Malena Galletto, the daughter of immigrants from Argentina, was accepted at 28 colleges, including all eight Ivy League colleges. Malena attended the Bronx High School of Science, one of the city’s most selective high schools, where she had a 97% average. Malena is the first in her family to attend college.
Malena has decided to go to Harvard.
When you hear Donald Trump rant about immigrants, accuse them of horrible criminal behavior, think of Malena.
It is 7 p.m. on March 28th, 2024. Malena Galletto ’24 sat in her dad’s car on their way to a family friend’s house for a long weekend. In the back seat, Galletto sat with her laptop opened to the eight college portals that released their decisions. Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, and University of Pennsylvania.
Having received an encouraging letter from Columbia a few weeks prior, Galletto opened the Columbia decision first. She rejoiced at her first acceptance of the day. She then opened Dartmouth, followed by Brown and Cornell, and eventually Harvard, Yale, University of Pennsylvania, and Princeton. By the end of the night, Malena had gotten into all eight ivies.
In total, Galletto applied to 28 colleges in the United States, hopeful that she would get into at least one of them. She was accepted to all 28 universities that she applied to. Galletto is an Argentinian-American who grew up in Washington Heights, and she embraces her Latin culture. Growing up, she was strongly immersed in the Tango community.
Galletto: “My mom loves dancing. I spent so much time watching her and her friends Tango, that dancing is just a part of me. I think that I probably learned to Tango before I learned to walk.”
Galletto’s culture is one of the most important things for her. Galletto believes that preserving Argentinian culture through celebrating the traditional dance of Tango is crucial for keeping it alive and thriving. Growing up in Washington Heights in Manhattan, Galletto had a first hand account of how the pandemic negatively impacted the Tango community. Due to social distancing, cultural activities and showcases were canceled, giving a devastating blow to the whole community.
Galletto: “Despite these challenges, over the past couple of years, we have been focused on ensuring that Argentinian cultural heritage remains active. Efforts to keep the community engaged have been paramount, as we are continuing to find innovative ways to connect and celebrate our traditions, despite the restrictions. This includes everything from increasing our outreach to hosting virtual concerts. As I was preparing for college applications, this commitment to cultural preservation was a significant part of my application, since it is such a big part of who I am and my story.”
Throughout her fight for preserving her culture and maintaining her passions for education, Galletto recognizes her mom as her biggest cheerleader and motivation.
Despite being the valedictorian of her high school, Galletto’s mother did not get the opportunity to attend college.
Galletto: “My mom was the valedictorian of her high school, and she has always emphasized the importance of education. She believes that education opens up a world of opportunities, and she has always pushed me to prioritize my education. This has been crucial for me, as I have been looking to strike the perfect balance for maintaining my grades and also to continue fighting for what I believe in.”
Galletto: “Being first-generation and of low-income, navigating the complexities of college was daunting. I did not have the generational wisdom passed down by parents who attended college, so not understanding the process felt a little like stumbling in the dark. However, the process was made a lot less challenging thanks to the generosity of the Bronx Science Foundation. Their abundance of resources helped me decipher the intricacies of the applications, financial aid, and campus life. For someone like me, the first person in my family to attend college, those resources were not just helpful — they were transformative. They empowered me to chase my dreams despite the odds stacked against me.”
The Boston Globe reported on Harvard’s decision to ban mandatory diversity statements. In recent years, many universities required applicants to the faculty to write a statement demonstrating their fealty to diversity, equity and inclusion. One of Harvard’s most prominent African-American professors—Randall Kennedy of the Harvard Law School—wrote an opinion piece in the campus newspaper opposing the requirement as a breach of academic freedom. Other universities, including MIT and the University of North Carolina, have already dropped the diversity pledge, likening it to a loyalty oath.
Less than five years ago, Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences followed a trend that was then sweeping across American higher education. It instituted a requirement that professors who wished to work at Harvard submit an essay explaining how they would advance “diversity, inclusion, and belonging” in their work.
On Monday, the university’s largest division announced it had reversed course, eliminating the requirement after receiving “feedback from numerous faculty members” who were concerned about the mandatory statements.
A seemingly routine part of academic hiring, diversity statements have become the focus of intense scrutiny as universities grapple with the question of whether well-intentioned efforts to diversify the elite ranks of American institutions have sometimes collided with other core values of academia.
“By requiring academics to profess — and flaunt — faith in DEI, the proliferation of diversity statements poses a profound challenge to academic freedom,” Randall Kennedy, a scholar of race and civil rights at Harvard Law School, wrote in an April op-ed in the Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper.
