23

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "USC and Columbia Protests" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. Threads about protests on college campuses, especially Columbia, have been rampant over the past several days. As anyone who has paid attention to the news will know, Columbia University's President was called before Congress where she was castigated for not doing enough about demonstrations. She returned to the college and asked the New York Police Department to arrest student demonstrators who had camped out on campus. The original poster of this thread criticized the arrests saying that things were "going to end badly". The original poster also criticized the decision by the president of the University of Southern California to cancel the graduation speech scheduled to be delivered by valedictorian Asna Tabassum, a Muslim woman, due to unspecified security threats. The original poster concluded, "These high level administrators seem completely clueless and out of touch with their student bodies." Many of the responses in the thread described incidents at other universities in which students were punished for demonstrating against the Israeli devastation of Gaza and the US complicity in what the students describe as "genocide". The situation at Columbia, in particular, has deteriorated rapidly since this thread has started. Unfortunately, there has been considerable misinformation spread, much of it showing up in this thread. Based on first-hand reporting, the student demonstrations on campus have been peaceful and, far from being anti-Semitic as some claim, actually include many Jewish students. However, outside campus, groups not associated with the University have gathered and have frequently been very aggressive toward visibly Jewish students and have engaged in anti-Semitic rhetoric. Opponents of the demonstrators have attempted to treat both groups as one, suggesting that the peaceful student groups are committing the activities of those outside campus. In addition, the thread contains a significant amount of scolding by those who do not think the students should be protesting and who accuse the students of being uninformed and naive. Many posters warn, sometime suggesting hope on their part, that the students are endangering their future job prospects. The situation on campuses and the opposition to demonstrators on the part of many DCUM posters reminds me of something Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail". King wrote: