🔗 Articles: Friday 19.Apr.2024
NYT: Michelle Goldberg: Republicans Wanted a Crackdown on Israel’s Critics. Columbia Obliged.
“Has there been any disciplinary action taken against students who have chanted, ‘From the river to the sea’?” the New York Republican Elise Stefanik, who scored a major political victory with the previous hearings, asked, citing a common anti-Zionist slogan. Shafik responded, “We have some disciplinary cases ongoing around that language.”
You don’t have to like anti-Israel language or activism to be worried about congressional demands to suppress it. These hearings are highly unusual; it’s hard to think of a time since the anti-Communist House Un-American Activities Committee when Congress has made such an effort to investigate disfavored ideologies in academe.
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Such pressure is the point: Republicans want to silence Israel’s opponents. In one of the hearing’s most farcical moments, Rick Allen, a Republican from Georgia, asked Shafik whether she knew Genesis 12:3. She didn’t recall the biblical passage offhand, so he explained it to her. “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,’” he said, explaining how this compact was confirmed in the New Testament.
“Do you consider that a serious issue?” Allen asked heatedly. “Do you want Columbia University to be cursed by God?” Shafik responded, “Definitely not.” Allen continued, “Young people are being indoctrinated by these professors to believe this stuff, and they have no idea that they’re going to be cursed by God, the God of the Bible and the God over our flag.”
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Just before the hearing began, a group of students from Columbia and its sister school, Barnard, organized a “Gaza solidarity encampment” on Columbia’s main lawn. On Thursday, Shafik took the extraordinary step of calling the police in to dismantle it, and over 100 people were arrested. The last time the school’s administration brought in the N.Y.P.D. to disperse demonstrations was in 1996, and many on campus were in shock.
*Time to put on Ohio by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young?*
UPI: Wild turkey populations declined in some areas of U.S.
Wild turkeys were abundant across North America when European settlers arrived. But people killed them indiscriminately year-round – sometimes for their meat and feathers, but settlers also took turkey eggs from nests and poisoned adult turkeys to keep them from damaging crops. Thanks to this unregulated killing and habitat loss, by 1900 wild turkeys had disappeared from much of their historical range.
Turkey populations gradually recovered over the 20th century, aided by regulation, conservation funding and state restoration programs. By the early 2000s, they could be found in Mexico, Canada and every U.S. state except Alaska.
Dead and dying shrubs and trees – some of which are found nowhere else on Earth – line more than 1,000km across the state’s south-west.
Kottke: “my therapist just told me that the NYT word games app is be…
“my therapist just told me that the NYT word games app is becoming a problem for many of her patients, including me … she asked me how long i spent every day doing them and i LIED”
— Tess Owen on Twitter
CBC: Slain tow truck kingpin had a target on his back for years, court documents show
Tow truck wars in Toronto. Quite the story!
No reports of injuries as fire affects several buildings at former airport.
Cybersecurity firm hired by pharmaceutical companies says it took down more than 250 sites last year.
Last Updated: 19.Apr.2024 23:47 EDT