That essay was widely read in academic circles. It was also cited approvingly in a recent Washington Post editorial that criticized mandatory diversity statements and praised the recent decision by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to ban their use…
In an announcement Monday, dean of faculty affairs Nina Zipser, said that going forward candidates for tenure-track positions would be required to provide a more broadly focused “service statement,” instead of a statement focused specifically on “diversity, inclusion, and belonging.” A service statement could include a candidate’s efforts to promote diversity and inclusion, but is not required to focus on those topics….
Ryan Enos, a Harvard political scientist and director of the Center for American Political Studies, said he generally pays little attention to diversity statements when vetting candidates. “You got the impression that they reflected more about candidates knowing the right things to say rather than an actual commitment to improving the department on diversity and other matters,” he said.
Of course, critics of the decision complained that universities were backing down from their commitment to diversity due to political harassment by rightwing politicians who object to diversity. But where values are deeply embedded, they are unlikely to disappear.
After months of heated controversy over the war in Gaza, Harvard University has adopted a policy of “institutional neutrality,” asserting that the core function of the university is to protect free speech and debate and to advance learning, not to take sides. Other universities are considering following Harvard’s lead.
I personally think that this is the proper path for institutions of higher education. They should be places where debates about public policy may occur without intimidation by students or wealthy donors.
After months of controversies tied to the Israel-Hamas war, Harvard University said Tuesday that its administration would no longer issue official statements about public matters that “do not directly affect the university’s core function.”
The school made the announcement more than a month after an Institutional Voice Working Group was established to consider the matter. It come as conversations around the country debate whether to issue public statements on divisive issues of the day.
“The integrity and credibility of the institution are compromised when the university speaks officially on matters outside its institutional area of expertise,” the working group said in a report, which was accepted by Harvard’s administration….
Harvard was engulfed last fall in controversies over what to say about the Israel-Hamas war. A growing chorus of professors and administrators proposed a simple solution: silence.
At Harvard and other universities, momentum has been building for “institutional neutrality,” the principle that university leaders should refrain from taking positions on weighty social and political matters. That idea was, until recently, a fairly obscure concept debated within the academy.
Butafter the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel plunged many American universities into turmoil, and thrust their leaders into debates over an intractable conflict,schools from Cambridge to California are considering adopting institutional neutrality as a matter of official policy.
Interim Harvard president Alan Garber assembled the working group to study the matter. Columbia’s University Senate recently adopted institutional neutrality in a unanimous vote. Faculty groupsat the University of Pennsylvaniaand Yale University are pushing their leaders to do the same.
Proponents argue that adopting neutrality will make universities more governable and protect their mission of fostering open inquiry. Universities, they say, should be forums for debates, not participants in them. But critics say the idea of a neutral university is a chimera. Endowments invest in fossil fuel stocks and some schools accept donations from representatives of autocratic regimes. Neutrality, critics say, is a way to deflect scrutiny and avoid taking morally correct but inconvenient stands…
However, in its report, the Harvard working group said that “the university is not a neutral institution.”
“It values open inquiry, expertise, and diverse points of view, for these are the means through which it pursues truth,” read the report. “The policy of speaking officially only on matters directly related to the university’s core function, not beyond, serves those values.”
Speaking at a private fundraising event, Donald Trump said that he would put a quick end to campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza. When Trump was president, he moved the American Embassy to Jerusalem, which previous presidents refused to do and took other actions that endeared him to Prime Minister Netanyahu, like canceling the multinational Iran nuclear deal, which Israel opposed. Netanyahu called Trump “the best friend Israel has ever had in the White House.”
Former president Donald Trump promised to crush pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses, telling a roomful of donors — a group that he joked included “98 percent of my Jewish friends” — that he would expel student demonstrators from the United States, according to participants in the roundtable event with him in New York.
“One thing I do is, any student that protests, I throw them out of the country. You know, there are a lot of foreign students. As soon as they hear that, they’re going to behave,” Trump said on May 14, according to donors at the event.
When one of the donors complained that many of the students and professors protesting on campuses could one day hold positions of power in the United States, Trump called the demonstrators part of a “radical revolution” that he vowed to defeat. He praised the New York Police Department for clearing the campus at Columbia University and said other cities needed to follow suit, saying “it has to be stopped now.”
From the beginning of the pro-Palestinian campus protests, I have objected to the students’ one-sided support of one side—Hamas. Their chant of “from the river to the sea” implicitly endorses Hamas’ demand to eliminate the state of Israel and to “Islamicize” all the land that includes Israel. With a better knowledge of history, the students would have condemned Hamas’ terrorism and Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, who has launched a campaign of intimidation and terror against the civilian population of Gaza, who have been victims of not only mass bombing but famine.
The Washington Post reported that the campus protests have failed to win the support of the American public. Perhaps they remember 9/11 or the USS Cole or any number of other terrorist attacks where the victims were Americans.
Multiple polls in recent weeks have shown relatively little sympathy for the protesters or approval of their actions. And notably, large numbers of Americans have attached the “antisemitic” label to them.
The most recent data on this come in the form of a striking poll in New York, a hotbed of the protests at Columbia University, in particular. The Siena College poll shows residents even of that blue-leaning state — Democrats tend to sympathize more with the Palestinian cause — agreed 70 percent to 22 percent that the protests “went too far, and I support the police being called in to shut them down.”
Public sentiment has encouraged Republicans to politicize the issue by harassing university presidents for their failure to close down the student protests. There is something richly ironic about the new-found Republican interest in anti-Semitism. If they really cared about Jew-hatred, they would ask Trump to testify about his relationships to known anti-Semites and neo-Nazis.
But no. Their audiences want to see them pillory the presidents of elite universities, to please their base. The most aggressive of the questioners, Rep. Elise Stefanik, is a graduate of Harvard University. Her low tactics are a disgrace to her university.
Yesterday, members of Congress, mostly Republicans, harangued three university presidents for ignoring anti-Semitism displayed by campus protestors who support Palestinians, and in some cases, the terrorist group Hamas.
Three university leaders were accused on Thursday, during a congressional hearing, of turning a blind eye to antisemitism on their campuses, while capitulating to “pro-Hamas” and “pro-terror” student groups.
During more than three hours of grueling questioning, Northwestern University President Michael Schill, Rutgers University Jonathan Holloway and UCLA Chancellor Gene Block were often bullied and taunted by members of the House Committee on Education & the Workforce for not cracking down more forcefully on anti-Israel protesters who had set up unauthorized encampments on their campuses.
“Each of you should be ashamed of your decisions that allowed antisemitic encampments to endanger Jewish students,” said Chairwoman Virginia Foxx, a Republican from North Carolina.
Schill and Holloway bore the brunt of the wrath of the Republican-controlled committee for also cutting deals with the protesters rather than calling in police to clear the encampments. Seven Jewish members of a committee tasked with fighting antisemitism at Northwestern resigned in protest at the concessions made by their university president to the protesters.
Neither university agreed to an academic boycott of Israel, but they promised to hold discussions in the future on the possibility of divesting from companies with ties to Israel. As part of its agreement, Northwestern also promised to take in students from Gaza displaced by the war, while Rutgers agreed to form a partnership with Birzeit University in the West Bank.
“I think your performance here has been very embarrassing to your school,” U.S. Representative Jim Banks, a Republican from Indiana, told Schill after the president of Northwestern refused to answer questions about a journalism professor at his university who had participated in the protests and scuffled with police.
When asked by Banks whether he allows professors at Northwestern to praise Hamas, Schill, who is Jewish, responded: “They have all the rights of free speech.”
Banks retorted: “Four billion dollars have gone to your university. We should not give you another taxpayers’ dollar for the joke your university has become.”
Elise Stefanik, the Republican congresswoman from New York, was especially hostile, accusing Schill of “unilateral capitulation to the pro-Hamas, anti-Israel, antisemitic encampment.“
When he tried to clarify a point, Stefanik – who has been fashioning herself as a leading voice against the pro-Palestinian student protests – cut him off. “I’m asking the questions here,” she said angrily.
When asked by Stefanik if it was true that he had asked the director of the Hillel chapter at Northwestern whether it was possible to hire an ant-Zionist rabbi as university chaplain, Schill responded emphatically that he had never made such an inquiry.
“That’s not true according to the whistleblowers who’ve come forth to this committee,” retorted Stefanik.
Holloway was interrogated by Congressman Bob Good, a Republican from Virginia, about a think tank at Rutgers that has referred to Israel’s government as genocidal, among other anti-Israel statements it has issued in recent months. When asked, Holloway said he had no intention of closing down this Center for Security, Race and Rights.
Holloway: “Sir, I don’t have an opinion about Israel in terms of that phrase.”
