My website is dianeravitch.com. I write about two interconnected topics: education and democracy. I am a historian of education.
Diane Ravitch’s Blog by Diane Ravitch is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
As Maine goes, so goes the nation – one hopes.
In the wake of the tragedy in which 18 people lost their lives in Lewiston, Maine, the state has passed new gun laws. #common sense.
https://apnews.com/article/maine-legislature-mass-shooting-gun-control-938ed48aa36cfa3ab364a72556e1abd3
FYI: Very alarming predicament for Brown v Board of Education in these times: https://www.rawstory.com/civil-rights-attorney-legal-action-to-hollow-out-brown-v-board-moves-at-deliberate-spe/
Oh, oh! This one’s a keeper. Señor Dwayne Swacker would especially appreciate these suggestions:
Opinion How to fix college finances? Eliminate faculty, then students.
https://wapo.st/4aOpFUA
Christine, I’m going to use that!
It seems to me this is an important essay. I hope there’s not to much of a paywall.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/06/academic-freedom-under-fire
This is confusing. How were the atrocities of October 7 “a crisis for American higher education?” I don’t recall any demonstrations on campuses in the weeks after October 7. Even now, students and professors are not protesting October 7. They are protesting the death toll and devastation caused by Israel’s military response. Their actions are overwhelmingly pro-Palestinian. If the students wanted to end the violence, they would protest against both Israel and Hamas. If they wanted to advance peace, they would advocate for a two-state solution, not echo terrorists who want to eradicate Israel.
I think, Diane, this is why he refers to the protests and responses to them as “the phenomenon that goes by the shorthand October 7th”. Like much of what we see play out politically, student protests are being manipulated to other ends. Menand sees higher education and academic freedom as that target, in the same way DeSantis has striven to mold Florida’s colleges and faculty to his purposes.
I agree with you that a two state solution is the realistic means to peace; likely the only one.
What turns me off the student protests is that they are dividing people by advocating for Hamas. The only path to peace is negotiation. This requires not only an end to the killing but a commitment to a two-state solution. The protestors can’t get past self-righteousness and condemning genocide. How does that advance peace?
From what I have read, many of the protests have the goal of transparency and divestment from their universities’ endowment in businesses that provide armaments being used – and paid for – by the United States in the war in Gaza. Universities called for similar action during the South Africa apartheid era.
The protests have been peaceful so far, at least until police have been called. I see the GOP making use of the moment to call for “control” of student protestors. For example, Greg Abbott sent in state troopers mounted on horseback at UT Austin. At Emory a female professor was thrown to the ground by officers as she passed by protestors. To me it seems the goal is for those “woke” students and professors to feel the weight of the state.
That elite campuses have been both the scene of protests and of intervention by law enforcement isn’t surprising. Higher education is a target of the right, as we know. Look what happened when Elise Stefanik called university presidents on the carpet: Elizabeth MacGill of Penn and Claudine Gay of Harvard resigned and now she’s targeted Nemat Shafik of Columbia. I read that subtext as women, and especially women of color, should not be running elite institutions.
There’s actually a movement to name Mitt Romney president of Harvard!
Christine,
It’s highly unlikely that the colleges and universities will divest from firms with ties to Israel or the Israeli military. That includes companies like Google and META.
Even if they were to divest, it would not end the war. The only way the war will end is if Hamas and Israel come to an agreement.
How do the pro-Hamas demonstrations bring Hamas and Israel closer to negotiations? If anything, they encourage Hamas to keep fighting because they are winning the war of public opinion.
I don’t disagree that the universities are unlikely to divest, or that perhaps the students are naïve or flat out wrong. I just think that opportunist politicians are using the moment to demonstrate that all these young people are woke, out of control and don’t represent “our” values and neither do their universities. All to gin up the culture wars in advance of elections and to distract from felon Trump’s candidacy.
The student protests are hurting Biden and helping Trump. How many of these young people will not vote? Is it surprising that the usually voluble Trump is silent?
Remember that he wanted to impose a Muslim ban, and he is close to Netanyahu.
You and I are in agreement on this.
