Peter and Michael discuss the media coverage of the protests at Columbia — from the crazed, bloodthirsty ravings of right-wing media to the more muted, respectful bloodthirst of centrist media.
To hear the rest of the episode, support us on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPod
Peter and Michael discuss the media coverage of the protests at Columbia — from the crazed, bloodthirsty ravings of right-wing media to the more muted, respectful bloodthirst of centrist media.
To hear the rest of the episode, support us on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPod
Peter: A good gag would be that you consistently think we're talking about Columbia, the country, throughout this. [laughs]
Michael: That wouldn't even be funny the first time, and it would get less funny as the episode goes on.
[laughter]
Peter: What if the bit is that you're very racist throughout this, but towards Colombians?
[laughter]
Michael: I was trying to think of a pun with Zionism.
Peter: I can't wait to see-
Michael: Zion.
Peter: -how close to the antisemitic gray area you land with this one?
Michael: Wait, wait, I have one. I have one. Do it, do it, do it.
Peter: Michael.
Michael: Peter.
Peter: What do you know about the protests at Columbia University?
Michael: All I know is that none of the chants and none of the signs at any of the protests have made me as uncomfortable as recommending a song by Macklemore.
[If Books Could Kill theme]
Peter: I guess we have to frame this a bit up top, because as we are recording, we're in the midst of a surge of student protests at universities across the country. And protests are about the Israeli attacks on Gaza. And more specifically, they are a call on universities to divest from companies and organizations that profit from Israeli war crimes. It's largely been my opinion and experience that the media coverage of this has been awful,-
Michael: Atrocious.
Peter: -and in recent days, we've gotten a heavy dose of police propaganda with a bunch of cameos from my boy Eric Adams, who I've decided will be a recurring character on our podcast. [chuckles]
Michael: Dude, this podcast is undefeated with, like, predicting moral panics in advance. Remember, we did Retail Crime and then the actual retailers, like, retracted their number.
Peter: Target actually sent me a gift card as an apology for that one.
Michael: And then now it's like we're talking about all this like deranged propaganda and how these fucking police departments have more PR people than entire newsrooms, and we get a huge wave of propaganda immediately after these crackdowns.
Peter: If Eric Adams gets arrested in the next couple of months, I do think that we did it, [Michael laughs] even though we have never talked about his various actual [laughs] crimes on this podcast.
Michael: This podcast has goals.
Peter: I wanted to limit this discussion to Columbia University for the most part, because I think the fact that these protests have spread out across the country and have all sorts of different valences in different areas, it's made the coverage more confusing. And I want to sort of do a case study.
Michael: Mm-hmm.
Peter: So, to contextualize this, student protests obviously have been ongoing since October 7th, when Hamas first attacked. And things recently escalated in April when the president of Columbia University, Minouche Shafik, appeared before the republican controlled House Committee on Education and the workforce in a hearing ostensibly about antisemitism on Columbia's campus. This is the same committee that Harvard President Claudine Gay and Penn President Liz Magill appeared before last December, where they were peppered with bad faith questions and ultimately, both of them had to resign.
Michael: Why do people keep showing up in front of these obviously bad faith committees? This is by far the most baffling thing to me.
Peter: Yeah. It feels like for university presidents, this is some sort of mandatory psychosexual humiliation ritual.
Michael: It's like, everyone who agrees to an interview with Isaac Chotiner [Peter laughs] where they're like, “Look, everybody else just got beclowned, [Peter chuckles] but it might work for us.”
Peter: So, yeah. Shafik, I think she thought she was being crafty. She's like, “I can learn from their mistakes and do the perfect testimony.” She, like, gets up there, and she's actually very conciliatory toward the committee members. She did her best to, like, align her positions with theirs. She points out how many students Columbia has suspended over the [chuckles] past several months.
Michael: Hell, yeah.
Peter: She was asked about professors who expressed what the committee members felt was support for Hamas’ attack. One of them, she says, “He was fired, and he will never teach at Columbia again.” Another, who had tenure, she committed on the spot when asked by Elise Stefanik to stripping him of a chairmanship in a faculty group.
Michael: I thought you were going to say, “Committed seppuku on the spot.” Which also, I think is what they wanted.
