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Category: Education

Columbia University protests and the lessons of ‘Gym Crow’

Columbia University protests and the lessons of ‘Gym Crow’

Judd Legum writes: In the early morning hours of April 30, 1968, then-Columbia University President Grayson Kirk summoned the NYPD to arrest hundreds of student protestors. About 1,000 police officers arrived on campus and, wielding nightsticks, violently arrested about 700 students. Almost 150 protesters ended up in the hospital with lacerations, a few broken bones, and other injuries. The student protesters had occupied several university buildings, forcing the school to suspend classes, in protest of Columbia’s plans to build a…

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Columbia University faces full-blown crisis as rabbi calls for Jewish students to ‘return home’

Columbia University faces full-blown crisis as rabbi calls for Jewish students to ‘return home’

CNN reports: Columbia University is facing a full-blown crisis heading into Passover as a rabbi linked to the Ivy League school urged Jewish students to stay home and tense confrontations on campus sparked condemnation from the White House and New York officials. The atmosphere is so charged that Columbia officials announced students can attend classes and even possibly take exams virtually starting Monday – the first day of Passover, a major Jewish holiday set to begin in the evening. Tensions…

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Columbia University is colluding with the far-right in its attack on students

Columbia University is colluding with the far-right in its attack on students

Moira Donegan writes: The students sat on the ground and sang as police in riot gear approached them. Eventually, more than 100 of them would be arrested; their tents, protest signs and Palestinian flags were gathered into trash bags by the police and thrown away. One video showed officers and university maintenance workers destroying food that had been donated to the encampment, making sure it would be inedible. According to student journalists reporting from WKCR, Columbia University’s student radio station,…

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Inside the Gaza solidarity encampment at Columbia University

Inside the Gaza solidarity encampment at Columbia University

Lara-Nour Walton writes: Around 4 AM on Wednesday, hundreds of Columbia University students set up tents on the East Butler lawn, establishing what they called a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” in protest of the university’s role in helping fund the war in Gaza. The occupation, organized by the Columbia University Apartheid Divest coalition (CUAD), Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), had been planned for months. The encampment was an escalation of previous pro-Palestine actions, designed…

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The terrible costs of a phone-based childhood

The terrible costs of a phone-based childhood

Jonathan Haidt writes: Something went suddenly and horribly wrong for adolescents in the early 2010s. By now you’ve likely seen the statistics: Rates of depression and anxiety in the United States—fairly stable in the 2000s—rose by more than 50 percent in many studies from 2010 to 2019. The suicide rate rose 48 percent for adolescents ages 10 to 19. For girls ages 10 to 14, it rose 131 percent. The problem was not limited to the U.S.: Similar patterns emerged around the same…

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PragerU is a conservative video giant. Here’s why it’s trying to get into schools

PragerU is a conservative video giant. Here’s why it’s trying to get into schools

NPR reports: Despite the suggestive sound of its name, PragerU is not a university. It’s a content creator. The conservative media nonprofit makes short, well-produced videos crafted to appeal to college students and young people. It has polished animations and titles like “What Radical Islam and the Woke Have in Common” and “Is There Really a Climate Emergency?” Recently, news headlines have focused on its PragerU Kids content. Arizona recently became the latest state where education officials have embraced online…

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Harvard students file civil rights complaint over harassment for Palestinian advocacy

Harvard students file civil rights complaint over harassment for Palestinian advocacy

Middle East Eye reports: Students at Harvard University submitted a civil rights complaint against the institution on Monday, claiming that it failed to provide adequate support or protection to students facing harassment due to their Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim identities or for advocating for Palestinian rights. The complaint was filed by the Muslim Legal Fund of America (MLFA) and nearly a dozen students, including Muslim students and others who have reported experiencing harassment for their pro-Palestine stance during protests on…

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Gen Z never learned to read cursive

Gen Z never learned to read cursive

Drew Gilpin Faust writes: It was a good book, the student told the 14 others in the undergraduate seminar I was teaching, and it included a number of excellent illustrations, such as photographs of relevant Civil War manuscripts. But, he continued, those weren’t very helpful to him, because of course he couldn’t read cursive. Had I heard him correctly? Who else can’t read cursive? I asked the class. The answer: about two-thirds. And who can’t write it? Even more. What…

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The real reasons the GOP suddenly pretended to care about Harvard

The real reasons the GOP suddenly pretended to care about Harvard

Will Bunch writes: The true meaning of Claudine Gay’s ouster can be seen in a story that’s gotten zero coverage in the New York Times or the rest of the mainstream media. At Louisiana State University, whose undergraduate enrollment of just under 29,000 is exactly four times that of Harvard, the looming arrival of a new right-wing GOP governor across town in Baton Rouge has sparked a quiet but significant effort to dismantle diversity efforts and kill anti-racism education in…

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The ‘bully’ billionaire who led calls for Claudine Gay’s Harvard exit

The ‘bully’ billionaire who led calls for Claudine Gay’s Harvard exit

The Guardian reports: Chief among the campaigners celebrating the resignation of Claudine Gay as president of Harvard University was a man who arguably did the most to push Gay, Harvard’s first Black president, out the door: Bill Ackman, a billionaire hedge-fund manager and Harvard alumnus. Ackman, who accused Gay of antisemitism and plagiarism, was a major player in what increasingly became a rightwing campaign against the Harvard president – who said many of the attacks against her were “fueled by…

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Powerful donors managed to push out Harvard’s Claudine Gay. But at what cost?

Powerful donors managed to push out Harvard’s Claudine Gay. But at what cost?

Robert Reich writes: [For major donors] to use their influence to force the ouster of these university presidents is an abuse of power. It sets a dangerous precedent of mega-donor intrusion into university life. It endangers the autonomy of America’s universities to determine for themselves how to strike the right balance between freedom of expression and hateful speech. The core problem is that one of the major jobs of today’s university presidents is to solicit money. Even at Harvard, whose…

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For the safety of Jews and Palestinians, stop weaponizing antisemitism

For the safety of Jews and Palestinians, stop weaponizing antisemitism

Bernie Steinberg writes: For eighteen years I had the great privilege of working as Executive Director of Harvard Hillel. As a leader of Jewish communities on campus, in New England, and around the nation, I have helped cultivate a new generation of Jewish leaders and citizens. I navigated moments of tension and war: the tumultuous 1990s, as the Oslo Accords began to crumble; the Second Intifada; 9/11 and its fallout; the Iraq War; Israel’s Second Lebanon War and its war…

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Public Christian schools? Leonard Leo’s allies advance a new cause

Public Christian schools? Leonard Leo’s allies advance a new cause

Politico reports: Groups aligned with the conservative legal movement and its financial architect, Leonard Leo, are working to promote a publicly funded Christian school in Oklahoma, hoping to create a test case to change the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the First Amendment’s separation of church and state. At issue is the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma’s push to create the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, which would be the nation’s first religious school entirely funded by taxpayers. The…

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Tel Aviv high school principal faces suspension for sympathizing with suffering of Gazans

Tel Aviv high school principal faces suspension for sympathizing with suffering of Gazans

Haaretz reports: The Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality on Thursday summoned Yael Ayalon, the principal of the city’s Ironi Yud Daled High School, to a hearing before suspension, after she posted a Haaretz article criticizing the lack of Israeli media coverage of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza on her Facebook page about a week ago. Following Ayalon’s Facebook post, a group of students opened a protest strike on Wednesday which escalated into a physical altercation, during which the head of the school’s…

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Powerful forces are fracking our attention. We can fight back

Powerful forces are fracking our attention. We can fight back

D. Graham Burnett, Alyssa Loh and Peter Schmidt write: The lament is as old as education itself: The students aren’t paying attention. But today, the problem of flighty or fragmented attention has reached truly catastrophic proportions. High school and college teachers overwhelmingly report that students’ capacity for sustained, or deep attention has sharply decreased, significantly impeding the forms of study — reading, looking at art, round-table discussions — once deemed central to the liberal arts. By some measures you are…

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‘It’s affirmative action for the rich.’ Five legacy students confront their privilege

‘It’s affirmative action for the rich.’ Five legacy students confront their privilege

  A lot of people have recently weighed in on legacy admissions, the preferential treatment given to the children of alumni in the college application process: President Biden. Members of Congress. Supreme Court justices. Officials at numerous colleges — some defending the practice, others calling to ditch it. The Education Department even opened a civil rights investigation last month into Harvard University’s legacy admissions policy. But what about the students who have benefited from the practice themselves, and were accepted…

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