Chapo Trap House - Bonus: Inside Higher Ed

Episode Date: May 10, 2024

We’re joined by a former university administrator (who prefers to remain anonymous, though we have reviewed and verified their credentials) for an insider’s perspective of the current state of college administration, and a discussion of just why colleges and universities around the country are reacting with such extreme opposition and often violence to the ongoing pro-Palestinian protests. Topics include increasingly corporate university structure, internal bias against certain perspectives and student organizing, and the foreign influence over university operations.

Joining me now to sort of give you a view behind the veil of university administration is a former university administrator who has worked at, how shall I put this, two of the universities that you have seen in the news over the past week. He's going to remain anonymous for this interview, but I think his perspective on how these universities are run and really what accounts for this really disproportionate crackdown on student speech and protest over the last couple weeks will be edifying to you. So first of all, thank you for talking to us. Absolutely, it's a pleasure to be here. So first of all, like, I mean, like, what can you tell us about the roles that you did at the universities in question? OK, so the two universities in question, I served as a communications director for those universities, highest offices.

As a communications director, I mean, these universities are pretty big, so I wouldn't be the only communications director. There are several. My communications role was specifically executive communications. So what that means is that I was responsible for both the internal and external communications generated by the top executives at that administration, whether it be the president, provost, vice presidents. So really people at the highest level of the administration, like the pretty much the top of the pyramid. So those are my roles. Well, you mentioned sort of the structure of these universities,

these colleges as sort of institutions. And like lost in the discussion, I think, in the media coverage of this is just sort of an understanding of like how these institutions are governed and like the actual internal structure that governs these universities, like the president versus the provost, the board of trustees. What can you tell us about like what's missing from perspective about like how these how these university administrations are actually function and run and are and are constructed? Yeah, I think it really is a valuable thing to just take a minute or two

to give our overview of university admin structure, because for so many people, you know, the public, the media, even the campus populations, that these structures can really seem disdainting. And if you're approaching them, especially from the media from the outside, you might not know who's in charge of what, who do you go for, for information or confirmation about certain things. So, okay, so let's just take, if you have a large university, what you're going to have is a president of the university at the very top. And that president is essentially the CEO of the university.

They act as the face of the university. They direct the vision of the university. They direct the finances of the university. They'll have a hand in marketing. And they're going to also be the person making decisions about government relations and investments. And so these are the figures that you're really really seeing the media a lot right now being asked about the climate and the situation of the campus. Just below that person, you'll have a provost. Now the provost is the person who will handle all the academics of the school,

like the actual functioning of the classes and degree certification. They're the person who's gonna interface with the faculty and the students the most. And then below that, what you'll have is vice presidents of different areas of the school. So you'll have a vice president, say of communications, of faculty relations, student relations, and so on.

And then if you have a larger school, such as say Columbia, what you have is a university that's made up of individual schools. So there's this Columbia School of Journalism, there's Barnard, there's Teachers College, and so on. Each of those schools will have their own mini replication of what the larger structure is. So they'll have their own president, provost, communications teams, and so on. Something like another university in the news right now is CUNY. And CUNY is really unique system to take a look at because they are not one college, they're a college system, they're a university system.

So it's 25 individual colleges throughout New York's five boroughs that are beholden to a central office that makes the big decisions about the whole system. So it's almost like a federal versus state system of government. So it's kind of like the way the CUNY system is run. So when you see in the news right now CCNY, which is CUNY's original university, that's just one college that makes up an entire 25 school system. I myself am an alum of the CUNY Grad Center. Never graduated, but did attend. And what can you say about the role?

We've heard a lot about the board of trustees. What role did they fill in like the life of a university and particularly in the pressure exerted on a university in terms of policy? OK, so this is a very important thing to understand. The president and the provost of these universities are not making their decisions independently. The ultimate decision about the direction of the school, the creation of new academic programs, the phasing out of other academic programs,

big faculty decisions such as tenure, investments that the school is going to make, those are all those big decisions are made by board of trustees. So when you think about it, you imagine, okay, so these are institutions of higher education, so the board of trustees must be largely populated of higher education, so the board of trustees must be largely populated by individuals who have a background in education or pedagogy. That is actually really not true. The individuals that make up the trustees, the trustees are very often strategic political appointments and they come from an array of industries. you know for example... Columbia's board of trustees. Contains at least one trustee who is currently an exact...

Lockheed Martin. That's a Jay Johnson he is on the board of directors at... Lockheed Martin. So you know so that's one. That's one guy if you take a't say CUNY's board of trustees, you're going to find a lot of real estate people, you're going to find people that come from Wall Street, Silicon Valley. There's even PR mogul there who was associated with Harvey Weinstein for a while. This is all very publicly-facing too. I think if you Google CUNY board Harvey Weinstein, you'll see how this individual trustee connects there. CUNY students and faculty were always very locally in opposition to that.

But these are just examples to show that the board of trustees are not people who understand higher education, like are the ins and outs of what happens in the classroom or what students' needs are pedagogically. They are political appointments. They're put there because they're advantageous to the school in terms of, I would say, investment, investment in the school from private entities. What money can they bring in? What money can the board members bring in?

Actually, I would say there's a major job qualification of board of trustees. Candidates is basically, okay, we have an opening on the board. Who can we bring in that's going to bring in private money, private funding for the university? That's a big job qualification there. In the case of something like CUNY, which is a state and city run school, trustees are very often appointed, it's all very subtle, but I would say appointed by Albany. So whatever Albany's interests are at the time, you know, might be reflected in their appointments that they suggest for board. So yeah, this is all to say that, you know, the ultimate direction of school rests with this board. we're seeing a lot of these boards, these trustees are exerting a great deal of pressure. And I think like that

that may explain, you know, the these universities outsized reaction to student protests. What can you tell us about why you chose to leave your most recent job as an administrator at one of these universities? You know, in another lifetime, I was a I was a writer. And, you know, very difficult to keep a roof over your head when you're a writer. I think a lot of people would, it wouldn't be a big surprise to a lot of people. So when I was able to enter the communications world of higher ed, I found work that was fulfilling in that, you know, I was working with some of the most powerful people

in New York State, in New York City, to really help craft messaging to connect with not just the campus community, but the community, the New York community overall. This was very meaningful work for me. I knew that there was going to always be a political give and take for me because my politics are always going to be very much the left or whatever. I've been one and I was always able to negotiate that. If you're a communications professional at a university, a lot of times you're just having long conversations about, okay, what are we going to write for our holiday message this year? Is it going to be a season's greetings or like happy holidays or whatever? And you're

just like, whatever the admin wants, you're going to do whatever. But October 7th really, or the reaction on October 7th really changed things for me. I could no longer toe the party line of the university administration. And that party line was to minimize or deprioritize the Palestinian perspective and Palestinian suffering. More than that, in a more direct way that I had experienced every day, was the minimization and the dismissal or even I would say the vilifying of our student body and our faculty who were anti-genocide. There's always so much I could do with that. I couldn't wake up every day and just keep doing it. I do want to say this, like when you work in a communications office and during a time like this, you're experiencing real banality of

evil vibes. You know, it's like, I don't think anybody is waking up with malicious intent to tow the party line that is, you know, essentially pro-genocide. But you know, you're trying to compartmentalize as much as you can, just get through the day, you know, clock in, get a paycheck, and then go home and decompress. What I found is that I could not do that in perpetuity. I'm just not that kind of guy. So I really thought it was time to get out. And the reason I decided to start talking more publicly about my experiences is because witnessing the absolutely brutal crackdown on student protesters juxtaposed with the images of yet another mass grave being on earth in Palestine just has completely incensed me and really has made me really,

I don't know how else to say this, deeply troubled and disturbed by the direction that my former employers, these universities are going, especially in their interaction with their own student populations. Now, you mentioned the brutal crackdown that occurred this week at campuses all over the country, but here in New York City at CCNY and Columbia, hundreds of arrests made, hundreds and hundreds of fully, fully tacked out NYPD officers raiding Hamilton Hall, raiding the CCNY campus, which is, you know, a public university that whose gates are normally open. It's like, you know, CCNY, there's an avenue that just runs across it.

It's part of New York City. But I guess from like, from someone who has an outsider's perspective, who hasn't like, you know, peered beyond the veil of these universities and how they're really run, one might be struck by how completely absurd and nonsensical and counterproductive the response by inviting the NYPD in, having these mass arrests.

It would seem from my perspective that were this an example of any other form of organized student protests not having to do with Israel even if they were protesting a war that the United States was more directly like the Iraq War or our anti-apartheid protests that took place in the 80s even from a cynical university administrators perspective Wouldn't the game plan normally be the typical kind of your scene your herd Acknowledgements some symbolic concessions and negotiations, but basically just letting them do their thing and doing like, you know, just like symbolic

concessions and then like basically not doing what Columbia and other universities have done. So from your perspective, what accounts for how wildly sort of, I don't know, out of out of place the like the disproportionate police and university crackdown on these protests? Like where does that come from? and what accounts for this disparity, as I said, as compared to other examples of university protests? Okay, so this is very important to understand, especially in the case of a large Ivy League like Columbia. How can I put this? When students protest demanding that their university divests from any corporation or any company connected to Israel, that's one thing. But here's the thing with Columbia. Columbia is the company.

You know, Columbia is not is not a typical university, right? Columbia is actually the largest real estate entity in New York City. They have major real estate and construction deals, not just locally but abroad and including Israel. We're talking about massive amounts of money that are coming into Columbia and directed by the Board of Trustees. What you're doing is when you're protesting against Columbia, you're not asking them to take a moral stand against the genocide.

You're also asking them to dissolve and rethink their entire business model. I mean, and so the people running these types of these universities, what you're asking them to do is absolutely inconceivable. And they see you as somebody who is just impossible to reason with. They see you as the person who is living outside of reality. And so that's why this is not what I think the public imagines how a university would react. People see these as bodies of higher education.

They're not. They are massive money-making machines. In Columbia's case, that is their real estate. And so you really are telling them to, again, just dissolve their entire business model. It would be like protesting McDonald's and telling them, you know, stop making hamburgers right now. Right. Not the person, the people running

McDonald's just just laugh at you. Right. And if you didn't go away, they would think that you're nuts. And so I think that's that is one of the reasons the crackdown is so brutal from these universities. I mean, like even even like taking in that perspective of that, like these protests directly put the economic model and like the money making operation that undergirds these billion,

billion, multi-billion dollar endowments, even if these protests to divest from, you know, corporations or firms that are directly profiting from Israel's ongoing genocide or war in Gaza. That's one thing but like what accounts for like the insane police crackdown and just like which has had the exact opposite effect on sort of silencing or containing the growing calls for universities to divest and and do you think that in so much as that it also touches not on their economic relationships but also the deep ideological connections between the people who run these universities and the state of Israel. Okay.

So the people who run these universities, again, I said they're motivated by whatever the business model is, but that's undergirded by a fealty to American imperialism. There's no other way to put it. So these have long, you know, institutions of higher education in this country have long been the purveyors of the status quo. So I think right now you're looking at what like a perfect storm of them having to reckon with their business model, having to reckon with the fact that the American imperialist project is in its dying days. And there's tons of surveillance equipment and there's tons of weaponry available to use

to counter protesters. So they're just gonna use that. I would say that this doesn't just come out of the ether. This has been brewing for a couple of decades now on college campuses. And it really has come from Israeli, I mean, I don't know if I can put it, Israeli influence on higher ed over the last couple of decades that has grown exponentially. So, you know, going back to the business model of these schools, public universities, for example, are constantly susceptible to budget cuts from the state or city in which they're situated. A lot of those funding is made up

by private donors, individual donors, private corporations. Over the last couple of decades, you know, more of those donors happen to be Zionists. More of those donations happen to come from organizations that are backed or financially backed by Israel, right? So there is an infiltration of the culture and climate of these universities to be going on for a couple decades. No, I was going to say to speak to an example of just what they're getting for their money. I was wondering if I could draw your attention to a report that I saw just yesterday and this morning

In the gray zone by Wyatt Reed and Max Blumenthal The piece is about how a professor at Columbia University named Rebecca wiener Is also moonlights as the intelligence director of the nypd I'm just going to read from this article real briefly During a may 1st press conference just just hours after the New York City Police Department arrested nearly 300 people on university grounds, Adams, Mayor Eric Adams, praised adjunct Columbia professor Rebecca Weiner, who moonlights as the head of the NYPD Counterterrorism Bureau, for giving the green light to clear out anti-genocide students by force.

She was the one monitoring the situation, Adams explained, adding that the crackdown was carried out after she was able to, her team was able to conduct an investigation. Again, from the outside looking in, you might be dumbfounded to discover that there is an adjunct Columbia professor who is also the head of the NYPD Counterterrorism Bureau. How does something like make this make sense to me? I mean, I look, I'm glad you asked the question because, you know, these are things I would ask myself every day on the way to work at work on the way home from work. So people need to understand what universities in 2024 in the US are. They are not they are not bodies of higher education, exclusively anyway. Again, they are businesses that are pumping tons of money into the hands of a small contingent

of people. And part of the way that you insure profits is that you maintain the status quo. And one of the ways you maintain the status quo is to establish this very porous relationship between law enforcement and the university, between the military and the university. And in the case of these schools, establishing a very porous relationship with the government of Israel, right? I think a lot of things, an important thing to understand is that, there are a lot of Israeli students and faculty in the US and because Israel has universal conscription,

that means that a lot of these faculty and students either are, have been or will be members of the IDF. On an individual basis, it's probably fine. you know, on an individual basis, it's probably fine, right? You know, everybody's, you know, nobody's trying to cause any trouble. But when you just pull out, I cannot imagine any other foreign government having that type of porous relationship

with higher education. And so basically to answer your question, like there has to be a maintenance of the status quo and one of the ways you maintain the status quo, the continuous relationships with the IDF, continuous relationships with law enforcement, because now they have a foothold in the school and they can direct the culture and they can act as intelligence gatherers essentially for those law enforcement bodies or foreign militaries and so on. It's just, it sounds like crazy conspiracy theory, but it's not. It's just what's happening. Now, in terms of directing the culture of these

universities and the students and faculty that attend them. I mean, like in terms of that function of, you know, enforcing a discipline. What can you tell us about your experiences at these universities as it regards to how sort of groups that are funded either directly or indirectly by Israel seek to kind of play up or really manufacture incidents of quote, campus anti-Semitism? Like, how would you as an administrator be brought to like sort of, you know, be forced to reckon with or call into account these, you know, reported incidences of anti-Semitism on campus?

Right. So I think it's important to understand about how universities define or choose not to define anti-Semitism and what the genesis of those definitions are, right? So I'll just give you an example. When I started at one of the universities where I was working, I was told pretty much from day one that as a communications professional, one of the priorities that I was working, I was told pretty much from day one that as a communications professional, you know, one of the priorities that I was going to have to undertake is finding ways to, for our messaging, to address and combat anti-Semitism on campus. I was told that at this particular university that it had become essentially a cauldron of anti-Semitism. Now, this was very alarming to me

because I take anti-Semitism very seriously. I think that it is a real danger, it needs to be snuffed out and it needs to be addressed. But the thing was that the more I investigated to find out what were these incidents of anti-Semitism, who was being harmed, what were these incidents of anti-Semitism, who was being harmed, what were the reports. I wasn't finding anything concrete or even anecdotal.

So I thought if this was a, you know, I was doing something wrong. I thought like, Jesus Christ, am I this naive that I can't see all this anti-Semitism all around me? I grew up in a big city. I've lived in New York for 20 years. My closest friends are Jewish. My mentor is Jewish. What is wrong that I cannot see or sense anti-Semitism?

And so I really sought out the counsel of Jewish colleagues, of Jewish students, and even they couldn't point me to anything concrete. When I finally met, I met with a particular member of our DEI office, and what she told me was she just ran down the list of what was unofficially considered antisemitism at this university. And so these were things that really surprised me, right? So these were things such as a student or faculty member

mentioned the word Palestine. A student or faculty member mentioned justice for Palestine or a free Palestine, like slogans like that. But it went beyond slogans or even terminology to actual historical fact. So for example, if a faculty member or student wanted to discuss or present on the Nakba, that was classified as an anti-Semitic incident. If anybody brought up the pure fact

that Israel had referred to itself as a settler colonial state, that was also considered anti-Semitism. So what I found was that the definition was just so broad that even the slightest advocacy for a Palestinian state or Palestinian justice was considered hate speech. And what I also found was that there were on-campus organizations, and I'm not going to name them because some of them are pathologically litigious. So there were on-campus organizations that were essentially rooted in Israel and had chapters. And they had chapters at universities all over the country, even in places where there aren't really many Jewish students or any. And one of the objectives of these organizations is to really

influence and shape what the definition of anti-Semitism on that campus is going to be. So at the one university I worked for, the university was working to adopt an official definition of anti-Semitism, which by the way, I think is a very good idea. I think all universities should do that. So because again, I take anti-Semitism very seriously, but also what it does is it establishes what is and what isn't anti-Semitism. And then from that, you can have a sense of what has to be investigated, what has to be remedied, and so on. At the university I was at, they did a very good thing. They adopted a definition of anti-Semitism

