Columbia U. hunger strike update–and a satirical counterprotest
I told you last week about the Columbia University hunger strike against Racism/Ethnocentrism/Gentrificationism/Etc.-ism. It’s still going. One hunger striker dropped out after feeling “jello-like.” The remaining protesters have moved indoors after dark because it’s too cold. A Barnard professor has joined the cause, wanting to relive his old anti-apartheid hunger strike memories.
Something called the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race (CSER) has also come out in support of the demonstrators. If you wonder why these Columbia U. college students write so obtusely, wonder no more:
We, members of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race core faculty and faculty advisory board, are very concerned for the health of our students who are involved in the hunger strike, now entering its sixth day, and we are worried about the health of our institution in responding to these actions.
The hunger strike by Columbia and Barnard students was prompted by a chain of racial incidents, but it is directed to longer standing issues, including Columbia’s expansion to Manhattanville, inadequate support for ethnic studies, and the failure of the Core Curriculum to engage in a sustained way with issues of race and ethnicity and with non-European cultures.
We concur with the students’ sense that recent incidents at Columbia indicate the need to build, bolster, and strengthen the community’s investment in research, teaching and administrative practices that challenge racial, ethnic, gender and sexual hierarchies. The university community as a whole needs to be reflexive about this moment: internal conflict at Columbia exhibits deeper tensions in the U.S. body politic and its education system.
The familiarity of the racist symbols that have been deployed (nooses, anti-Muslim slurs, swastikas) belies the newness of the situation that we face. Columbia is experiencing a highly mediated form of politics that test the practice of a key academic value, sustained and open discussion. We believe it is important for the community to be aware of this and to create spaces to address these challenges. Engaging the politics of the present requires investment in research infrastructure, patient and sustained discussion, and a willingness by students, faculty and administrators alike to confront the challenges before us with creativity and perseverance.
We are disappointed that there were no negotiations over the weekend. In order to protect the health of the students and the well-being of the community, we urge the administration and striking students to engage in responsible negotiations immediately.
Signed:
Coco Fusco
Nicholas De Genova
Jean Howard
Wen Jin
George Lewis
Claudio Lomnitz
Nicole Marwell
Frances Negrón-Muntaner
Mae Ngai
Pablo Piccato
Elizabeth Povinelli
Bruce Robbins
You’ll remember De Genova’s name from his call for “a million more Mogadishus.” Fight the Powah!
It’s hard to parody these multicultural mobsters, but some anonymous bloggers (likely on campus) have done a good job. At “Why We Act, Why We Eat,” there’s a satirical manifesto that incorporates the bloated rhetoric and self-absorption that have become the bread and butter (pardon the pun) of college campuses.
Now, if we can just get them some “Don’t Feed Me, Bro!” t-shirts… (thanks to Aztec):
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Hey Michelle,
WHERE’S THE ICE CREAM???
.
I love a good hunger strike. (fattening, but good)
This meeting will now come to order.
*faint voices in the background: “would you like fries with that?”
This surly needs a Faux News Update or I am going on strike! I swear I will eat nothing but food until this is resolved.
Hunger strike my doopa! Most of these college students are carrying around an extra 20 or 30 pounds and can sorely use the weight reduction. Notwithstanding their stupid cause, they should not eat to allow other more deserving (skinny) types to gorge themselves at their expense. That’s the liberal thing to do, right!
I know I am preaching to the converted, but…
1) Hunger strikes are voluntary
2) If the protesters faint from hunger, they should be given the option of going to a U.S. health care facility or a Cuban one.
3) Force the strikers to watch video clips of what Armageddonijad does to protesters in Iran before they invite him again.
4) Let em die, and use their remains as plant food, thereby preserving the ecosystem.
Respectfully,
eric
http://www.blacktygrrrr.wordpress.com
So during the day they protest outside? Someone should park a hotdog cart across the street from them.
Why did they move their hunger strike inside? All us vets know from cold weather training that the cold will reduce your feelings of hunger … so that cold weather would make their hunger strike even easier to handle.
I suspect there is plenty of (ch)eating going on during this so-called “hunger strike” … and if they move “inside” and out of sight it will become even easier to (ch)eat … I defy anyone to show me a college student that can go 24 hours without eating … let alone 6 days … Riiiiiight …
Oh, and…
I will eat 2x as much as normal today, red meat for lunch and dinner, to make up for their hunger strike.
