Bernhardt isn’t the only noodle-spined, terrorism-enabling fool running an American college or university right now, but he’s as good a representative as any. I’m familiar with Emerson (most people weren’t before its students started demonstrating for more Jew killing as if there hadn’t too much of that already) because it resides in my old stomping ground of Boston, and my aunt Bea, 97-years-old and still as progressive as they come, graduated from there.
Over 100 Emerson students were arrested in downtown Boston’s Boylston Place alleyway in an early morning confrontation with Boston police last week. The students were illegally participating in an encampment protest by the student organization Students for Justice in Palestine. They also fought with police as the cops tried to do their jobs. But in his letter of three days ago, Emerson College President Jay Bernhardt said that he will urge the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office to drop all charges. Four Boston police officers were injured during the confrontation, one seriously. Never mind, though. These are only adults who can vote, buy liquor and and otherwise have full privileges of citizenship, and they violated the law in support of terrorists. Their hearts were in the right place. They meant well. Anybody can make a mistake. For a full list of the inexcusable rationalizations being used to let these idiots escape accountability for their ignorant, illegal and violent actions, see here, at the Ethics Alarms Rationalizations List. I’m guessing at least 40 of them apply, maybe more.
Bernhardt is really something, the equivalent of an alter-ego of a superhero we might call Superweenie. In addition to announcing that there would be no discipline taken against students who have embarrassed the school while committing felonies, Bernhardt said the college will provide housing for any students who are required to stay in the city for court appearances after their dorms close. (Over at Columbia, the illegal protester occupants of Hamilton Hall, in addition to demanding “amnesty,” want the university to supply them with food and water. If Bernhardt was in charge over there, he’d probably do it.)
In his fatuous letter, he called his embrace of a no accountability policy (my description, not his, but mine is accurate) “initial steps toward healing and growth.” The growth he refers to is properly the cancerous metastasizing of a privileged class of Marxists and anti-Semites opposed to core American values, the rule of law, and the right of the state of Israel to exist.
More standard academic weenie-speak from Bernhardt: “The College has done its best to keep all community members safe every day during these challenging times, but we recognize that we must do more,” Bernhardt wrote. “Our leadership team is committed to redoubling our efforts, engaging and respecting all voices across our community, and actively listening and learning how to move forward together.”
Ramalama-dingdong!
“It takes immense bravery to speak out and act in support of a cause,” Emerson’s president added. “As an institution, the College may not take positions on global conflicts, but our overarching goal is for Emerson to be unyielding in our support for our students’ education and their ability to find and express their voices.”
Ridiculous. These aren’t “challenging times,” except that students maleducated by colleges like Emerson (Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Cornell, MIT, USC, UCLA, Northeastern, Northwestern, and on, and on…) have made them challenging by deciding to ensure that the October 7 Hamas terrorism raid have exactly the results it was designed to have. All voices should not be respected in an institution of higher learning, not those who traffic in lies, false equivalencies and distorted history, and certainly not those who interfere with the education of fellow students.
It takes no bravery at all to engage in illegal and damaging protests when one is confident that those actions, even when they involve breaking laws, will be excused by administrators terrified of upsetting the fellow residents of their woke bubble. The arrested Emerson students have officially protested to the Boston news media regarding newspapers publishing photographs of their faces, complaining that this essentially doxxes them and might adversely affect their future career success.
Awww!
Good!
Finally, Bernhardt is estopped from claiming that his school’s objective is education. If Emerson was devoted to education as it should be, part of its educational duties in advancing “students’ education and their ability to find and express their voices” required teaching them basic life competencies, like “Don’t just follow the crowd because everybody’s doing it,” “Don’t fight with police,” “Know what you’re talking about before you protest anything,” and “Don’t shout ‘Kill the Jews!” or similar sentiments, like “From the river to the sea…’ If Emerson was devoted to education as it should be, it would have instructed students regarding the origins of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and how the Palestinians made their own bed of pain over decades of bad choices and violent conduct, culminating in the consequences of a war their elected representatives started.
[Note: the WordPress bot thinks this post is about Sarah Bernhardt!]
Ethics Alarms 
Why aren’t these people beomg charged as dangerous paramilitary groups? They are organized and are obviously trained. They are giving commands that result in the group taking specific action (this requires training). They also are engaged in violent activity. Oh, I forgot. Selective prosecution.