Peter: I too am watching Shogun. [Michael laughs] Now, I do want to send one quick clip just to give you a sense of how much clownery was going on at this hearing.
Michael: Are we watching at 1x?
Peter: Yes, we're watching at 1x.
Michael: Like a fucking pilgrim. Okay, fine.
Peter: You don't want to hear these people faster.
Michael: [laughs] That's true. Okay.
Peter: All right.
Michael: Double check. [unintelligible 00:04:50] normal. Okay, count us down.
Rep. Rick W. Allen: Are you familiar with Genesis 12:3?
Michael: Oh, no.
Minouche: Probably not as well as you are, congressman.
Rep. Rick W. Allen: Well, it's pretty clear. It was the covenant that God made with Abraham, and that covenant was real clear. “If you bless Israel, I will bless you. If you curse Israel, I will curse you.” And then in the New Testament, it was confirmed that all nations would be blessed through you. So, you do not know about that?
Minouche: I have heard that. Now that you've explained it, yes, I have heard that before.
[laughter]
Peter: When you've definitely heard of it.
Rep. Rick W. Allen: Do you consider that a serious issue?
Michael: What?
Rep. Rick W. Allen: I mean, do you want Columbia University to be cursed by God.
Michael: What?
Rep. Rick W. Allen: Of the Bible?
Minouche: Definitely not.
Rep. Rick W. Allen: Okay.
[music]
Michael: Oh, it's so sad. She's, like, trying to be nice but, like, this guy. This guy sounds like a psycho.
Peter: Now that you mention it. Yeah. No, being cursed by God. Yeah, no, I have heard of that.
Michael: Yeah, I really, I prefer not. Yeah. Also, he's doing the voice that if your friend did it while doing an impression of a republican senator, you'd be like, “Hey, dial it back. That's really offensive. Like, don't do the cartoon redneck voice when you're pretending to be a republican senator.” [laughs]
Peter: That's why you can't speed that up to 1.5 or something, because you really lose the effect. [Michael laughs]
Michael: The thing is, I was just about to do it, but I was like, “No, people will yell at me if I do it right now.” It's like, “It's too offensive to do the voice.”
Peter: [laughs] I want to hear it, Mike. [Michael laughs] Look, you can't be racist against, like, southern senators or whatever. It's not a thing.
Michael: God, her, like, sad smile. I'm not as familiar with that. I don't want the campus to be cursed. [Peter chuckles] We live in hell, Peter.
Peter: So, when this hearing wraps up, at first it feels a little bit like a PR win. She is sort of complimented by one member of the committee that says she beat Harvard and Penn on this issue-
Michael: Okay.
Peter: -so maybe she's feeling good at this point. But while she was testifying, pro-Palestinian protesters set up an encampment on a campus quad. Hundreds of students pitched about 50 tents, and they state that they will be occupying the space until Columbia divests from Israel.
Michael: So, is this related to the congressional hearing or is this just a total coincidence?
Peter: I don't think it's a coincidence. I think they knew that administration was going to be focused on the testimony and that would present them with an opportunity, right?
Michael: Okay.
Peter: And this is a high-profile moment to put pressure on Columbia.
Michael: Her performance in the congressional hearing also illustrates the fundamental problem here, that even if you do go in front of Congress and, like, own the republican senators and do really well, that's not a news story.
Peter: Right.
Michael: So, the best-case scenario for going in front of these ding dongs is just no news at all.
Peter: There is a political instinct missing in the brains of university administrators. That's what I've learned from this whole thing.
Michael: Yeah.
Peter: She gets back to Columbia and she's faced with this dilemma. Because you have these students protesting. You basically just promised Congress that you were going to rule with an iron fist over these protests.
Michael: You don't want to be cursed. Trying to avoid cruses.
Peter: So, she responds by writing a public letter to NYPD. She says, “I write with regard to the encampment on Columbia University's campus that began before dawn on the morning of Wednesday, April 17th, 2024. As discussed, more than 100 individuals are currently occupying the south lawn of Columbia University's Morningside Heights campus. This group has been informed numerous times and in writing that they are not permitted to occupy this space, are in violation of the university's rules and policies, and must disperse. I have determined that the encampment and related disruptions pose a clear and present danger to the substantial functioning of the university.-
Michael: Oh, my God.