Hurting Biden may not have been the intention of student organizers, but count on the right wing to amplify any criticism and use it to undermine him. People like Stefanik are angling towards a post-Trump future.
The WaPo is reporting that Brown will take a vote on divestment. You need to scroll a bit.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/04/30/columbia-university-protests-palestine-news/#link-XGIWVMPOT5BFBFYKUATJNO6DEE
it is disgusting that there is no mention of Oct 7. The tapes of the women. Tied to trees with their legs spread. No mention of the atrocities in that attack. This accusation of genocide applied to what Israel has done,
This is organized mayhem.
Who is behind the Gaza-Israeli protests causing mayhem and chaos on US college/university campuses?
My guess, the Putin-Trump-MAGARINO alliance.
There are about 6,000 colleges in the US serving 15.9 million undergraduates and 3.1 million graduate students.
Less than one million are foreign students, but less than 500 Palestine foreign students attend US colleges.
I know because I fact checked that a day or two ago for a response to misleading BS propoganda pretending to be a question on Quora.
How many of those less than 500 Palestine foreign students in the United States are protesting?
For every palestine student attending a US college, there are 12 colleges.
12 to 1
Chaos agents, Lloyd, is my guess.
But the GOP is chanting for protesting students to be deported.
While many in today’s GOP are willingly ignorant, I think the few at the top that are behind the orchestrated “chanting for protesting students to be deported know the facts/truth. That most of the protestors are probably US citizens, MAGARINOS and/or extremists on the left. Not all liberals believe in the same tropes so most will be peacful.
Eventually, someone will discover that most if not all of the violent protesters are extremists taking advantage of the peaceful protestors to cause violence and chaos while running propoganda campaigns through sites like FOX fake NEWs to blame the peaceful ones.
The violence is staged to make the peaceful protestors look bad.
The same thing happened during some BLM protests. Investigations from reputable sources discovered afterwards that most of the. BLM protesters were peaceful and the violence, damage, and thefts was rare and mostly not by BLM protestors. While this was reported by the media later, it wasn’t promoted as much as the allegations of violence.
Diane you are spot on! It is frustrating to listen to pundits and the media continuously talk of these protests as if they are driven exclusively by anti-semitism. Many of the students are appalled by the violence and military industrial complex that allows such carnage in Gaza. The Tom Cotton’s of the world don’t want resolution, but an opportunity to promote violent retribution and blame.
If you teach high school, you know college admissions are fraught, but this is cray-cray.
No paywall:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/01/opinion/college-admissions-applications.html?smid=url-share
Interesting and topical interview by Mehdi Hasan of Naomi Klein (the good Naomi) on the university protests:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hjt9M1CS9Qs
Not satisfied with putting university presidents in the crosshairs, and lacking any evidence to impeach Joe Biden, the House is now calling on the superintendents of public schools in Berkely, New York City, and Montgomery County, Maryland to testify about their teaching on the war in Gaza. The last thing we need in a democracy is for children to grow up into critical thinkers. We need dupes for the burgeoning autocracy.
Why not just focus on governing? Because they’re bad at it.
No paywall:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/07/us/berkeley-schools-israel-hamas-war.html?unlocked_article_code=1.qE0.LrpD.gIZ-u2w1fDrT&smid=url-share
The House or a committee controlled by a majority of Traitor Trump ditto bobbing heads like Marjorie Taylor Greene?
Those superintendents should ignore those House MAGA cult members behind this dumber than dumb stupidity.
Bobbing-yes head MAGA House members take their marching orders from Traitor Trump, who is a well know micromanager.
His way is the only way or he throws them under a tank.
If the traitor didn’t think this crap up, he approved it as another attempt to keep the chaos churning.
What the MAGA chaos cult is doing is throwing chaos idea on the wall to see what sticks.
It’s the ghost of Joe McCarthy, whose chief counsel was Trump’s Roy Cohn.
Are you a current NYCDOE Teacher of Adolescents (grades 6-12)?
Participants needed for a study to learn more about the perceptions and experiences of New York City teachers in the present COVID-19 endemic era. Please see below (all interviews will take place via Zoom).
https://nyu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9ZbfIOOOnjzH2gC