Columbia's main lawn: In a rare protester-free momentSo, protests sometimes happen at Columbia University. In the past month alone there has been a commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the 1968 riots, a week-long CU Democrats war protest (including a massive red balloon display that, despite its seriousness, only succeeded in getting that song stuck in my head), a protest about Tibet, protests about Columbia’s impending expansion into Manhattanville, and a Take Back the Night rally. Not to mention the blood drive, arts fair, sex fair, free Mumia posters, a relay for life, and that random jumping castle and pink balloon-display that showed up last Friday. Seriously, Columbia students have recently done everything short of throwing a pie in Thomas Friedman’s face.

So what are those crazy kids going to do next? How about an al-Nakba rally – Say, day before Yom Hashoah-ish? Sure, why not – it can at least provide topical fodder for name-calling.

Many Jewcy readers will know that this May is the 60th anniversary of Israeli independence. They might be less familiar with the fact that many Palestinians and Palestinian support groups are marking this time as the 60th anniversary of al-Nakba, a time in which Palestinians were forced out of their homes to make room for the new state of Israel. That's why, starting this week, a new flier campaign began over at the Columbia campus about the mistreatment of Palestinians as a casualty of Zionism. According to the fliers, it’s officially Nakba Week.

Competing birthdays: A poster commemorating Al-Nakba's 60th anniversary Also, a Pro-Nakba Week student published this article in the campus newspaper, accusing the campus Hillel (and its president, Emily Steinberger) of disrespecting the week’s commemoration by refusing to co-sponsor the event simply because it used the word “Nakba.”

Then came the backlash. LionPAC, the pro-Israel group under the broader Hillel umbrella, put up a bunch of retaliation fliers equipped with their own pro-Israel statistics. And in retaliation to the original Spectator article, Steinberger submitted this report, which, among other things brings up (drumroll, please)…the Holocaust! So the whole debate becomes not the “new chapter in Columbia’s Israel-Arab discourse” that LionPAC says it wants, but instead a great big print-based shouting match.

It is of course the prerogative of every ethnic group to raise sympathy for and awareness of their respective oppression by waiving their grievances in people’s faces. But will shoving opposing tragedies at the opposition really solve anything? As Spectator columnist Armin Rosen puts it, this methodology is “more proof that the Zionist and anti-Zionist blocs totally deserve each other.”

Holocaust discourse in general is something that is all too easily buffeted about. Palestinian supporters often accuse Zionists of acting like Nazis toward the Palestinians -- within a homeland that was created to be a Jewish safe haven in the face of Nazism. Similarly, Zionist are often too quick to pull their own Holocaust card. We’ll see who racks up the most references when we get down to the “discourse.”

You know what makes me a little nauseous? This article from the Columbia Spectator:

Students Balance Homework, Husbands
By Laura Schreiber

Grades Aren't That Important: it's all about the dress

In October 2003, first-year Miriam Casper, BC ’07, hit it off with a guy she met at a friend’s party on the roof of Woodbridge Hall. A year later, she married him and moved to Queens. After 18 months, she gave birth to her son Benjamin.

One week later, she graduated magna cum laude.

Most students at Barnard and Columbia College will spend their undergraduate years exploring varying levels of relationships and intimacy. But for a number of orthodox Jewish students, tying the knot while in college is the norm.

“I always hoped by the time I graduated college, I would be married, be engaged, or be dating someone I knew I wanted to marry,” said Molly Elkins, BC ’08, who married last month and moved to Washington Heights with her husband.

For Yael Hall, BC ’10, who is preparing for her January wedding, marriage came sooner than expected. “I was the last person anyone would think would be getting married,” Hall said. “I got really rude responses from friends who knew me like that, saying, ‘Wow, I really didn’t think you’d be one of the first ones to go.’”

While living in Cathedral Gardens may seem like a trek, married students commute from as far as New Jersey. According to Hillel Rabbi David Almog, marriage presents a disruption of a student’s college experience.

“In college ... friends really do become your family,” Almog said. “There’s a severe rupture that happens, when somebody gets married, of that bond.”

Rachel Fischer, BC ’08, who married last year, agreed that one of the hardest parts of matrimony was giving up campus connections.

“I definitely miss ... that environment where you’re always with people doing the same things,” said Fischer, who lives in New Jersey. “Everyone has midterms, everyone has finals, everyone’s in library.”

Elkins said she accepted that marriage meant giving up certain aspects of her old social life, including spending less time with her friends.

Marriage was a possibility she kept in the back of her mind from the beginning of college, though it did not dictate her plans.

