Columbia’s Sociology Department Faculty: Will subvert university suspension of students over pro-Palestine protests, will allow students to attend class, take exams, receive grades, and receive credit
The relevant Senate committee was not consulted, as required by university rules
This has been one of the most wild things about the universities responses to these protests. Most of them are breaking their own internal rules with the way they’re responding! Most universities have both a student government and faculty senate (staff can get fucked) and at most universities those two bodies have to be consulted at some level before you can do things like call in outside cops and mass suspend/expel students.
A bunch of university presidents are going to lose their jobs over this, depending on the power of their faculty senate, all for something they could’ve just left alone. None of these encampments were even really disrupting normal activities, you could’ve just left them there and they’d probably go away after a few weeks.
Instead you threw a temper tantrum, broke your own rules, and in many cases broke state or federal law as well - The uni I work at is now being sued for violating the ADA because they arrested a disabled student for having a chair in the quad. My president unfortunately won’t lose his job for this, his hiring broke state law and university rules in the first place and was opposed by the faculty senate and student government, and forced through by
, but at a lot of schools the faculty senate has more power than it does here.i'm sure if the university president loses his job over it, he'll be rewarded somehow for his selfless sacrifice for the greater good. so i dont see how this is a real downside for them.
University presidents be like: I am the senate
A bunch of university presidents are going to lose their jobs over this
They’ll be asked to resign then quietly get a job at a different university a few years later
What are the protests there like at the moment ? Asking as an alum.
This has been one of the most wild things about the universities responses to these protests. Most of them are breaking their own internal rules with the way they’re responding! Most universities have both a student government and faculty senate (staff can get fucked) and at most universities those two bodies have to be consulted at some level before you can do things like call in outside cops and mass suspend/expel students.
Rules are there to hollow out your fucking soul through continuous interaction with bureaucratic committees where almost everyone there, doesn't want to be there. So it just grinds down any suggestions into limp biscuits.
Um sweaty it’s called the rules based order
I hope these protests continue to spread with the same departmental support. There is already massive tension between department faculty and admins at many universities and a huge wave of grad student unionisation in response to terrible working conditions facing both them and non-tenured professors. If they can build solidarity strikes with the anti-Zionist students, the scope of the unrest can expand. Any attack on them by police means a response from UAW since that's who they're with.
There is already massive tension between department faculty and admins at many universities
It reminds me of one of Graeber's Bullshit Jobs/Utopia of Rules points that many of our actually useful public institutions (within the realm of education, healthcare, etc.) have become bloated with class middlemen - a vertically swelling stack of bureaucratic administrators that manage the tension between owners and labourers with increasingly technical systems of means testing and whatever else. These people have a distinct class position from actual educators, so even though professors can be all over the place ideologically depending on their department, it's really not a huge surprise to me that the sociology folks are on the right side of history here.
I really enjoyed Bullshit Jobs
Unfortunately it's basically the most triggering thing in the world to speak about because people immediately go WHAT MY JOB ISNT BULLSHIT YOU'RE BULLSHIT STFU
Like bro. No one said that. In fact Graeber's definition explicitly says if workers in the job consider it to not be bullshit then it isn't. People really really really lose their shit, in my experience, when you discuss the idea of bullshit jobs and suggest that many, maybe most?, jobs in industrialized nations like the US and the EU are either bullshit, could have hugely reduced hours of working, etc. They start crying on about "but we need plumbers!" Yeah, nooooooo shiiiiiiiit dumbasses (reliving stupid conversations I've had in my head now). No one would accuse plumbers of being bullshit. And no one is accusing you! ITS A SOCIETAL LEVEL FUCKING PROBLEM NOT A YOU OR JUST ME PROBLEM HOLY FUCK
This discussion was with a person, actually people, multiple people, who are legitimately on the left. They just kept thinking i was saying abolish work. I had to eventually save my brain cells by saying "ok, just read the book. It's short. Then we can discuss it more." And never heard anything else about it 🤦♂️ legitimately one of the most frustrating conversations I've ever had (multiple conversations with different people).
Do universities even need a board to operate normally?
No, in fact it seems like the board of a university is consistently a hindrance to the day to day operations of the school, and every university would be better off burying every board member in a shallow grave and forgetting they ever existed.
no but most will have one, if only for the purpose of raising tuition year over year so they can line their pockets
Is there a columbia newspaper article (or any article) on this? Whered you get the pic from?
This was posted to Twitter by several of the professors who endorsed the letter, and an official version was sent to Columbia a few days ago. I haven’t seen anything in the student papers regarding this but I can’t say I’ve combed through them either. It’s increasingly difficult for students to produce news articles, especially as of the past 24 hours where student press has been banned from campus.