The student occupation of the NYU student center is continuing, although the administration has closed the center, and cut off internet access and electricity to the students.
The administration’s negotiation consisted of repeating the same ultimatum over and over. They proposed probation (not amnesty in the slightest) for all students involved in the occupation, a disbanding of the occupation and the ability to meet with only two administrators in order to meet to discuss the demands. So… basically they offered to blacklist us, end the occupation and we get 5 minutes in a room with Lynne Brown (Senior Vice President for University Relations and Public Affairs) and Linda Mills (Senior Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and University Life). This is not negotiation, this is mandate with no room for bargaining. We’re all busy blogging, napping noshing and chanting to the crowds. We appreciate your support, and are open to negotiation at all times. Contact your professors, contact administrators, contact your parents. All we ask is a seat at the negotiations table. We don’t need to bargain to negotiate. We don’t need to plead to talk. We will be heard. This is for the students who work three jobs to attend the school of their dreams. This is for the students in Gaza, whose university is destroyed and can no longer study. This is for workers in Abu Dhabi building our facilities with no human rights to speak of. We are a global university and our actions are connected to world events, whether we like it or not. It is our responsibility. We have voices. Let’s use them.
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{ 33 comments }
Wow, the NYU admins are making a big mistake to make that offer. Just like negotiating with terrorists, if you let terrorism work the reward is more terrorism.
Same here, if they let a group of students disrupt the operations of the university and get what they want, that will just lead to any disgruntled group of idiots taking over buildings whenever they want something. A society cannot function on the basis of giving anyone who can disrupt the society anything they want, because it is so easy to disrupt a society that you quickly end up with groups that (in the aggregate) demand more than 100% of available resources.
These students broadcast their crimes on the web. It isn't as though they can't be identified. They should be expelled and arrested for trespassing.
BTW, this has nothing to do with their message. I would feel the same way if a bunch of Jewish students were occupying that university building.
Speak, leaflet, posters, whatever you want that falls under free speech. I support the right of the National Lawyers Guild to hand their blood libel posters in their offices and on public bulletin boards. I would support their right to hand out swastika fliers. But what these students are doing is not exercising their right to free speech, it is disrupting other people's rights to use the university facilities they pay for.
There are also some video updates about the anti-war student occupation of NYU posted on the New School In Exile site at the following link:
http://www.newschoolinexile.com/
Undergraduate silliness, says I.
Civil disobedience has no place where there is free expression.
A society cannot function
Our society is functioning poorly now, and its dysfunction is accelerating. Free expression may still be available to Americans, but it has no power to stop our collective immoral violence. Free expression is impotent, and has very little value to individuals or groups without being backed up with action that forces establishmentarians to acknowledge it. Without the occupation of one floor of one building there is no publicity, no confrontation with authority, no possible change to policy. Free expression in America is widely touted as something especially democratic, but it is only considered that way because it is meaningless when confronted with the power of accumulated wealth.
The administration needs to call the police. Have them arrested and banned from the school. It would teach these fools an important lesson.
Thom,
These students broadcast their crimes on the web. It isn't as though they can't be identified. They should be expelled and arrested for trespassing.
BTW, this has nothing to do with their message. I would feel the same way if a bunch of Jewish students were occupying that university building.
Lemme get this straight: If a bunch of Jewish students occupy a university building it's "crime", but when a bunch of Jewish soldiers occupy an entire country, they deserve our financial support?
Square dat, Thom.
I repeat what I said earlier: they should all be thrown in jail.
tommy, you are a thug. You think your ends are so holy that it justifies thuggery, but I bet if some students staged an occupation in protest of divestment or something you'd by absolutely shocked and livid at their behavior. It is people like you who gave the world the gulag.
But a bunch of Jewish soldiers are not occupying an entire country.
Square dat, Sam.
The most interesting comment I read was: You are ruining my certificate, among all the distractions about Pizza and Coke.
It is essentially about democracy. Demanding to be heard is now a crime. Misdemeanor or felony?
Same here, if they let a group of students disrupt the operations of the university and get what they want, that will just lead to any disgruntled group of idiots taking over buildings whenever they want something. A society cannot function on the basis of giving anyone who can disrupt the society anything they want, because it is so easy to disrupt a society that you quickly end up with groups that (in the aggregate) demand more than 100% of available resources.