Peter: -With great regret, we request the NYPD's help to remove these individuals. We trust that you will take care and caution when removing any individual from our campus.”
Michael: The thing is, I also read that letter, and she mentioned that this has the potential to ruin John Cage's 4’33.” [Peter laughs] So it's interesting you didn't read that excerpt. I think we need to focus on the real victims.
Peter: So, Columbia is a private university on private property. They have an agreement with NYPD that NYPD won't intervene on campus unless asked to. So, this letter is the president saying, “Hey, NYPD, come on in.” This is something that has not happened since 1968, when there were student protests and NYPD intervened, and it was largely considered to be a big clusterfuck. So legally, they are within their rights here. They can basically tell anyone, students included, “Hey, we want you off this lawn.” And if the students refuse, they are trespassing and can be removed, right?
Michael: It is very funny that this whole thing is literally, “Kids, get off my lawn.” It's kind of perfect.
[laughter]
Peter: It's always telling when the charge that protesters get hit with is trespassing.
Michael: Yeah.
Peter: That's when you know that nothing has happened, that they're just being arrested because they were irritating people. [Michael laughs] I also want to talk about some weird language in this statement. She says that students present a, “Clear and present danger to the substantial functioning of the university.” This is, like, very crafty phrasing, because at a glance, it seems like she's saying they're dangerous in, like, the general sense of the word, but she's saying they are dangerous to the substantial functioning of the university,-
Michael: Yeah, yeah [laughs]
Peter: -which doesn't seem like it's actual danger.
Michael: It's this combination of high stakes and low stakes.
Peter: Right.
Michael: Because, like, you could say that about anything. You could say that, like, “You working from home poses a clear and present danger to my ability to watch the Legend of Korra all day.” It doesn't mean anything.
Peter: [laughs] So also, as a lawyer, I kind of perked up when I saw clear and present danger, because that's like an antiquated legal standard from the World War I era that has been overruled. So now the First Amendment test is inciting imminent lawless action. And the clear and present danger thing, that hasn't been the First Amendment law since the 60s.
Michael: Yeah, but there was that Harrison Ford movie in the 90s, and so everybody thinks--
Peter: That’s true.
Michael: Everybody thinks it’s real.
Peter: I was sort of like, “Why is she using this language?” And apparently, it's in Colombia's policies. Like, I went digging through their policies, and apparently, they use this clear and present danger standard, presumably because it's, like, broader and vaguer, which is why it was overturned to begin with.
Michael: Yeah, yeah.
Peter: But it sort of still sounds like it's legalese, right?
Michael: Hmm.
Peter: I also will flag that Columbia policy says, “That in order to bring in NYPD, the president has to consult with, “A majority of a panel established by the University Senate's Executive Committee.” The Executive Committee said that they were not consulted.
Michael: Okay.
Peter: The Columbia spectator, the student paper, which, by the way, has done the best reporting on this-
Michael: Yeah.
Peter: -by such a wide margin that it's remarkable. They asked the school about this, and the school responds that Shafik, “Consulted with the Senate chair, comply with the consultation requirement.” But their requirement is that she consult with a majority of a panel established by the committee. So, it seems pretty clear that she just ignored the policy to bust up this protest as quickly as possible.
Michael: It's also funny because breaking the procedure of how to tell the protesters to disperse is kind of silly. It's this sort of technical, procedural thing, which nobody really cares about. But the whole thing is that the entire argument for breaking this up is a little tiny procedural thing too. It's like they're trespassing on campus.
Peter: No, it's even less than that. Columbia's real justification, like, what they're putting forward, is that these students were basically violating the protest rules.
Michael: Okay.
Peter: So, the president also sends a letter to Columbia writ large and says, “We updated our protest policy to allow demonstrations on very short notice and in prime locations in the middle of campus while still allowing students to get to class and labs and libraries to operate. The current encampment violates all of the new policies, severely disrupts campus life, and creates a harassing and intimidating environment for many of our students.”
Michael: But then if, like, if we're such fucking sticklers for policies, you're also not following your own policies-
Peter: Exactly.
Michael: -and the procedure for doing this. So it's like, “Are we sticklers or are we not?” I don't think people really care about this procedural stuff, but it's very clear that there's, like, a huge double standard.