Good: “You do not have an opinion as to whether or not Israel’s government is genocidal?”
Holloway: “No, sir. I think Israel has a right to exist and protect itself.”
Good: “Do you think Israel’s government is genocidal?”
Holloway: “I think Israel has a right to exist and protect itself, sir.”
Good: “But you will not say that Israel’s government is not genocidal? You can’t say that?”
Holloway: “Sir, I believe the government . . . “
Good: “Are you in a position to answer any questions? Do you have an opinion on anything?
Later on in the hearing, Holloway was given a second chance to address the question, phrased somewhat differently. When asked by Congressman Eric Burlison, a Republican from Missouri, whether they believed Israel was genocidal, all three university leaders responded that they did not.
Pro-Palestinian protesters at UC Berkeley took down all but a few tents on a central campus plaza Tuesday, in an agreement that appears to end for now one of the largest and longest student encampments in the country as Chancellor Carol Christ said she would consider demands for the university to divest from weapons companies. Christ said that the university would examine complaints of discrimination against Palestinians and others in academic partnerships and that she supported examining Berkeley’s investments in firms involved in the weapons manufacturing, mass incarceration and surveillance industries. But the university will not support divestment or academic boycotts aimed at Israel.
Anand Giridharadas is a brilliant writer and thinker who blogs at The Ink. In this post, he interviews Michael Roth, the President of Wesleyan College in Connecticut, who describes how he has handled student protests without calling in the police or trampling on free speech rights. Just days ago, Roth wrote an article in The New York Times advising that the best college choice is one where you don’t fit in; go outside your comfort zone. Be a nonconformist.
Anand writes:
In recent weeks, the wave of antiwar protest that began at Columbia University spread across the country, as did the backlash against it.
What is right here? Should universities crack down on students who disrupt campus life, even if their cause is just? Are there steps student groups could take to more clearly separate their movements from elements of antisemitism? Can the rest of society muster enough historical memory and thick enough skin to remember that students are often telling us something that we need to hear, even if we don’t want to?
One university leader has been grappling with these questions in an especially thoughtful way, in part because, in addition to running a university, he is a scholar of universities and of education. That grounding shows. Under Michael Roth, Wesleyan University has cut a different path from many campuses, by clearly and calmly reiterating students’ right to protest peacefully, as Roth did in this letter:
The students there know that they are in violation of university rules and seem willing to accept the consequences. The protest has been non-violent and has not disrupted normal campus operations. As long as it continues in this way, the University will not attempt to clear the encampment.
At the same time, Roth has been clear about the importance of keeping people’s focus on the underlying war, not elite campuses; on the very real problem of antisemitic elements in and around the protests; and about the need to sustain campuses as places where students and teachers and others expect a mix of safety and challenge.
We caught up with Roth the other day for a conversation you won’t want to miss if you’ve been following not only the war but the fight over the war and are craving, as we have been, more light and less heat.
A request for those who haven’t yet joined us: The interviews and essays that we share here take research and editing and much more. We work hard, and we are eager to bring on more writers, more voices. But we need your help to keep this going. Join us today to support the kind of independent media you want to exist.
And today we’re offering new paying subscribers a special discount of 20 percent. You will lock in this lower price forever if you join us now!
Your statement of Wesleyan’s position on the continuing protests is notable for its simple recognition of the rights and responsibilities of all parties.
Can you talk about the decisions that went into your statement and why such statements have been so rare?
I am happy to talk about my statement, but I really want to emphasize that we need to turn more political energy toward demanding that the U.S. force a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, a return of the hostages, and, then, negotiations toward a sustainable peace.
As for protests at Wesleyan University: We could have immediately closed down the encampment because the protesters hadn’t gotten advance permission for tents, or because they were writing messages on the adjacent buildings in chalk. But in the context of national protest movements, it seemed wrong to me to use “time and place restrictions” other schools have cited as reasons for shutting down protests.
Over the last week, I’ve gotten many notes from alumni, parents, and strangers chastising me for not making the protesters “pay a price” for breaking the rules.
So why haven’t I made them feel those consequences? Cops don’t always give people tickets for going a few miles over the speed limit. Context matters, whatever Congresswoman Elise Stefanik says.
In this case, I knew the students were part of a broad protest movement, and protest movements often put a strain on an institution’s rules. They are meant to do that. The encampment was “non-violent and has not disrupted normal campus operations,” I wrote, and “as long as it continues in this way, the University will not attempt to clear the encampment.” I added that we would “not tolerate intimidation or harassment of students, staff, or faculty,” and that the protesters, as far as I could tell, were not moving in those directions. I want to emphasize that this can change and that if the protesters choose to more seriously disrupt our work as an educational institution, they will face much more significant repercussions.
Last Tuesday we saw two very different conclusions to major campus protests; at Columbia, the administration — claiming it had “no choice” — called in the NYPD, made multiple arrests and cleared the Hamilton Hall occupation and lawn encampment. (Yale, UCLA, and others did similarly.) Reportedly, Columbia has arranged for the NYPD to remain on campus through the conclusion of the term on May 17. On the other hand, student protestors at Brown finally reached an agreement with the Corporation of Brown University to dismantle their encampment in exchange for a vote on divestment from firms connected to the Israeli military campaign. Admittedly, I am asking you to speculate, but can you think through what the process behind these different decisions might have been?
At Columbia, the combination of outside participants, intimidating antisemitic chants, and — most importantly — the destructive occupation of a building necessitated a much stronger response than has been necessary elsewhere. Administrators seemed to judge that the university couldn’t safely continue to operate. If that was the case — and I know there remain significant disputes about the facts — the protesters had to be cleared, and the penalties on offenders, I suspect, will be severe.
At UCLA, early indications are that police allowed counter-protesters to engage in violence. At other schools, students and administrators have been able to decide to do something positive for the situation in Gaza without engaging in empty but symbolically satisfying gestures. Divestment is a distraction. There is little indication that it has the desired effects, even in the long run. Gazans need a ceasefire and massive humanitarian aid now.
I’m curious as to how your scholarly work might have informed your thinking on this. Several of your books speak pretty directly to what’s happening (I think in particular of Beyond the University, Safe Enough Spaces,andThe Student: A Short History). How does your work as a theorist of liberal education figure into your response to these protests?
All my scholarship is animated by a pragmatist approach, which means that I have a general suspicion of abstract principles and a commitment to working through problems so as to be in a better position to pursue one’s most important goals. My work before these education books was heavily influenced by Hegelian and Freudian models of thinking: an expectation that conflict is necessary for any important change and that unconscious motivations are always in play in crises. To put it simply: I expect conflict, and I expect acting out.
I believe that liberal education in America is always connected to civic engagement. We want our students to learn how to be better citizens while they come to understand the ideas and the contexts of whatever field they study. In Safe Enough Spaces, I argue that civic preparedness (to use Danielle Allen’s term) develops when students value free speech and political participation in contexts that prohibit violence and intimidation. Students don’t need to be protected from offensiveness, but they do need to be educated in situations in which they learn to think for themselves in the company of others. That’s what I call “practicing freedom.”
That’s why ideally we can make crisis moments like ours educational for the students. This does not mean we pander to them. On the contrary, they learn from teachers who resist their popular but dumb ideas, and who help students understand better how to pursue meaningful objectives over time.
The House Education Committee has now called three more university presidents — for the first time, three men, and two of them leading public universities: Peter Salovey, president of Yale University; Gene Block, chancellor of the University of California at Los Angeles; and Santa Ono, president of the University of Michigan.
It seems quite clear that the committee’s animus towards the elite universities isn’t actually about the threat of antisemitism, protecting free-speech rights, or even ensuring student safety. What do you think the goal actually is for Foxx, Stefanik, and the other Republican members?
Despite my many years working on Freud and psychoanalysis, I don’t understand the deep motivations behind people who on some days cozy up to Replacement Theory and Christian Nationalism and on other days paint themselves as anti-antisemites.
For over a century, one has said that antisemitism is the socialism of fools. Today, anti-antisemitism has become the conservatism of knaves.
The political motivations of extreme right politicians are clear: they are riding the anti-elites train, the wave of rejecting people with expertise and credentials. By attacking so-called cultural elites, the extreme right avoids talking about economic elites. It distracts people with real grievances from the profound issues of inequality that plague this country. Rather than deal with child poverty, the so-called conservatives attack Ivy Leaguers; rather than force billionaires to pay their fair share of taxes, they turn our attention to protesters on campus.
Some news coverage has described university actions against protesters as driven by these Congressional hearings. Is that the case? What about donors or boards? Are you feeling any such pressure?
No.
What do you make of the charge that the protesters are antisemitic? Do you have a sense that there are actual connections among opposition to Israeli military action, anti-Zionism, and antisemitism? Or are we seeing a toxic mixture of bad-faith political entrepreneurship and angry, less-than-fully-informed student groups?