Right. They’re not as superbly organized as, say, the cretins at the Capitol…
They are lucky the Democrats weren’t able to get the Preventing Private Paramilitary Act passed this year. If they had, these groups could have been charged under the act. Now, they wouldn’t, because the act was specifically stated to target the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, with no mention of Antifa. However, the act allowed private civil action for anyone harmed by the action of the group. All the students who had their classes or graduations cancelled could sue. Anyone prevented from using campus grounds could sue. Anyone who was targeted by them could sue.
Because, for the past 50-plus-years, college protests have been romanticized by the news media and the entertainment industry as harmless, victimless, youthful idealism and portrays any crackdown on them as the equivalent of Kent State.
I never realized how much of the counterculture “wisdom” I absorbed growing up watching ’70s and ’80s TV until recently. The snide jokes about Nixon, the politically-liberal parents who remained unreconstructed hippies underneath their bourgeois exteriors, the conservative caricatures and the many happy endings that came about because the character chose the Left answer instead of the Right one.
We’ve been conditioned to consider the youth wise beyond their years in every way except taking responsibility for their actions. At that point, they are infantilized.
Anyone who uses the term “community” is up to no good.
Hmmmmm….
2021- “Emerson College investigates, suspends conservative student group for stickers criticizing China’s government”
Just 3 years ago they seemed to sing a completely different tune about hearing and allowing students to express their voices
And no one is surprised. The same thing can be found for every single university having protests right now. The double standard is the gold standard for the left.
This is the president of Columbia’s letter to her school after the NYPD finally took action.
“Dear members of the Columbia community,
Early Tuesday morning, tensions on our campus rose to new heights when a small group of protestors broke into Hamilton Hall, barricaded themselves inside, and occupied it throughout the day. This drastic escalation of many months of protest activity pushed the University to the brink, creating a disruptive environment for everyone and raising safety risks to an intolerable level.
I know I speak for many members of our community in saying that this turn of events has filled me with deep sadness. I am sorry we reached this point.
Over the last few months, we have been patient in tolerating unauthorized demonstrations, including the encampment. Our academic leaders spent eight days engaging over long hours in serious dialogue in good faith with protest representatives. I thank them for their tireless effort. The University offered to consider new proposals on divestment and shareholder activism, to review access to our dual degree programs and global centers, to reaffirm our commitment to free speech, and to launch educational and health programs in Gaza and the West Bank. Some other universities have achieved agreement on similar proposals. Our efforts to find a solution went into Tuesday evening, but regrettably, we were unable to come to resolution.
Because my first responsibility is safety, with the support of the University’s Trustees, I made the decision to ask the New York City Police Department to intervene to end the occupation of Hamilton Hall and dismantle the main encampment along with a new, smaller encampment. These actions were completed Tuesday night, and I thank the NYPD for their incredible professionalism and support.
I also want to thank all of the many people, including faculty, staff, and especially our public safety officers and facilities workers, for their tireless efforts on behalf of Columbia and to support our students through this difficult period.
Columbia has a long and proud tradition of protest and activism on many important issues such as the Vietnam War, civil rights, and the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. Today’s protesters are also fighting for an important cause, for the rights of Palestinians and against the humanitarian tragedy in Gaza. They have many supporters in our community and have a right to express their views and engage in peaceful protest.
But students and outside activists breaking Hamilton Hall doors, mistreating our Public Safety officers and maintenance staff, and damaging property are acts of destruction, not political speech. Many students have also felt uncomfortable and unwelcome because of the disruption and antisemitic comments made by some individuals, especially in the protests that have persistently mobilized outside our gates.
It is going to take time to heal, but I know we can do that together. I hope that we can use the weeks ahead to restore calm, allow students to complete their academic work, and honor their achievements at Commencement. We also must continue with urgency our ongoing dialogue on the important issues that have been raised in recent months, especially the balance between free speech and discrimination and the role of a university in contributing to better outcomes in the Middle East. Both are topics where I hope Columbia can lead the way in new thinking that will make us the epicenter, not just of protests, but of solutions to the world’s problems.”
Sincerely,
Minouche Shafik
President, Columbia University in the City of New York
Soooooo…what’s missing? There’s not a single mention of consequences for these actions. Nowhere does she say that the students that went too far will be dealt with under the appropriate disciplinary procedures (although in keeping with university policy she won’t publicly get into specific cases) and she leaves the outside activists for the civil authorities to deal with, with the university’s full cooperation. There’s definitely no mention of restitution.
There’s also no mention of the fact that anti-Semitism is as much a form of bigotry and racism as any other form, and, as such, it has no place in a university devoted to being a marketplace of ideas.
There’s no mention of justified anger here, only “sadness.” This isn’t something to get sad about. It’s something to get angry and disgusted with. The university expects better of those chosen to attend this elite institution.
What also seems to have gotten lost in all of this is that Columbia is a university with four undergraduate schools and 16 graduate programs. People don’t just go there to discuss ideas or express anger. They go there to become engineers, teachers, lawyers, doctors, and a bunch of other specialized professionals that it actually requires discipline to become. Its primary purpose is to be an institution of learning, not to be a venue for angry privileged young people trying to ride the latest social justice wave to ride it, any more than Palm Springs is a venue for drunk young people to destroy.
This isn’t about healing, except maybe for the people who’ve been made to suffer as a result of these idiotic actions. It’s shameful that the university even considered any of these people’s proposals. The only response to this kind of action should have been something a la the Riot Act:
“Our sovereign lord the King chargeth and commandeth all persons, being assembled, immediately to disperse themselves, and peaceably to depart to their habitations, or to their lawful business, upon the pains contained in the act made in the first year of King George, for preventing tumults and riotous assemblies. God save the King.”
maybe
“The president of this institution by this announcement instructs all individuals here assembled to immediately to disperse and return to their housing or academic business if associated with the university, or to leave the campus if not. Failure to do so will result in arrest and appropriate disciplinary, legal, or other proceedings.”
It still doesn’t quite resonate with me why American students, pursuing degrees at an American university, should want to insert themselves into a conflict that does not involve their nation, and definitely does not involve the university or them. It’s not like they are going to change anything and it’s not like it’s really even their business. What’s between Israel and Hamas is between them and them only until it spills over into other nations’ business. What is more, what is all that admirable about a quasi-nation that puts a terrorist group in charge, then follows them into an assault on another nation that targets civilians and involves atrocities from jump? I think there is nothing that is admirable, but I also think this is the end result of years of social justice education that warps people into thinking what’s conventionally good is bad and what’s conventionally bad is good.
Bingo, and Comment of the Day. Well done, Steve.
Thanks.
Why wouldn’t they want to insert themselves into such a cause? They have been raised to be radicals who protest for ‘the oppressed’. Most of them are white Americans, and they have found that they are not that welcome in the BLM crowd. They can’t normally protest against colonizers, since they are probably being bankrolled by wealthy white people with property. They can join the transgender crowd, but only as an ‘ally’ in most cases. For this situation, however, there aren’t many ‘Palestinians’ at the college, so to have protests, the protesters can be anyone. Now, they have a cause where they can be the moral superiors because their leftist professors said so. They get to shout down anyone and everyone they want to without anyone pointing out their own ‘privilege’. It is perfect. Moral superiority without any need to knowledge or sacrifice or effort beyond throwing a tantrum. In addition, they get excused from their classes and probably finals for their righteous ‘protesting’. They get to have the ultimate ‘Junior high school student council sanctioning Russia’ moment here and they get to denounce the United States and colonizers. They get to obtain the mantle of the oppressed and the liberal ideal of the white savior of brown people. I don’t see why this is difficult to understand.
There hasn’t been a masturbatory exercise this blatant since Jeffrey Toobin did that ‘War Games’ exercise.
Jack Dorsey, who ran Twitter until, thank God , Musk bought it, just endorsed a tweet reading “Iraq war protesters were smeared & hated in the moment. Same with Vietnam war protesters. Today anybody with a functioning brain realizes they were 100% correct & the conventional wisdom was dead wrong. The fact that people don’t see this is exactly what’s happening now is astonishing.” i don’t have time to make an impact on “X,” but I had to respond to Dempsey: “Wow. What an astoundingly ignorant and illogical, historically bats analogy.’
These are the people that apathy and laziness have permitted to gain power. I hope its not too late to get rid of them.
The reason these people are rooting for Hamas is they are engaged in the great anti-American, anti-democracy, anti-capitalism and anti-Western culture project, which project has been going on since the end of World War Two, led by the academy. They literally want to deconstruct society. They’re nuts, but they are determined and ruthless.
Jack Dorsey…
Northwestern just promised scholarships for Palestinians, faculty positions for Palestinians, and scholarships for Muslim students. I believe the second one, at least, is illegal. Anyway, laws are for little people and this will get the protesters to stop beating up students.
The Biden administration (so called) is admitting Palestinian REFUGEES!
Why not just let Hamas fighters hide out in the U.S. until things blow over?
Well, in the latest aid package, there was $3.5 billion for that, so you knew it was coming.