Peter: Right. I want to pause before we continue, because as this story goes on, it gets messier. I want to be clear that at this point, there have been no credible allegations of, like, antisemitism or offensive statements or violence from any of these protesters. When Columbia brought in the NYPD to clear the encampment, they claimed that the protesters were creating a harassing and intimidating environment. But they didn't provide any examples. And I think to this day, there's really no evidence that anyone within this actual encampment did anything of the sort.
Michael: Okay.
Peter: So, it really seems like what happened here is that Shafik was coming off of her testimony to Congress and then confronted with this dilemma, “Do I back up my tough talk or do I sort of let them stay?” She calls in the cops. So, you get this initial round of media coverage that's relatively mild, but you start to see some sort of weird tendencies. So, the New York Times says and they're talking about the clearing of the encampment. They say, “Many in the crowd watched with a sense of disbelief or anger. Some students though, those who had felt harassed by the chants and actions of the pro-Palestinian students, said they were glad that the university had finally agreed to follow its rules.” Again, they're not specifying what the harassing chants or actions were. It's just sort of stated, which is not necessarily to say that it's fictional, as much as that this is just bad reporting. This is not how you should be reporting on this sort of shit. You can't tell from this whether the complaint here is that they don't like pro-Palestinian chants or that they are actually being directly targeted for harassment by protesters. And that's a pretty important distinction, right?
Michael: Basically, is it a normal ass protest, or is it genuinely something like rowdy and harassing and something that the university should really do something about? Like, that's the entire point. [laughs] It's like, “Is this okay or is this not?” Yeah.
Peter: So, to map this out chronologically, Shafik testified on Wednesday, April 17th. The encampment was set up that same morning. NYPD cleared it the next day. What happens next is that these students set up another encampment on the lawn. Like, right next to the first one. [chuckles]
Michael: Hell, yeah.
Peter: And this time, the energy is way higher because people are upset by the administration calling in NYPD faculty,-
Michael: Yeah.
Peter: -many of whom say that they are not actually aligned with the students on the substantive issue, staged a walkout in protests of the administration. And this is also where you see other encampments and similar protests start to pop up on campuses across the country.
Michael: Right. This is the thing. They could have just ignored this in the first place.
Peter: Yeah.
Michael: There have been encampments on campuses, like, around the country, and it hasn't really been a big deal. And also, isn't the semester ending in, like, two weeks? [laughs]
Peter: Yeah.
Michael: And they could have just, like, “Let this happen.” And, like, I don't know. The whole thing is just such a fucking own goal by the university presidents. I mean, I do get it, but. I don't get it.
Peter: When the argument being put forward is basically, these protesters are potentially harassing, loud, disruptive. The scope of the failure is, like, laid bare, right.
Michael: Yeah.
Peter: Because this was one protest on Columbia's campus. It is now, like, a nationwide movement. There have been hundreds of arrests. There have been incidents of protesters clashing. And you can make a pretty coherent argument that Minouche Shafik is responsible for all of that.
Michael: To try to look good in front of republican and senators.
Peter: No, not even senators.
Michael: “Who was that fucking guy?”
Peter: It’s house members, which is even more-
Michael: Oh, God. Come on.
Peter: -degrading,-
Michael: Humiliating.
Peter: -barely politicians, right.
Michael: Barely adults.
Peter: So, over that following weekend, there are reports on social media of several instances of antisemitic or otherwise offensive conduct in and around Colombia. One person shouted, “Go back to Poland,” at pro-Israel demonstrators. One person held up a sign with an arrow pointed toward pro-Israel demonstrators that said, “Al-Qassam's next targets.” That's Hamas' military wing. One guy is recorded shouting that there would be 10,000 October 7th.
Michael: I know about all those because I read about them on Bari Weiss' Substack.
Peter: That's the thing, is, you've probably heard all of these because the media coverage of each of them has been extensive.
Michael: Yeah, there's also that poor woman who lost an eye in one of the protests, is my understanding.
Peter: RIP. No, I think she passed. Yeah, she didn't survive.
[laughter]
Peter: It just sounds like we're being very insensitive to someone who's not familiar with that story.
[laughter]
Peter: You had pro-Israel demonstrators shouting, “Go back to Gaza,” at student protesters calling them terrorists. There were some minor scuffles, nothing serious. People grabbing flags from one another, things like that. Almost all of these incidents occurred off campus. And from the reporting I've seen, none of them have been traced to actual Columbia students.