Of course, one can be anti-Zionist and not be antisemitic. It is clear that many Jewish students have joined the protests and that one can be very much opposed to the politics of Israel’s government (I am) and not be antisemitic (I am not).
I also think it’s pretty obvious that some of the protesters use antisemitic tropes, and that some of them don’t consider it possible for a Jew to be an innocent civilian. Hamas, which some protesters applaud, is viciously antisemitic. It considers the rape of Jewish women and the killing of Jewish babies not just tactics of war but an occasion for ecstatic rejoicing. It doesn’t get more antisemitic than that.
I remain appalled (but, alas, no longer shocked) that many protesters don’t seem to be concerned about their association with this terrorist organization. They don’t care. Although only a small minority of protesters might be overtly antisemitic, it is far too easy for many to accept Jewish deaths as the price for someone to be free.
This doesn’t have to be explicit for it to be hateful, especially from people who not long ago were concerned with microaggressions against other groups. Antisemitism enables far too many to accept the cheapening of Jewish life; it’s classic scapegoating. This is a very old story on the right, and also for more than fifty years among people who want to be thought of as progressive. If Israel changed its ways, would these people still be antisemitic? Yes. The thrill of being part of a movement trumps their basic moral sense.
Speaking of Trump, of course this will help him. If his people were smart enough to instigate the protests to divide the left and to whip up anger at kids on campus, they couldn’t have done a better job. My hope is that the civic preparedness that may be enhanced by young folks’ involvement in this movement will energize them to protect democracy in the fall.
What are the protesters’ specific demands at Wesleyan? What’s your sense of their actual overall motivations?
Also, what do you make of the common media framing of the protesters as “pro-Palestinian” versus counterprotestors who are “pro-Israel?” If we’re making the 1968 comparison, why not “antiwar” instead, since in a practical context they are mainly pushing for a ceasefire at this point?
The demands at Wesleyan resemble the BDS demands of some years ago. Very little to do with Gaza in particular; the demands have to do with isolating Israel economically and culturally. I would hope that students will turn their attention to having an impact on U.S. foreign policy and not the “cancellation” of a complicated country with a complex history.
As for being antiwar, I wish there was more of that idealism across the country. I prefer that good old naivete to what one hears from many in today’s movement. Many in today’s movement seem to think war (violence) is justified as long as you are “on the right side of history,” which today for them means the “anti-colonial” side. This is insipid, lazy thinking, and it leads to some of the self-righteous, close-minded rhetoric of people who in other moods might be defending free speech, democracy, and the development of the rule of law. It also leads to the same vicious moral callousness that the U.S. displayed in, say, Iraq and that Israel displays today in Gaza. People who had “God on their side” have done lots of damage, as will people who think they have “history on their side” today.
One thing I’ve been wondering is whether everyone is making a mistake by thinking of this movement in light of 1968. Is there built-in hyperbole here — on the left, seeing a protest movement as a looming problem for the Democratic convention, as a threat to a second Biden term; on the right, the useful specter of 60s-style counterculture opposition — that works against peaceful resolution of the conflict, regardless of how the students might see themselves? I don’t see as much media comparison to the actions against apartheid of the 1980s, which seems more useful (and in many cases then, university administrators either ignored or came to terms with the student movement).
Some of the opposition to the students is based on procedures. They are in the wrong space at the wrong time. Other opposition is based on the clear indications from many protesters that Israel should not exist as a state. These protesters have yet to opine as far as I know about the legitimacy of other states in the region.
Yes, I think the protests are a problem for politics in the fall unless young people take the political energies they’ve experienced and turn those energies toward building coalitions at home to win the next round of elections and to pass legislation that might facilitate the creation of a more just and peaceful world.
But at a time when we should be putting our full attention on getting a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, we are instead talking about fancy college campuses. At some schools, protesters seem more interested in investment policies or in campus disruption than in doing anything meaningful for Gazans. The media finds it easier to cover Columbia than Rafah. Let’s instead pay attention to the right things: We need a ceasefire and a return of the hostages now, and we need to get aid to Gaza.
But the main point of his article is that the students protesting against Israel and calling Biden “Genocide Joe” are helping to elect Trump.
Trump will be far harsher towards student protestors than Biden and far closer to Netanyahu. Trump promises to use the National Guard to crack down on student protestors and to ban Muslims from entering the U.S.
He wrote that Trump:
….said he would change the law to reverse “a bias against White” people: “I think there is a definite anti-White feeling in this country and that can’t be allowed.” He walked away from his previous support for a Palestinian state, saying “I’m not sure a two-state solution anymore is going to work.” And he said he wouldn’t hesitate to use the National Guard against pro-Palestinian protesters while also leaving open the possibility of using the broader U.S. military against them.
Those last Trump positions — the restoration of white power, the rejection of a Palestinian homeland, the willingness to mobilize troops against peaceful demonstrators — show how deeply misguided those on the far left are as they protest Biden’s policies on Gaza. Their frustration with the president’s support for Israel is understandable. But in making Biden the enemy, including with chants of “Genocide Joe,” the plans to trash the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and the proliferation of vows of the “uncommitted” never to vote for Biden, they are in effect working to elect Trump. This isn’t principled protest; it’s nihilism.
They are working to help return to office an authoritarian who just last week said the neo-Nazi violence in Charlottesville was “like a peanut compared to the riots and the anti-Israel protests that are happening all over our country.” In recent months, Trump said Israel should be allowed to “finish the job” in Gaza and boasted about cutting off aid to Palestinians. And he has vowed, if elected, to reimpose his travel ban on predominantly Muslim countries and “expand it even further.”
For those student protesters too young to remember, this is the guy who led the anti-Muslim “birther” campaign against President Barack Obama; who claimed thousands of Muslims in New Jersey cheered the 9/11 terrorist attacks; who said “Islam hates us” and employed several anti-Muslim bigots in his administration; who wanted to have police surveillance of U.S. mosques; who called for a “complete and total shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”; who retweeted anti-Muslim propaganda videos by a white supremacist; and who told figures such as Palestinian American Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Somali American Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) to “go back” to the “totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”
So it’s entirely consistent that, in Wisconsin on Wednesday, he said that he’s “restoring the travel ban, suspending refugee admissions and keeping terrorists the hell out of our country.” He went on: “We’ve seen what happened when Europe opened their doors to jihad. Look at Paris, Look at London. They’re no longer recognizable.” Trump, on Hannity’s show this week, called the demonstrators at Columbia “paid agitators” and “brainwashed.” At his Wisconsin rally, he condemned the “raging lunatics and Hamas sympathizers at Columbia and other colleges.” He called for authorities to “vanquish the radicals,” many of whom “come from foreign countries.”
None of this should be surprising, either, for this is the same guy who called thousands of National Guard troops to Washington and federal police to Oregon to combat racial-justice demonstrators after the George Floyd killing; who held a Bible-wielding photo op in Lafayette Square after authorities cleared a peaceful demonstration with tear gas; who, according to his own former defense secretary, suggested to military leaders that they shoot demonstrators; who calls the free press the “enemy of the American people”; who defended the “very fine people” among the Nazis in Charlottesville and who called those convicted of attacking the Capitol “hostages.”
Yet the pro-Palestinian activists, through their actions, would return the author of this ugliness to the White House. They must have been doing for the last eight years what Trump has been doing in court the last three weeks: napping.
Columbia University emerged as the national epicenter of student (and faculty) protests against Israel in its war against Hamas. William McGurney of the Wall Street Journal reported on a notable contradiction:
Meet the surprising president-elect of the student body of the School of General Studies, one of Columbia University’s four undergraduate colleges. Her name is Maya Platek. She is a proud Israeli who once worked for the Israel Defense Forces spokesperson’s unit.
Anyone watching the goings-on at the university’s Morningside Heights campus these past two weeks might easily mistake Columbia for a wholly owned subsidiary of Hamas Inc. Ms. Platek’s election throws a wrench into the protester narratives. It signals that at least some at Columbia want students to be able to walk the campus without harassment—and life to get back to normal.
“I am always willing to listen,” Ms. Platek says, “but also very good at speaking up when I think something’s wrong.”
She isn’t shy either. Ms. Platek is a member of Students Supporting Israel, a national organization whose mission is “to be a clear and confident pro-Israel voice on college campuses.” It also aims for something Columbia plainly needs: “to reassure students who oppose the demonization of the State of Israel on campus that they are not alone.”
This isn’t Ms. Platek’s first rodeo. In October, she posted a petition onChange.org seeking to remove Joseph Massad, a Columbia professor who teaches modern Arab politics and intellectual history. She directed attention to his Oct. 8 article for an online publication called the Electronic Intifada celebrating the “stunning victory” against Israel the day before.