These students broadcast their crimes on the web. It isn't as though they can't be identified. They should be expelled and arrested for trespassing.
notice the careful attempts at balance in the end.
A "society" must be especially repressive when it comes to Palestinian human rights. They are scum, terrorist, you must know! As our friends never tire to tell us.
But a bunch of Jewish soldiers are not occupying an entire country.
Chris, Wonder Cat, Dude:
If it's not an occupation of the West Bank (and Gaza), then what is it? A picnic that ran late?
Poor Sam, so much time, so little knowledge. Israel is in control of a territory that is in dispute. In order to occupy smething, there must be another sovereign entity with ownership rights. At this moment, there is none, nor has their been for a long time.
The Chinese occupy Tibet. There is a Tibetian government in exile.
Israel occupies a small slice of Syrian territory. Israel did occupy Egyptian property, the Sinai. There has been no Palestinian government that has ever held sovereignty rights for well over 100 years.
Poor babies, electricity and internet access gone. You'd think it was the Alamo.
No property has been destroyed by the students, who are not occupying the entire school but only one floor of one building on a large university campus. I would disagree with students who occupied one floor of one building who called for more bombing of civilians in Gaza with more US weapons, because they would be using their free expression to increase hatefulness and violence as US policy, not because they were using non-violent civil disobedience.
Thuggery is better defined as using violence, whether as vigilante or through state police power, to confront conflict. Thuggery begets more violence, which is why many American supporters of Palestinian self-determination do not support the use of violence by Palestinians and urge them to use non-violent civil disobedience instead. Israelis and their American supporters have no such inhibition to the uses of violence, which is why their incessant use of overwhelming force has led to its increase by their near powerless foe. When the state police resort to violence in the US against non-violent protests, a similar response should be expected by a minority of discontents, which will then be used to rationalize an escalation of violence against protesters of the current policies. An escalation of violence will please some though.
Sometimes legalism is a synonym for horses**t.
Israelis, who want to keep a Jewish state, in Gaza surround and control exit/entry, import/export, fishing, etc. on a territory inhabited by people the Israelis don't like and don't want in their polity. They also bomb it from time to time.
On the W. Bank side, their troops roam at will, they cut down trees, establish crippling roadblocks, expropriate land, ration water to the inhabitants, dump their sewage on them, wall them off from the farms, and frequently make raids and arrests.
Call it whatever you like. It's still thuggish and shameful.
The NYU Administration plans to put all the students involved on probation. As long as there is a clear personal cost to the participants, I doubt there will be a social breakdown at universities.
I am on the far right, and generally dislike civil disobedience or anything "leftist," but if these students expressed themselves nicely in print they would simply be ignored, like everyone else who isn't famous enough to get the public "anti-semite" treatment.
Israel is in control of a territory that is in dispute. In order to occupy smething, there must be another sovereign entity with ownership rights. At this moment, there is none, nor has their been for a long time.
Ah, now the territories seized by the Israeli military are "in dispute." I guess the presence of a military force that does not answer to the inhabitants is just a mirage? The absolute deprivation of the local population's civil rights just a typo? The total absence of rule of law just an administrative oversight? Please clarify.
But alas, you seem to be arguing that it is ok to seize territory by military means so long as any flimsy argument can be mustered by any old carpetbagger on a chat site? So: If Syria were to invade and seize parts of Israeli territory not indicated by the '47 resolution, it would be ok? See, there is no legal authority for Israel to hold these lands, including Jerusalem. No, you see, because this land is "in dispute". You would be fine with that, for this is where your own logic takes you. Atta boy! (Tell me when you've finished disentangling yourself from this rather twisted logic.)
One more thing: The notion of a government having "ownership rights" over a land is a truly perverse mode of thinking. Get out of the totalitarian mindset that marked so well the 30's and 40's. Governments don't own land, people do. Governments answer to their people. (Remember the Boston Tea Party?) People are soveriegn.
Unless, of course, said people are under military occupation.
But of course, that's off topic, for there is no military occupation of the West Bank. It was all just a misunderstanding.
Israel is in control of a territory that is in dispute.
Sure, if the world would finally collectively recognize the Jewish people's eternal rights to the land of their fathers, and take the Palestinians & Israeli Arabs in, than surely the ban on protests could be slightly lifted again. Let's say it could be lowered from felony to misdemeanor? Correct, Chris?