Michael: Yeah.
Peter: It's pretty clear that most of this, if not all of this, is from non-students.
Michael: God. In any large protest, someone is going to yell something fucking stupid like one out of every 500 signs is going to have something problematic on it. Like, do you remember the anti-war protest in 2003?
Peter: Yeah.
Michael: There was some, like, hella dumb shit being said there and some dumb chants and some dumb signs,-
Peter: And they were still right.
Michael: -this whole time, I've just been like, “Why are we fucking talking about this?”
Peter: Well, the question is, when you see one asshole, do you want to say to yourself, “That guy's an asshole?” Or do you want to say to yourself, “This is emblematic of a broader trend within the pro-Palestinian movement.” That's the choice you're being confronted with. And the media chooses the second one every single time.
Michael: It's also so fucked up because it's very clearly a distraction from something that is like, the actual fucking bombing of Gaza is so indefensible. Tens of thousands of people dead. There's literally children starving. It's like, “It could not be clearer what the right thing to do is and who the fucking heroes and villains are.” And yet we're still talking about, “Ooh, was this chant bad or not?”
Peter: The vague implications of the metaphor in your rhyming chant are a little bit disturbing to me.
Michael: [laughs] I mean, fuck.
Peter: So social media posts of these, like, antisemitic incidents and sort of like, violence endorsing incidents, if they're not antisemitic, go viral
Michael: Of course.
Peter: -And very quickly, the tenor of the media coverage changes dramatically. The New York Times writes a piece headlined, “Some Jewish students are targeted as protests continue at Columbia, citing some of these incidents.” The piece also does include quotes from Jewish students who are protesting for Palestine and say they feel perfectly safe, which some media outlets have just completely ignored. But they do make one omission, and I've seen this almost universally, which is that they don't cover any of the racist rhetoric coming from pro-Israel protesters-
Michael: Yeah, it's fucking wild.
Peter: -which is also pretty thoroughly documented on social media that weekend. And that omission creates this impression of a one-sided problem.
Michael: The implication of stories like this is that any amount of antisemitism or one antisemitic person in a crowd of thousands of people protesting is disqualifying. And yet Islamophobia is also rife among people who are pro-Israel, and yet that's never disqualifying.
Peter: Yeah. I think you're sort of like imagining what a good faith discussion might look like.
Michael: Yeah.
Peter: But what's really happening here is that reactionaries are just sort of sensing an opportunity to smear the left and also shift the conversation away from what's happening in Gaza and toward what's happening on American campuses, right.
Michael: Yeah, that's been so palpable.
Peter: So first I want to talk about the right-wing news cycle that emanates from this. Fox News runs countless stories about what it calls, “Agitators at Columbia.”
Michael: Love it.
Peter: The New York Post has run nonstop stories about this. I would like for you to guess the number of stories in the New York Post between April 18th and the end of the month referencing the Columbia encampment.
Michael: I'm thinking of, remember, we did every single story in the New York Times about Hillary Clinton's emails in one month, and I think it was something like 43. So, like, I'm going to say somewhere in the 40s.
Peter: Yeah, the answer is over 150.
Michael: [laughs] Dude, I follow the New York Post on Twitter, and they had a story this morning that was just the headline was, “Teddy Roosevelt's great grandson supports Columbia protests.”
Peter: Tell him.
Michael: It's, like, Steve Roosevelt or something, just some random kid.
Peter: That's news, baby.
Michael: Someone I've never heard of who was related to a politician has an opinion.
Peter: [chuckles] I almost wish that the New York Post had a functional website rather than one that will destroy your computer if you scroll it for long enough, [Michael laughs] because it is deeply fascinating to just witness the media diet of your average Staten Island resident. It's like, “No wonder they're like this.”
Michael: [laughs] The thing is, the fact that you are moving to New Jersey, [Peter laughs] I feel like it means you should be careful making fun of people from Staten Island.
Peter: I am moving very purposefully to a town full of wealthy, stick up their ass liberal pussies. [Michael laughs] Like, people have Black Lives Matter signs in their yard just to be performative assholes. You know what I mean?
Michael: Yeah. You're moving to the name of the county is in this house, New Jersey.