“On some level it focuses you,” said Michelle Friedman, BC ’74 and a psychiatrist who counsels observant Jewish women. “If you’re a pre-med person you know what courses you take. If you want to get married, you focus on that. Finding a spouse is like finding a job.”

For Fischer, who is currently applying to law school, her time at Barnard was often a tough balancing act between family obligations and career aspirations.

“There’s always the constant temptation of ‘forget school, who cares? I’m married. ... What would be the difference?’” Fischer said. “But I can’t give up that aspect of my life. I couldn’t give up those goals.”

Yet some students feel no qualms prioritizing family life over college. “Marriage is much better than education and academics,” Elkins said. “I wasn’t going to push off my wedding six months to do a little bit better in all my classes. I live life and go to school, but I don’t let it conflict with celebrations or anything like that. That’s the wrong perspective for school.”

Friedman said it could be tricky for college women to balance the more traditional values of the orthodox community with contemporary careers, noting that going back and forth between traditional gender roles and modern college life is sometimes confusing.

Full story

Because I know one of the people quoted in the article I’m not going to go into what parts in particular test my gag reflex, but as a rule, this whole thing is grotesque.

It’s cute that the spectator assumes that all the girls who get married in college will continue to come to classes and be enrolled. I bet there are a reasonable number who pretty much drop out after their wedding and/or the birth of their first child. And hey, I think it’s fine if that’s what these women want to do. I mean, they’re not my priorities, but they’re certainly valid ones.

What makes me crazy, though, is the idea that these guys are concerned about women who want to have careers. What is scary about that? Does extra money for vacation really intimidate people that much? Or savings to pay for day school? Or a nicer apartment? I don’t actually think Orthodox men are as shallow as this article makes them out to be, but man, this really makes me want to smack something.

If you fall in love with someone, and they fall in love with you, and you happen to be 19, or 20, or 21, I don’t have any problem with you getting married. But when girls are rushing through school to get to marriage, or are dropping careers that they’ve spent years training for because the community is pushing people to get married young, we have seriously fucked up our priorities somewhere. Not cool, people. Not. Cool.

Hey, don't sweat it. The swastika is just a plus sign doing cartwheels, and the noose was a last-minute alternative to a don't-come-a-knockin' necktie.

NEW YORK -- Police are continuing to investigate an anti-semitic message that included a swastika found etched into a bathroom wall at Columbia University, just two days after a noose was discovered hanging from the door of a professor at Teachers College.In a message to the Columbia community, President Lee Bollinger said he was saddend by the second incident of hate in a week.

 David Bernstein at the Volokh Conspiracy:

[I]t may come as a surprise to Columbia faculty and students to learn that a current professor at Columbia has argued that there are no homosexuals in the entire Arab world, except for a few who have been brainwashed into believing they have a homosexual identity by an aggressive Western homosexual missionizing movement he calls "Gay International." The article is called, "Re-Orienting Desire: The Gay International and the Arab World," and it appears in Volume 14, issue 2 of the journal Public Culture, and was elaborated upon in a book, Desiring Arabs, published by University of Chicago Press (UPDATE: BTW, I read the article, which is accessible through my GMU library account, but not the book). According to the author, "It is the very discourse of the Gay International which produces homosexuals, as well as gays and lesbians, where they do not exist" (emphasis added).

The author doesn't deny that same-sex sexual contact exists in Arab countries, but claims that the category of "homosexual" is purely a Western one exported to the Arab world by Western cultural imperialists. He suggests that by encouraging Arabs to adopt a Western homosexual identity, westernized Arab homosexuals have naturally provoked a counter-reaction against the importation of decadent Western culture into their societies. The article, to say, the least, is not at all sympathetic with the Western gay rights movements, and the author could easily write, replacing "Iran" with "the Arab world," "in the Arab world we don't have homosexuals like in your country." (See here for a good critique of the author's thesis.)

Oh, and the author/professor is Joseph Massad, whose name has come up in this blog many times before because of his "creative" scholarship, such as claiming that the movie "Exodus tells the story of the Zionist hijacking of a ship from Cyprus to Palestine by a Zionist Haganah commander." (As I've noted previously, this is analogous to saying that Schindler's List was a movie about Jews taking a working vacation in Poland.)

Goodness. Don't tell Lord Byron. Or Benjamin Disraeli. Or Michael Jackson.

Anne Applebaum is right to say that Columbia played right into his hands by changing the subject from free speech in Iran to free speech in the U.S. I'd have asked that the Haleh Esfandiari, just released from Tehran's brutal Evin Prison, be allowed to speak right after Ahmadinejad.

Here are Lee Bollinger's opening remarks: