Churchill was fired because of his academic work.

True. And if he hadn't been an American citizen, he would have been deported for supporting terrorism.

The university realized they had a terror supporting lunatic in their staff and they did a deep dive (well, just looked at) his work and bounced him. That they didn't technically bounce him for his views is besides the point.

When you select for those views you're also selecting for substandard work in fields affected by those views. Further the U was looking for a reason to fire him because of his views.

The current situation has had the University tolerate this set of terrorism supporters for years. Because Jews. Trump shouldn't need to get involved because the University has had more than enough time to clean house themselves.

Instead we've had their administration testify to Congress that they don't need to clean house and advocating genocide/terrorism is protected speech. So apparently supporting Hamas and arguing that Jews need to put up with terrorism doesn't break any codes of conduct and behavior that would in other situations be illegal should be shielded from the authorities by the administration. Because the First Amendment, and Jews.

My expectation is this example, assuming that op-ed is the limit of her involvement, will be undone by the courts.

CJColucci: There are normal, well-understood ways of dealing with actual threats and forcible obstruction.

Absolutely. However the problem on the table is the people who are responsible for doing those things have failed to do those things.

Both of the following can be true at the same time.

1) Trump is a blunt tool and bully.

2) The University is deliberately ignoring breathtaking levels of antisemitism which would never be tolerated against other groups.

This is similar to the U looking the other way when one of their employees is committing sex crimes (Michigan State). The institution doesn't want to do it's job so the institution needs to be punished as an institution.

If they want that then they need to have police prevent the Protesters from shutting the U down and/or threatening Jews.

At least then when they have discussions on whether advocating for genocide is a good thing, the U will be able to say they're only debating things.

If they don't want politics to matter, then they shouldn't be threatening Jews and insisting that everyone's politics need to match theirs or they'll shut down the University.

There is a vast difference between "a single narrative" and "a crack down on the idea that 'No Israel, No Jews' is acceptable." Advocating for genocide shouldn't be funded by US tax dollars.

I have little respect for "process" arguments because we wouldn't apply them in other situations.

Example: A professor who was openly a white supremist who publicly made an argument for bringing back slavery as a "solution" to various race issues would instantly be fired without the Feds needing to threaten budgets.

We wouldn't have University Presidents claim "it depends" on whether the code of conduct is being broken, nor argue for the first AM and so on. Protesters backing him and his issues would be handled by the police and they wouldn't be allowed to shut down the university much less threaten black students.

All of this would, correctly, be handled by the U calling in the cops if need be to enforce things that are normally illegal.

"Disagreements" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there in the face of published department support for 10-7.

Presumably there is supposed to be a carful review process where we prove someone who openly supports Hamas is unfit to teach ME politics and history. Clearly that hasn't happened.

But this is a process argument where we pretend we don't know what we know. Same with those protests.

Calling for Jews to be killed is deep into antisemitism. That's still true if it's rephrased into "No Israel, No Jews" or any of it's equivalents.

That's in addition to whether protesters have the "right" to shut down various things to force people to respond to their arguments and do other things that are normally illegal.

I think the next question is,

Is Columbia and Trump's crackdown of the pro-Palestinians the ‘Canary in the coalmine' (link at bottom, their answer is "yes") or is it a lot more reasonable?

Some of the claims are concerning; Trump is forcing Columbia's Middle East department to be seriously redone, ergo academic freedom is a problem. However (normally not mentioned) is a prof in this department, one day after 10-7, made posts referring to scenes from the attacks as “awesome” and “stunning” (same link).

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/29/columbia-middle-east-department-trump-edward-said

Really well written and well done. Good work DavidTC.

The behavior of the administration reminds me how we've seen them (not) respond to sex criminals in their staff. Michigan State and that "athletic doctor" for example.

They want to ignore (and/or downgrade) the problem and hope it will go away so they don't have to offend anyone or embarrass the U.

Here's a link which talks about "Trump's war on Columbia University explained"
It does a reasonably good job at bringing together the various things, including some I hadn't known about.

I hadn't realized the "protesters" were that clueless and about half aren't students. I also hadn't realized to what degree the protesters were causing problems (i.e. crossing lines) and the degree to which the University administration beclowned themselves in front of Congress.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9JiRcXob-Q

What a clown show.

I don't see even the slightest connection to George Floyd. All reviews say the movie is a trainwreck.

The only hint of a reprieve is Zegler's singing.

I've seen Zegler's red carpet interview and it's more cringy-woke and dissing-the-original than is normally shown.

To be fair, faict "cringy-woke" was the Disney line at the time. For example none of the finalists for the part of Snow White were White.

I've also seen Zegler openly admit that she's a narcissist (that's since my last post).

Wiki claims that Zegler has supported Palestine since 2021 and that predates her involvement in Snow White by a few months.

That high level producer flying out to talk to Zegler happened. That's amazing when you think about it, apparently a phone call or lesser person wouldn't do (or more likely, didn't work). It's like the CEO flying over to talk to you about your bad behavior.

Narcissists really don't like being told they're wrong, they don't change their behavior, and they don't accept responsibility for their behavior.

I expect Miss Zegler will find it harder to get employment in these expensive shows. Whoever hires her needs to expect her to create lots of personal drama to overshadow the film.

LeeEsq: there is no reason to doubt that Zegler might really believe what she put on social media about Israel or Gal Gadot

Zegler has been accused of being a narcissist and apparently has admitted the same. My ex was too.