If this does not happen the crowds out there should be prepared that the same standards studied in Judea and Samaria can be easily applied to unruly segments of society everywhere, to use a slight hyperbole, but necessary to get the point over.
And now I am retiring. (hi there, I noticed your funny coinage;)) Still wishing the best to the students, but somehow assuming in this context the so-called Hasbara outlook will win. This is all about not allowing precedents now to make students recoil in fear, so the protest cannot spread.
Student takeovers historically hurt whatever cause they are aiming at.
Another nail in that coffin.
BTW– Elaine Thomas, Director of Communications for Hampshire College notified me that Hampshire College issued an open letter to Alan Dershowitz.
I think they've made it very clear (except, of course to those in their own morphine fog) that divestment from Israel did not occur.
Those who care to do analysis of both their investments and divestments can best affirm that.
Hampshire did not divest from Israel
@suzanne:
"Student takeovers historically hurt whatever cause they are aiming at."
Where do you come up with this unreasoned thought? You seem to think like GWB, say it enough times and it was always true. I was involved in the "Free Speech Movt" and anti Vietnam War marches. Eventually the war ended but it took a long time. We also banned the bra.
ummmm….banning the bra was a stupid idea and bras are alive and well.
Can you prove takeovers brought an end to Vietnam? For all you know, they failed, but other measures succeeded. When I say, historically, btw, I mean in general, not the exception to the rule.
Easy to square Sam. The university wasn't lobbing rockets and mortars at the students and their families.
What you are asking is "why is it not OK to knock someone to the ground and hold him there when he didn't attack you, but it is OK to knock someone to the ground and hold him there when he did attack you".
One is self-defense, the other is initiating violence.
Next to moral sanctimony and support for Israel, Americans' third greatest delusion must be their near-religious fervor for 'college education.'
Marc Scheer, in his book 'No Sucker Left Behind,' details the greedy, misleading, fraudulent means by which government-subsidized U.S. colleges extract outrageous fees from students for degrees which frequently are valueless. At least half of college students could make higher lifetime earnings with a 2-year associate's degree or a vocational education.
The guy the dissenting students really need to negotiate with is Daniel Tisch, on the Board of Trustees. The Tisch family are the guiding lights of NYU.
http://www.nyu.edu/about/trustees.html
Negotiating with Lynne Brown and Linda Mills would be like trying to hammer out U.S. foreign policy with Obama's Secret Service detail. Speaking as an NYU alumnus, this risible proposal is just another reflexive dose of the old college horseshit.
Suzanne:
"Those who care to do analysis of both their investments and divestments can best affirm that."
http://www.hampshire.edu/news/11321.htm
Another loss for the three stooges Weiss, Martillo, Duke.
Berel wrote:
"Israel occupies a small slice of Syrian territory. Israel did occupy Egyptian property, the Sinai. There has been no Palestinian government that has ever held sovereignty rights for well over 100 years."
That 'argument' could have been used against giving independence to virtually all countries decolonized after the Second World War. When there had been something like a state in the past the newly formed one covered in only very few cases the same territory.
And just for the record: Jordan transferred its sovereignty rights over the West Bank in 1988 formally to the Palestinians. The Palestinian Declaration of In dependence dates from the same year. In that year the PLO also accepted UNSC 242.
The problem being that Jordan had no sovereign rights to the region. In fatc, only England, out of 192 existing countries ever recognized the annexation of the land that had no sovereignty.
My argument could not be used against granting independence to any nation. My argument is merely in defense of your misbegotten whine of occupation.
The use of the term 'occupation' is, with reference to the West Bank, not a matter of personal whim or 'whine' but sanctioned in international law.
Cp."Belligerent occupation is governed by The Hague Regulations of 1907, as well as by the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, and the customary laws of belligerent occupation. Security Council Resolution 1322 (2000), paragraph 3 continued: "Calls upon Israel, the occupying Power, to abide scrupulously by its legal obligations and its responsibilities under the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in a Time of War of 12 August 1949;…" Again, the Security Council vote was 14 to 0, becoming obligatory international law."
LeaNder, if I stand across the street from your house waving a sign saying you're an awful person because you disagreed with me at Mondoweiss, that's free speech. If I occupy your house (even just one floor!), that's thuggery. If you can't understand the difference between a restroom and a living room, stay the hell off my carpet and if you can't understand the difference between free speech and the criminal seizure of property (which I would include the Boston Tea Party under) your opinion isn't worth much. I'm not that big a fan of democracy (being the slave of everyone still means being a slave), but you can't really have a functioning liberal democracy (the liberal part is what's actually worth a damn) if some people don't restrict their speech to speech but put themselves above the law to force their way. Do you think that the fascist and communist paramilitaries of the past were merely engaged in democratic communication?
I agree on what Jim Haygood said about universities. I oppose our government funding Israel or offering any support for them (even non-binding resolutions in Congress). That doesn't change what it is the students are doing. They are thugs engaged in extortion. They aren't trying to end subsidies stolen from us and given to universities, but demanding a slice of the pie, becoming parasites themselves. If they really want to choke off these obsolete dinosaurs, they wouldn't be attending them in the first place. What's needed is Microsoft or Google or Wal-Mart to set up their own higher-education business, preferably disseminating information online so slots don't have to be limited by classroom size. We could also overturn Griggs vs Duke Power and replace expensive credentialist signalling with cheap (and quite predictive for job performance) tests.
TGGP, I lived through the student revolution of the sixties and though not liking it at that time I must admit, in retrospect, that it had some positive results. Wikipedia says for France:
"May '68 was a political failure for the protesters, but it had an enormous social impact. In France, it is considered to be the watershed moment when a conservative moral ideal (religion, patriotism, respect for authority) shifted towards a more liberal moral ideal (equality, sexual liberation, human rights) that today better describes French society, in theory if not in practice. Although this change did not take place solely in this one month, the term mai 68 is used to refer to this general shift in principles, especially when referring to its most idealistic aspects."
I can say the same for my country of origin, Holland, where what was called the 'culture of notables' was replaced, after the noisy protests of the sixties in which the students played an important role, by a more open and democratic political – and university system. Perhaps LeaNder can say the same for Germany.
I am fairly sure that these results would not have been achieved if the students hadn't made a pest of themselves and just had exercised their right of free speech by talking into the blue yonder ('ins Blaue hinein').
In many European countries universities are public property. Your example regarding your living room concerns private property. That is an important distinction here. Also when students are temporarily occupying a university building to make a point that otherwise will get no attention at all they are not 'seizing' it (you spoke, rather hyperbolically,of the 'criminal seizure of property')just blocking its ordinary functions for a while. Though administrators might get hot under the collar about this to most staff it would be a minor nuisance (or a welcome holiday).
Seeing the importance of the point they are trying to make I am rather in favour of what those students are doing.
HA, WHAT WOULD THE WHITE ROSE STUDENTS SAY?
Modern American culture would not be like it is now if we had not wiped out nearly all of the area's native inhabitants. Would you try to justify that similarly? That's how American history books went for a long time and would have been reflected in Wikipedia had it existed back then. The winners write history books, and the winners are pretty much always the most successful thugs.
The argument that it's "temporary" is no excuse. If I occupy part of your house and "temporarily" disrupt its functions, that's still thuggery.
NYU is a private university.
-"Modern American culture would not be like it is now if we had not wiped out nearly all of the area's native inhabitants."
I see that you are given to hyperbole, as was also clear from your previous post. The 'student revolution' had no real victims in that sense and in fact in France the students were not even 'winners' because the government was not overthrown (a thing they were aiming at) and electorally gaullism came back stronger than ever in the subsequent election. The change in mentality was almost a byproduct of their activity. I remember one slogan of those days: "soyez raisonnable – demandez l'impossible'. Because they were aiming at the impossible they achieved what was possible (and welcome).
."Belligerent occupation is governed by The Hague Regulations of 1907, as well as by the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, and the customary laws of belligerent occupation. Security Council Resolution 1322 (2000), paragraph 3 continued: "Calls upon Israel, the occupying Power, to abide scrupulously by its legal obligations and its responsibilities under the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in a Time of War of 12 August 1949;…" Again, the Security Council vote was 14 to 0, becoming obligatory international law."
Posted by: Arie Brand | February 20, 2009 at 11:22 PM
Israel is "abiding scrupulously by its legal obligations and its responsibilities under the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in a Time of War of 12 August 1949;…"
in the Golan heights. The other areas of your concern are not covered by the fourth Geneva Convention as the group seeking to exercise sovereignty are not sovereign themselves. And that is International law.
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