Mr. Massad is still there, a melancholy fact several congressmen brought up during Columbia President Nemat Shafik’s grilling two weeks ago before the House Education Committee. But Ms. Platek’s petition fleshed out what people mean when they complain that Columbia tolerates antisemitism.
In a speech captured on video a few months back, Ms. Platek spoke about Columbia students and faculty who “manipulate history in order to demonize” Jews. She made clear she isn’t intimidated.
“They choose to advocate for our removal off of this campus over our nationality,’’ Ms. Platek said. “That is discrimination. They choose to regurgitate Nazi Germany’s talking points. They choose to argue that they are righteous to advocate for our death. Wake up!”
In most of America, her objections wouldn’t be controversial. At Columbia they are bracing. They are also a refreshing counterweight to the crowds chanting “Globalize the intifada!” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”
Two imminent threats to higher education are bloated bureaucracies and clever chatbots. Herewith, I humbly propose a straightforward way to solve both problems.
I will use Pomona College, where I have taught for decades, as a specific example of how easily my proposal might be implemented. In 1990, Pomona had 1,487 students, 180 tenured and tenure-track professors, and 56 administrators — deans, associate deans, assistant deans and the like, not counting clerical staff, cleaners and so on. As of 2022, the most recent year for which I have data, the number of students had increased 17 percent, to 1,740, while the number of professors had fallen to 175. The number of administrators had increased to 310, an average of 7.93 new administrators per year. Even for a college as rich as Pomona, this insatiable demand for administrators will eventually cause a budget squeeze. Happily, there is a simple solution.
Pomona’s professor-administrator ratio has plummeted from 3.21 to 0.56. A linear extrapolation of this trend gives a professor-administrator ratio of zero within this decade. This trend can be accelerated by not replacing retiring or departing professors and by offering generous incentives for voluntary departures. To maintain its current 9.94 student-faculty ratio, the college need only admit fewer students each year as the size of its faculty withers away. A notable side effect would be a boost in Pomona’s U.S. News & World Report rankings as its admissions rate approaches zero.
And just like that, the college would be rid of two nuisances at once. Administrators could do what administrators do — hold meetings, codify rules, debate policy, give and attend workshops, and organize social events — without having to deal with whiny students and grumpy professors.
The college could continue to be called a college, since the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines “college” as “an institution offering instruction usually in a professional, vocational, or technical field.” There would just be a shift in focus from young students looking to delay entering the job market to administrators looking to build their résumés as they move up the administrator ladder.
Colleges do not need traditional students or professors. In fact, these are generally a drain on resources in that student revenue does not cover faculty salaries. The elimination of professors and students would greatly improve most colleges’ financial position.
In general, administrators are paid for by a college or university’s endowment. As of December, Pomona’s endowment was $2.8 billion. The annual payout from its endowment is set at between 4.5 and 5.5 percent of the average value of the endowment over the preceding five years. A 5 percent payout would provide each of 310 administrators an annual allotment of $450,000, which would easily provide generous compensation, a wide variety of benefits, and frequent travel to conferences and workshops worldwide.
There would continue to be some expenses for clerical staff, cleaners and so on, but renting out the now-empty dormitory apartments and selling the now-empty classrooms to private businesses and government agencies would almost certainly not only cover these expenses but also add to the endowment and allow the hiring of additional administrators.
The college might slightly modify its mission statement, which currently begins: “Throughout its history, Pomona College has educated students of exceptional promise.” An updated mission statement might begin: “Pomona College is dedicated to sustaining and advancing the careers of administrators of exceptional promise.”
Obviously, each institution of higher learning would use its own endowment, properties and other assets to determine the equilibrium number of administrators that could be supported.
If all colleges and universities follow my suggestion, there will be a small problem in that college students will no longer have colleges to go to. This is easily resolved by tapping the second existential threat to higher education — ChatGPT and other chatbots. All higher-education courses could be done online via bots with no need for expensive classrooms, dorm rooms and other physical facilities.
Instead of paying college costs currently approaching $100,000 a year, students could earn their degrees conveniently and inexpensively from the comfort of their own homes. Moreover, they would be given access to bots that they can use to take tests and write any essays required by the instructor bots. The students’ test answers would no doubt be perfect, and their essays would be persuasive and error-free, which would allow all students to be given A grades without having to disrupt their lives by attending classes, listening to lectures or reading. Win-win.
College and universities would be places for administrators to advance their careers. Education would be student bots interacting with instructor bots.
Everything will be for the best in this best of all possible worlds.
Diane Ravitch's blog 