that specifically said that any criticism of Israel was not considered anti-Semitism, that advocacy for Palestinian freedom of rights was not anti-Semitism. So this was a good thing that this university did. However, when I did a peer audit of other universities with other definitions of anti-Semitism, they were much more draconian and much broader. And from what I researched, were very much influenced by these on-campus organizations. So that's, you know, that's a, to me, is a big issue nationwide. It's just how the definition of anti-Semitism has become broader and also more draconian and how it hasn't really happened organically or

through a grassroots movement or even with collaboration with students and faculty in the community. It's coming like a cut and paste from what these on-campus organizations say is anti-Semitism. Now conversely, there are universities that do not have an official definition of anti-Semitism, and I think that is even more problematic because then anti-Semitism can be anything at any time, like whatever the university wants and This is a big issue. I'm seeing in media right now Right now I'm visiting family that are out in the suburbs And you know, you know when they wake up in the morning like their default opinion Is that Israel needs to stop killing Palestinians, right?

Student protesters are on the right side of history or by 11 a.m Palestinians, right? And student protesters are on the right side of the street. But by 11 a.m., after watching nonstop, you know, local news and CNN and the view, Jesus Christ, the view, they by 11 a.m., they're like, Oh, you know, all these kids are anti-Semitic. The problem is that when the media is breathlessly reporting that all this anti-Semitism is happening on all these campuses, they're not actually reporting what that university's definition of anti-Semitism is, right? Or reporting that there is no official definition of anti-Semitism, but this is what, in this moment, the school

is considering anti-Semitism. Which again, could just be somebody flying a Palestinian flag, somebody saying from the River of the Sea. So it's very easy when there's no official definition of anti-Semitism, it's very easy for the universities to tell the media that their schools are hotbeds of anti-Semitism because it can really be anything. I think the point you make about relatives who wake up in the morning and have essentially a human view of the world and are you know, of course, as good liberals against war and ethnic cleansing. But then you watch two or

three hours in the news and you begin to question that. And that goes to how the media basically prioritizes the Israeli point of view and then like any outrage committed upon an Israeli person or a Jewish person as an order of magnitude far more serious or noteworthy or even noticeable than tens of thousands of dead Palestinians. Now, I want to talk about your experience after October 7 and some of the things that led you to leave your most recent job at one of these universities.

Could you give us some examples of how you were told and how the official university policy explicitly told you to prioritize essentially the Israeli point of view as it regards the ongoing war? Right. So, I mean my last job in communications was at a university that had a very diverse population. We had a significant number of both Jewish and Muslim students, students of Arabic descent, some students from Israel as well. So I knew that we were dealing with a situation that had to be absolutely empathetic towards everybody, right? But what I found

within a couple weeks of Israel's violent reaction to October 7th was that in our official communications from our university executives to our campus population, I was instructed to never ever front and center even prioritize the Palestinian perspective. In fact, I was at times, it really came down to vocabulary and line edits. At times I was told Nazis say Palestine in our communications, but to use the word Hamas instead. And so presented as a horrific complicated war between two equally armed militaries. So that was one thing that was

very problematic to me and just completely ahistorical. One of the things that was also problematic to me was that, you know, I was discouraged from engaging with students who wanted to present a Palestinian perspective. I mean, I think as a communications professional, the only way you can be effective is through engaged listening. You have to go out in the community and listen to what people are feeling, what they want, what they need. One of the terms I heard a lot over my last few months in that job

was the term a skewed perspective, right? So anytime a student wrote into us or engaged with us wanting the Palestinian suffering to be prioritized in our communications, I was told to not really give credence to it. It was just a skewed perspective. That was the phrase that got bandied about a lot there, which was also problematic for me.

Another thing that was extremely problematic for me that, you know, we were instructed to breach our own communications protocol in that whenever there was an act of mass violence or serious violence on a college campus throughout the nation, it became an all hands on deck communications moment for us. Because our top leaders were going to have to put out a statement condemning said violence, reinforcing that our campus is different, that your safety is our top priority, and that these are services that you can use if you feel traumatized or

affected by this act of violence that happened on another campus and so on. So basically a message of community care and compassion. So I believe it was back in December is when there was a shootings in Vermont on the Vermont campus of the three Palestinian students that I believe resulted in the death of one, the paralyzation of another. So for me, this was just naturally an on-hands-on-deck moment. I remember getting the news in the early evening and calling my superiors to say, hey, I'm ready to spring into action.