Peter: [laughs] So the post coverage and most right-wing coverage is really expressly calling the protesters antisemitic, genocidal. On April 28th, they ran an op-ed by the editorial board titled, “Pro-Palestine protests really are seeking a final solution.”
Michael: Oh, my God.
Peter: They wrote that, “Israel's war is entirely just the protest movement consists entirely of the malevolent and the idiotic Nazi equivalents and their enablers.” That is the New York Post editorial board. By the way, I feel like people don't realize what the editorial boards of conservative papers are like, [laughs] but these people are unwell.
Michael: The Wall Street Journal editorial board says shit that, like, would get somebody kicked out of, like, a neighborhood barbecue. [Peter laughs] You'd be like, “I'm sorry, man. We just can't have you around anymore if you're going to say shit like this?” Yeah.
Peter: Yeah, you have to leave. I am going to share with you a couple of my favorite New York Post pieces on this subject.
Michael: Okay.
Peter: I am sending you a headline.
Michael: “The Columbia protester diet: Anti-Israel students munch on Pret sandwiches, pricey nuts, and sip Dunkin. Oh, because they're like decadent elites.”
Peter: The protesters are simultaneously professional terrorists and also the privileged children of wealthy elites.
Michael: Also, these kids are the coddled children of wealthy elites. [laughs] They're still correct.
Peter: No, I think it's cool that some rich kids can step outside their bubble and recognize some injustice. You know, even if they are probably going to give this up and go work at JPM.
Michael: That Roosevelt kid is going to be cool for the next two years and then immediately go to McKinsey.
Peter: I am going to send you an excerpt from this harrowing piece in the New York Post.
Michael: It says, “The anti-Israel Columbia University students hunkering down on the Ivy League's West Lawn received a hefty food delivery Wednesday as they show no signs of abandoning their makeshift tent city. Fruits, nuts, granola bars and overpriced sandwiches were being handed out like candy to the protesters, [Peter laughs] who were given a 48-hour extension to camp out on the grounds before the administration warned it would clear them out.”
Peter: Thank you for catching that stellar bit of writing-
Michael: Yeah. Just amazing.
Peter: They're handing out fruit like candy. [Michael laughs] Yeah, yeah. You're a professional writer.
Michael: It's so evocative. I have a mental image now. “The anti-Israel protesters, more than 100 of whom were cuffed by the NYPD last week, had their choice of an array of nuts, including a $17 jar of Good & Gather Sea Salt Roasted Mixed Nuts.” It is true that nut pricing has gotten out of control.
Peter: Okay. But Good & Gather is Target's in house brand.
Michael: Oh, is it really? [laughs]
Peter: So, a $17 jar is probably just a large jar of nuts, which actually sounds like a pretty cost-effective solution for a group of people.
Michael: Yeah.
Peter: Okay.
Michael: “Cheaper options like Blue Diamond Almonds and PLANTERS cashews were also laid out for the students, who are used to shelling out $86,097 in tuition each year. Sandwiches at the UK brand convenience bakery Pret A Manger, were neatly lined up along the table. A simple veggie sandwich would cost only $8, but those with any meat between the bread slices cost anywhere between $10 and $14, or even $16 for a salmon option.” My God, this is so boring.
Peter: Is this so fucking boring and stupid?
Michael: They can get sandwiches.
Peter: You don't have a real job if you're writing this professionally. This is not a real job. You are a fake person with a fake life. Also, these are normal sandwich prices in New York, sorry.
Michael: This entire piece should be about the injustice of Biden's economy, [Peter chuckles] Bidenflation that we're experiencing due to his choices.
Peter: I told you that they wrote, like, 150 articles about this encampment and the protests. So, like, “This is the kind of shit you need to write to hit those numbers.”
Michael: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, just like, “People had food.” There was food available.
Peter: Someone's going to their editor being like, “I looked up the price of those nuts for you, sir. And they're $17.” And he's like, “Run it.”
Michael: Yeah, yeah.
Peter: I'm going to send you another headline. This one's a little more serious in the sense that it has sort of spread around the right-wing ecosystem.
Michael: Oh, I love this one. “George Soros is paying student radicals who are fueling nationwide explosion of Israel hating protests.”
[music]
[Transcript provided by SpeechDocs Podcast Transcription]