushy americans loved. too bad. fiscal responsibility though... who cares about that when you can talk about social security blowing a godzilla sized hole in kansas come 2042.

in a week we'll all forget that Bush wanted to cut so many programs that are ridiculous. he wants to improve everything. he wants to improve airline security. OBVIOUSLY cut funding to FAA. loves veterans. OBVIOUSLY cut their veterans business development corporation. Loves small businesses. OBVIOUSLY cut their microloan program. environmentalists. well he never liked them, that's why water quality funds are proposed to be cut, epa protection for inuit villages... he loves mexicans. OBVIOUSLY cut migrant worker training programs. cut international labor affairs bereau, cut office of disability employment?

sure these may seem frivalous until you realize that real americans fall into these categories.

and nobody will care. ms. betty crocker white america will sit at home watching her soap operas and making her brownies smiling, knowing that her bush did what needed to be done. who cares that what needs to be done now could have been avoided. you can't be credited for achievement went it is to counter-act a failure. that puts you at even, skewed to the unhappy side. yet, for once, america only wants to hear the good parts. dumb asses.

america doesn't care pt. 1

Thursday, February 17, 2005 - 06:27 AM EST (37 views)

every day i read something new that has come to light out of the secrecy that is the bush administration. and the more we see and the longer we wait to observe the reactions, the clearer it becomes that the bush administration will never be held accountable for anything.

haliburton pulls out of iran. iran is part of the axis of evil. haliburton subsidiary makes big new deal with iran. this may not directly correlate with the administration, but this is exactly the kind of thing that the american media reading public eat up and ignore. it's bait and switch. 'oh haliburton is ethical, they are getting out of iran because that place is a bastion of unamerican-ness and a harvesting ground for terrorists'. nobody cares about anything past that.

with the latest on the story about jeff gannon, as reported by keith olbermann, what is that, the 4th 'reporter' that we have discovered in the past few months that has been funded by the bush administration. nobody cares about this because they have more important things on their mind, things that are made incredibly one-sided as you have seemingly smart people with the credentials advocating 'bush is great, listen to the man' at every turn.

they will never be held accountable. of course they won't. although you may observe bush pushing privatization of social security now and calling everyone a sissy face that doesn't agree with him, first it's not going to work and democrats are going to be viewed as an obstruction to the democratic process. second, bush won't be able to privatize anything because it doesn't withstand the scrutiny of the democrats and those in the republican party. this doesn't matter because whatever is pushed through congress will ultimately be the doing of the bush administration (in the eyes of the public). right now bush has said that he is thinking about raising the payroll tax of those who make more than $90,000.

doesn't anyone remember him calling john kerry silly for wanting to increase any sort of taxes in order to be fiscally responsible? now bush says it's something to think about. bush won't be seen as a stubborn asshole who uses everything to his political advantage, he will be seen as somebody who accepts a wide variety of possibilities for every situation. the truth is that he lambasts opposition views, but if his policy does not work, he will stubbornly adobt the opposition view and take credit for it.

it's happened before and it will happen again. bush will probably go down in history as some sort of saviour of america. and he will not have earned it, he will have stolen it.

politics is a stupid game. you can't ever prove your right unless you have the political leverage. if you have the political leverage, then you can be right, wrong, lie, cheat, steal, completely make things up, obstruct liberty, control various aspects of the 'objective' media and you always come out on top.

and the best part is the american system that perpetuates this will never be fixed. unless people start caring then it's not going to happen. and america won't ever start caring because politics happen once every 4 years. the rest of the time we spend trying to figure out what to buy next and how to get the money to buy it.

why is john kerry reaching across the aisle for bipartisan effort? sissy. democrats need to stand up and say, fuck you, you guys are dead ass wrong, you manipulate the system to the point of not following within the confines of constitutional freedom. you cannot work for bipartisanship when there is no such thing. bipartisanship is a facade that only serves to make it seem as if the republicans care what everyone thinks. obviously they don't.

welcome to american politics. it's been in the shitter for a long long time.
for further lessons in ridiculousness turn to brit hume on fox news who claims that FDR supported privatization of social security. way to go fox. twist and turn a dead man's words. that's almost sick.