I'm going to assemble my team. We're going to get out a message. And I was told, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. Like, we already mentioned Islamophobia in previous messages, we're not addressing this act of violence. And I negotiated the best I could to try to see what we could do around that, but we never put out a message around that.

As far as I know, since I left, I don't think they ever put out a message addressing that. We also had, you know, we had students who were documented to have been the victims of, we had pro-Palestinian students who were documented to have been the victims of a chemical attack on the campus. It was documented by, it was documented by Public Safety Office. I believe some of the students had documentation from the ER visits they had. And one of the students who was harmed in this incident was at this

was a student at the particular school where I was working. So I just assumed this again was all hands on deck moment. I was told in no uncertain terms to not even touch it. So this is this is yeah, this is an attack on students. And you were like you're not at the university you were working working at not the attack on students at the ones who were shot in Vermont this is an attack on students at the university you were working at and you're saying the administration told you not to mention those or not bring it up or not address it and your capacity as a communications professional I mean

this was really demoralizing to me, right? Because I just saw at this point, if we're not even going to communicate empathetically with our own student body during a really, during a crisis, then what are we doing here? Right? So this was really demoralizing to me. I think that was really the beginning and the end of my time there. You know, so those are just some examples of that. I mean, conversely, and I will say this to be fair, there were some good things the school did. I mean, when the Israeli or the pro-Israel doxing trucks showed up outside our school with the images and

addresses and contact info of different students who were pro-Palestine, the school did, not the university, but the school I was at did condemn that and spring into action to make sure the students had the kind of legal counseling they would need to end that. Interestingly, with that, to go back to the NYPD, when those doxing incidents happened, our Student Affairs Office was instructed to send

the students who were involved, the students who had been doxed, to the local precinct so they can make reports about being doxed. Within 24 hours, the school received a message from that precinct that they would no longer be taking or investigating any reports about dox. I don't know what that is. I mean, make of that what you will. But yeah, to get back to the earlier thing, I was really demoralized that in the incident of our own students' safety being jeopardized, that we weren't

doing enough in terms of communications to address that. And I still feel awful about that. Till this day. I mean, what you're describing to me here, I would describe it as not exactly surprising, but it is still jaw dropping to hear this. I mean, this is this is this is really I mean, this is unspeakable. The just blindness and complicity of these administrators and what they're doing to their own students. Like, I spoke to a Columbia student who was at the Columbia protest.

I believe they have been arrested as of earlier this week. But they were a student whose aunt was killed by the IDF in the West Bank. And like obviously for institutions like universities, they love having a diverse student body that they can advertise publicly about what an inclusive community and an academic environment that it is. But what do you make of like just not just the complete erasure of Palestinian Americans, Palestinian American students, Muslim American students, but just the idea that now that they're being targeted as the straight up enemy, enemies of the state, enemies of the university, like from within, even after

they've been accepted and are presumably paying tuition to go to these universities. Yeah, I think this goes back to what we were talking about earlier. These university administrations are an important pillar in upholding, you know, U.S. imperialism, they just are. I mean, that isn't, I don't even feel like that's me speculating. It's just, it's just what they are. I think that a lot of these people in charge of the administration, running

the administrations, have a really, not just an insular, but really outdated worldview. insular but really outdated worldview. I think they think it's 1989 and Israel can just mass slaughter anyone they want, anytime they want and everyone's just either look the other way or not really have access to information, right? So what we're now looking at student populations that are any of us who have 24-7 access to images of mass graves, right? And so the student reaction is going to be persistent, it's going to be organized, and it's going to be relentless for the common good, I might add. This is baffling, absolutely baffling for the people in charge

because I think their mode of looking at the world is so outdated. They just thought that, you know, again, this is something that's just going to dissipate over a few weeks. It's not a big deal, but it's not happening that way right now. I mean, multiple lines have been crossed by both the US and Israel at this point. And the population, especially the young population, is very well informed on these issues. So the only tool left in their tool belt is, well, I should say this, they have two tools. One tool is, and this is their favorite tool, is civility. So when they see all these students putting together encampments and being really relentless in their professional university, the university deploys their first tool, and that's their

soft power, and that is civility. They try to change the discourse around civility, what's the proper etiquette for protesting. One of the things I'd like to do, I guess, the best way to describe it, I think, would be calling it like nerfing history. Like they go back to the end. Yeah, the endless search for nuance and complexity. Well, yeah, what I'm saying, like nerfing history is like they're going back to volatile historical events and rewriting them as just like civil interaction. So we go back to 1968 and protests and say, you know, those protests were done the right way, right? Everybody met us for like, you know, like tea, and we sat down and talked politely and we had our differences and then we went opposite ways.

And it's like, we actually look at historical fact. It's just it's not what it is, right? It was actually really volatile and chaotic and it should have been. Well, I mean, I've talked about 1968 on an order of magnitude more volatile than anything we saw from the student protesters at least. Right, right, right. And I might, oh, by the way, I might also add with 1968 protests, Columbia gets a lot of credit for being the linchpin for that. But it really began at CCNY, really began at Q. But that's an aside.

So anyway, that's the one tool that these administrations have. They want to deploy this nerfing of history, this call for civility, but they've underestimated how passionate and how dedicated these students are right now. The students right now are absolute queens and kings to me because they are staying on message. They're not engaging in this civility quagmire, not getting the civility quagmire. They're staying on message about why they're out there. So after that tool cannot be used, the only tool left in the tool belt is brute force. And since it's 2024, we have police departments that are armed to the teeth.

So I hear people talking in media, social media, whatever, saying, Oh, I hope National Guard's not deployed. The National Guard is going to be awful. And my response is like, you don't need the National Guard anymore. Like every police department has, you know, we saw the other day, like the bridges that go into buildings. Yeah. The bridge, the bridge tank. Sure. Yeah, they all have bridge tanks. So it's like, why do you need the National Guard? The National Guard might actually, you know, have. They're kitted out with.

They got the last year's shit. They got last year's shit. And they might actually have some like mechanisms for accountability. Right. So whereas, you know, your local police department. I mean, if you're going to compare the national the state National Guard of New York versus the NYPD, which of those two institutions is more thoroughly enthralled to a foreign country? I would choose the National Guard as being the American option.

Right, right. But again, just to answer your question very quickly, the administrations right now really feel like they have two tools. One is to try, is civility, rhetoric around civility, that's not working. So they went to the next tool, and that is brute force. And, you know, brute force in 1968, you know, National Guard, which was bad enough, and also in that cops with batons. Today, brute force means, you know, cops trained by the IDF showing up in literal tanks. So, you know, that's what I'm saying. There's kind of a myopic view of how the situation can be dealt with.

I guess I really want to thank you for sharing your experiences. I think they are immensely clarifying to people wondering why this is happening. Or, you know, maybe like just to just puts a fine point on what's really going on here. But I guess I want to get you out of here with this question. Just for people listening to this, or even probably many people listening to this who are partaking in these protests themselves on campus or elsewhere, but particularly as students of an academic institution, what should they keep in mind from your perspective about what they're doing and just sort of like going forward and just like what this

all pretends in terms of academic freedom and freedom of speech? they're doing and just sort of like going forward and just like where this all what this all pretends in terms of academic freedom and freedom of speech and the student and the student bodies what power they do have to exert influence over these over these administrations. What I would say to students is this very simply you're winning the brutal crackdown as as horrible as it may seem is a sign that you're winning that they got enough. These administrations got nothing else right now. So do not, do not stop and stay absolutely stay on message. Like I said, they're not doing it, but avoiding the temptation to get

into the civility discourse, quagmire, stay on message. Like you've been keep reminding people you're out there because of the mass graves, because of the 50,000 confirmed dead Palestinians, because of the 2 million Palestinians who have been rendered homeless to the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who are now amputees, to the nonstop dispossession and murder of Palestinians in the West Bank, right? Just stay, you're doing a great job. Keep it up. One thing I will say though, just if I could say very quickly to my colleagues and communications offices throughout the country, like my message is this, look, you know, I'm you. I tried to do it, right? I tried to do it every day going in and out, compartmentalize, but we have crossed some major thresholds

right now and if you're on the inside just try your best to push back, try your best to get out there and do more engaged listening with your student population and do not give up on trying to make even some kind of the slightest changes that you can in communications. So that's where I'm at. Thank you so much for your time and your perspective. It's like I said, I found this is very edifying. So really, thank you for sharing your experiences. Like I said, beyond the veil of the university with us.

No, my pleasure, guys. Thanks for watching!