Using flame bait to focus attention on herself would be in character. Even (and especially) at the expense of the primary project. People are supposed to be paying attention to her and not her fellow lead actress or even the movie itself.

So she might only believe in "free Palestine" when it's going to create problems and attention. She certainly is not going to listen to other views, either on what's going on in Palestine or even how stunningly inappropriate it is to bring this up on the set or in interviews.

And if she feels she's not the center of attention on her next project she'll find a different way to be toxic.

When we select for people who are thinking emotionally and not dealing with the real world, we're dealing with people who aren't dealing with the real world.

So if you have convinced yourself that Hamas are the good guys, then them torturing (and otherwise being heinous to) their own citizens isn't a thing. It doesn't happen.

North: consists of the Clintons getting entities to contribute more money to charitable causes

If that's what they were doing, then why did the money stream only exist while HRC was either Secretary of State or expected to be President?

The money disappeared the moment she lost. These groups didn't think about "charity" before.

North: no... nefarious benefit to the Clintons ever being demonstrated.

The money was used to give Clinton insiders jobs between political appointments and to create the same sort of influence that a Billionaire gets.

This was not a politician lining their pockets, it was a politician getting the influence of Bill Gates to fund their own interests.

North: ...provable facts...

I've only put down provable facts. I have admitted it was legal, I'm saying it was also obviously and openly corrupt.

Most people don't sweat the fine details. When the Clintons repeatedly and openly do this they figure out the system is fixed.

In many ways Trump is the result of the Clintons. If Blue is fine with HRC selling pardons and collecting Billions from Russia and the Saudis then that's the ethical standard.

Slade: Isn’t Team Red supposed to be an improvement over Team Blue?

If you mean "throw the rascals out" then the party out of power is always an improvement.

If you mean "has better ethics" then "no". BSDI.

If you mean "economic policy" then Team Red got rid of their economic sanity wing so still "no". Also extra negative points for the economic chaos.

If you mean "war in Israel" then I'd say "yes".

If you mean "war in Ukraine" then I'd say "no".

North: ...billions ... requires you loop in the foundation which was regularly audited and found to be above board.

No, it was found to be "legal", as in, "we can't prove anything illegal in court".

The Husband of the Secretary is State is accepting Billions of dollars from states She deals with professionally. This money is used to promote her political agenda and influence.

The entities that were giving the money don't normally do this. These entities entirely stopped giving money the moment she lost power.

All of this was "legal", meaning with marital communications being privileged we have to trust there's no connection. Much like kindergarteners accept that Santa exists.

Pointing to this and claiming "it was above board" takes us to willful ignorance. I fully admit everything that happened was not-provably-illegal-in-court, but that's not the line that most of the electorate uses to decide if there's a problem.

So if you're wondering why Team Red can be expected to back their guy even though the group chat was obviously illegal, a big part of that is we had the Clintons showcase for years just what Washington ethics looks like.

And we also had for that same period of time Team Blue declare in lockstep that this kind of thing should be ignored.

And the court case has started: https://www.axios.com/2025/03/27/judge-hearing-signal-case-trump

North: in response to genuine, convicted and materially factual right wing crimes.

I was responding to your comparison, "teh emailz” and then I was responding to your claims that the pardons were "unsubstantiated".

North: the vast majority of their alleged crimes exist, overwhelmingly, as a matter of right wing spin...

I already agreed that what she did wasn't a crime if your line is "provable in court".

That doesn't change that She/They were the most openly corrupt politician(s) of their generation, to the tune of Billions of dollars.

Adding a reporter to a group chat (or even having the chat), hits the radar as shear incompetence. That's a problem, I'm not defending it.

I'm not sure it's useful to call it "illegal" when we've already made the decision that we're going to tolerate open corruption.

RE: speculative tea leaf reading about unsubstantiated crimes the Clintons are alleged to have committed to somehow

So we're supposed to pretend she wasn't caught (legally) selling pardons?

Marc Rich's wife gave a million or so dollars to HRC's campaign when she badly needed it. Bill gave Marc a pardon.

People as far to the Left as Jimmy Carter have pointed out that there was no reason for the pardon other than the money. And there was no reason for the money other than the pardon.

This didn't rise to the level of "provably illegal in court" which is apparently her personal ethical standard.

That's why the Clintons were constantly being investigated and also why we constantly found we didn't have enough evidence for a criminal conviction.

You say that like it'd be a good thing. Far as I can tell it's only Trump's political opponents who are upset with him and we just had elections. If the system allows/requires elections every 5 months then the gov is so unstable that there will be serious problems.

We had an election and decided to let the clowns rule for a while. Elections have consequences. I don't like it, but the rules say this is what happens.

Yes, they're in the same barrel. But it will blow over until they constantly lie about it and/or continue to do this.

For this to be truly damaging we need a way to keep it in the news for months. So we'd need them to pretend it wasn't a big deal, have more news about it, find they're still doing it, and then have them pretend it's not a big deal again.

The bulk of HRC's damage wasn't in what she did but how she handled the aftermath.

My impression was that she couldn't tell the truth about what she'd done because it was something along the lines of "if I engage in criminal activity like selling pardons I need to be able to destroy the emails". So she was always trying to tell one more self serving lie which would in turn be found out to not be true and kept this in the news for months.

It's not the crime, it's the coverup.