On the menu today: Why don’t Columbia University president Minouche Shafik and so many other university and college presidents across the country want to do their jobs, restore order to campuses, make sure students can attend classes without harassment, and enforce local and state laws on campus when they’re broken? If you’ve spent your career climbing to the top, was it all just to get the nicest office and the most prestigious title? Doesn’t anybody see themselves as a steward of an institution anymore?
In an Unraveling America, Does Anyone Want to, You Know, Lead?The reaction of Columbia University president Minouche Shafik to the snot-nosed punks harassing Jews and defying the law with their protests reminds me of Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of The Atlantic, letting his junior staff overrule his decision to hire our old friend Kevin Williamson back in 2018. If you’ve worked your whole career to reach the point where you make the decisions needed to run a large organization . . . why are you now so terrified to make a decision? Why are you so terrified to enforce your decisions? If you’re not the one who actually makes the decisions as the leader of your organization, you’re just a figurehead.
Our Dan McLaughlin, as is his wont, cites an example from the world of baseball, when Hall of Fame manager Whitey Herzog asserted his authority over insubordinate and obstinate players. “If Shafik doesn’t show the encamped demonstrators who’s in charge, then she’s not — they are. And from that point on, she is not the president of anything,” Dan writes.
At first, Shafik appeared to know what was necessary, calling the New York Police Department, which arrested more than 100 students who refused to leave. Barnard College, across the street, started issuing suspensions of students.
But then Shafik effectively surrendered by announcing that classes at Columbia’s main campus will be held remotely for the rest of the semester.
She no longer runs her university; the protesters do.
We know not every university president has the will and spine of a wet noodle. At Pomona College — not exactly Hillsdale in its political culture — President G. Gabrielle Starr gave the students a long leash, but when they crossed the line, she did what every university leader ought to do: She enforced the rules and the law.
Offering notice both verbally and in writing, we repeatedly instructed the individuals to stop their harassment and provide identification.
Individuals held on to the signs and continued their harassment for more than two hours.
There is absolutely no excuse for this harassment; and there is no excuse for refusal to identify yourself on our campus.
Students then, under false pretenses, entered Alexander Hall, and are occupying my office.
Any participants in today’s events on the SCC lawn or in Alexander Hall, who turn out to be Pomona students, are subject to immediate suspension. Students from the other Claremont Colleges will be banned from Pomona’s campus and subject to discipline on their own campuses. All individual participants not part of The Claremont Colleges community are hereby banned from campus immediately. [Emphasis in original.]
When the students refused to leave, “about 20 police cars swarmed the scene and officers in riot gear entered the building. Nineteen students were charged with trespassing, and one with obstruction of justice, the Claremont Police Department reported.”
The charges were dropped, and I think those kids would have been better off in the long run learning that defiance of an order to leave property that isn’t theirs can result in a criminal conviction for trespassing. Still, a ride downtown to the police station in handcuffs is likely an unpleasant shock to students who believed that the moral righteousness of their cause — hating Israel, and often hating Jews along with it — provided them with some sort of invisible force field protecting them from the consequences of their actions.
The Pomona students involved were suspended; the others, “mostly from Scripps and Pitzer Colleges, were banned from the Pomona campus and would be ‘subject to discipline on their own campuses.’” Note that a ban from the Pomona campus only means something if it is enforced.
Y’all know leadership is not really about popularity, right?
Columbia University had an endowment of $13.6 billion as of June 2023. For the past ten years, it’s had an 8 percent return on investment for that endowment. According to the school’s website, “Roughly 12% of the University budget is currently supported through an annual distribution from the endowment.” Columbia has an operating budget of just under $6 billion, so roughly $72 million per year comes out of the endowment. The tuition at Columbia University undergrad is $68,400; throw in housing, food, fees, and books, and it hits $89,587 per year.
If every alumnus stopped donating, Columbia would still be just fine, for many years.
Jack Raines ran the numbers and concluded that Columbia University “owns $277,000 worth of a BlackRock corporate bond ETF” (exchange-traded fund). That’s the so-called investment in Israel that the protesters want the university to “divest” from.
Weather Forecast in Crimea: Cloudy with a Chance of ATACMS
Good news for the Ukrainians, bad news for the Russians:
The United States last week secretly shipped a new long-range missile system to Ukraine, and Ukrainian forces immediately used the weapons to attack a Russian military airfield in Crimea last Wednesday and Russian troops in the country’s southeast overnight on Tuesday, according to a senior U.S. official.
The United States previously supplied Ukraine with a version of the Army Tactical Missile Systems — known as ATACMS — armed with wide-spreading cluster munitions that can travel 100 miles.
But Ukraine has long coveted the system’s longer-range version, with a range of about 190 miles. That can reach deeper into occupied Ukraine, including Crimea, a hub of Russian air and ground forces, and supply nodes for Moscow’s forces in the country’s southeast.
I’ll bet the Crimean Bridge, also called Kerch Strait Bridge or Kerch Bridge, is looking like an awfully tempting target right now.
ADDENDUM: Tonight, I will be happy if the New York Jets, who currently hold the tenth pick in the 2024 NFL Draft, trade up for wide receiver Marvin Harrison Jr. (unlikely), or stay put and get wide receivers Rome Odunze or Malik Nabers, tight end Brock Bowers, or one of the big offensive linemen — Olu Fashanu or Taliese Fuaga. (I figure tackle Joe Alt will be long gone by the time the Jets pick.) At least one of these big-name quarterbacks taken up high is going to be a bust, but I have no idea which one.