This is called “food credits,” and I am now “food neutral,” because these imbeciles are fasting for me. I can feel myself getting slimmer already.
Respectfully,
eric aka the Tygrrrr Express
Maybe I can use the fact that they are not eating to buy food credits from them, then when I gorge on that double Whopper I can tell my wife “it’s ok, I bought food credits from Columbia.”
Works for Gore
Meatpie is right! I could lose a coupla pounds too — is there a hunger strike around here that might just last a few days?
They’re probably in their dorm rooms pigging out on pizza.
This whole hunger strike farce is street theatre, after all. As with any performance, enjoying it entails the willful suspension of disbelief, regardless of what happens backstage.
Whether or not the hunger strikers actually refrain from eating is irrelevant. What matters is that they are raising awareness on an important issue.
“groan”
are you sure it wasn’t BARNYARD professor – as in PIG or donkey?
This is important enough to hunger strike over…
Yet today, a TEN YEAR OLD was used in a suicide/homicide bomb, killing at least 6 people.
Where is their outrage over this?
I’m not complaining, but in the interest of accuracy I threw together that t-shirt design. Aztec is part of my super-duper-double-secret e-mail address.
Soylent Green says it all.
Are these folks students? A cursory looksee shows that the first four I searched to be faculty:
Nichole Marwell (Professor of Sociology)
Elizabeth A. Povinelli (Professor of Anthropology)
Claudio Lomnitz (Professor of Anthropology, CSER, Latino/a Studies)
Mae Ngai (Professor of History)
Paging Evan Coyne Maloney…I smell a sequel ;D
DelosWorld
good work on that shirt …
Well, I’m glad the people who signed the CSEO statement seem to be a veritable multicultural soup—I mean salad.
The next time somebody protests a hunger strike by eating, sign me up!
Yeah, I hate it when a bunch of nobodies get together and whine, thinking that’ll accomplish anything. If you truly want to do something for your cause, get together and vote. Whining just pisses us off. Of course, the people who whine generally have crappy causes, so if they actually voted… Okay, never mind—just keep on whining, but do it in an out-of-the-way place, like network television or a cave!
IOW, the ethnic studies folks want more support (money).
These departments are losing students like crazy, and these loafers are afraid for their jobs–that’s the real issue.
UMMMMM Just ate a meat loaf sandwich.
No way is Coco Fusco a real name.
Michelle observes:
Ah, dear lady, there is no need to parody them; what they are already doing and writing is such a damning self-caricature that anything you or the rest of us might try to top it or exploit it would seem amateurish by comparison.
The professors who wrote that manifesto or whatever it is are such a pathetic bunch – hot house flowers who could only survive and thrive in the cloistered little Never, Never Land of academia, and who wonder why nobody outside of the faculty lounge takes them seriously.
I’d be angrier at them, but the sense of pity gets in the way.
Image: Bear1909 downloading the statement from the (rotten to the) core CSER faculty at Columbia, into his BearWonk decoder ring—-
THEM: We, members of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race core faculty and faculty advisory board,
BEAR1909: Code for- “We, well paid upper-middle class people of color who are in the upper 5 percent salary range for all people of color anywhere in the known universe, who use subsidized office space, phone lines, internet connections, library and research facility resources, paper clips, paper, pens, student labor, editorial services, teaching facilities, and cafeteria meal cards and faculty dining privileges….”
THEM: We are very concerned
BEAR1909: Code for- we are going to tell you what to do for our sakes and our image as the be all and know all of Leftist petty bourgeois politics in the Great Marxist Tradition; after all we do wear berets and have deep friendships with bureaucrats working in dictatorships and military juntas throughout Latin America and Africa.
THEM:for the health of our students who are involved in the hunger strike, now entering its sixth day, and we are worried about the health of our institution in responding to these actions.
BEAR1909: Code for- we cannot tolerate not being in control of the little leftist monsters we have created, and, who now are out of reach of our literary machinations and posturing that work so well when we control their reward system (grades).
THEM:The hunger strike by Columbia and Barnard students was prompted by a chain of racial incidents, but it is directed to longer standing issues, including Columbia’s expansion to Manhattanville, inadequate support for ethnic studies, and the failure of the Core Curriculum to engage in a sustained way with issues of race and ethnicity and with non-European cultures.
BEAR1909: (I admire how everything must be a “core”. Core this and core that. Wormy applez I say- all of their cores.) Code- We need to define this issue in terms of the Marxist Bubble Factory we live in.
THEM:We concur with the students’ sense that recent incidents at Columbia indicate the need to build, bolster, and strengthen the community’s investment in research, teaching and administrative practices that challenge racial, ethnic, gender and sexual hierarchies.
BEAR1909: (Build Bolster and strengthen….It harkens back to the era of surfing movies….Beach Blanket Babylon…alliteration for the sake of having impact on the reader….. ooooo weeeeee. These are so good!)
Code for- We want everybody to support us writing a grant for our “core” faculty so we can then publish a book of recipes for social engineering that includes Ahmedinejad’s policies against Israel and the extermination of the Jews.
Investment= taking other peoples earned money and property from prior decades of teaching and research that equipped markets and market makers and the self-motivated to function. We know best how to make the many live for the few.
THEM: The university community as a whole needs to be reflexive about this moment: internal conflict at Columbia exhibits deeper tensions in the U.S. body politic and its education system.
BEAR1909: Code- We the unknowing want to extend our unearned influence into the realm of national politics so we might indict President Bush and VP Cheney for leading the nation into an unjust war, while using the US university system as co-opted assets that must be returned to peaceful use.
THEM:The familiarity of the racist symbols that have been deployed (nooses, anti-Muslim slurs, swastikas) belies the newness of the situation that we face.
BEAR1909: Code- Pay no attention to the fact that we worship America’s enemies. Pay attention to the re-hashed phony “hate crime” happy horse hockey that makes the entire University chase its tail. Pay no attention to our confounding rhetoric- “The familiarity of…..belies the newness of the situation that we face.” Pay attention to the fact that you do not speak our lingo and that, therefore, positions us to control the debate. We know. You don’t. We know. You can’t.
THEM: Columbia is experiencing a highly mediated form of politics that test the practice of a key academic value, sustained and open discussion.
BEAR1909: Code- We’ve made a helluva mess of the Ivy League. You cannot have anything to do with anything on campus that doesn’t praise and adore homosexuals. Unless you are a Persian Dictator. Sustained = We get to say anything we want whenever we want. Even on your front lawn. Open= Gay.
THEM: We believe it is important for the community to be aware of this and to create spaces to address these challenges.
BEAR1909: Code- “Create spaces”= disrupt the normal functioning of the University and turn all classrooms and lecture space, hallways and lounge areas into a campus wide sit in. And we get to “facilitate” all the interactions to prevent them from being “co-opted” by rational thinking.
THEM:Engaging the politics of the present requires investment in research infrastructure, patient and sustained discussion, and a willingness by students, faculty and administrators alike to confront the challenges before us with creativity and perseverance.
BEAR1909: Code- “Drop everything for us. We live in reality. You live in the past. Even though our students are using outmoded political strategy, encouraged by us, acting as human shields.” (Research infrastructure? For what? Fight global warming?)
THEM:We are disappointed that there were no negotiations over the weekend. In order to protect the health of the students and the well-being of the community, we urge the administration and striking students to engage in responsible negotiations immediately.
BEAR1909: Code- “We are going to guilt Daddy into giving us the car keys.” (In this instance, “responsible negotiations” is an oxymoron.)
Google her. A 90s has been.
Michele said:
But I recall the great parody of the Cindy Sheehan hunger strike!
I think a revivial is in order.
Errah, I’m gonna join them in spirit after dinner!
bear1909
ok … where do I get my Bear De-coder Ring???
So, when did the hanging of one “noose-like” object constitute “a chain of racial incidents.”
CSER: Proof that “professional minorities” can’t count.
They should call themselves the Citizens for the Severing of Equitable Relations.
Bear 1909
I’m afraid my Ragman decoder ring just came up with “blah-blah-blah”, “chicks with armpit hair”, “waahhh”.
That’s one heck of a machine you’ve got there.
Can I just say “I don’t care if they starve”? Everybody has a gripe these days!!!! College kids don’t know SQUAT about life. Heck, they are fresh out of high school!!!! I don’t know who I want to slap first….the kids themselves or the parents of said students. I guess I should be happy that neither of my children go to college.
BTW Meatpie #3? “doopa”? I know what that is. lol Just curious how you know. : )
As an alternative to letting these morons starve to death — which would be peachy-keen with me as they are all candidates for this year’s Darwin Award — someone should start barbecuing ribs and burgers upwind from them. And someone should videotape the “hunger strikers” breaking ranks….
I built this over 30 years inside the belly of the beast.
These emotional vampires are living off the human suffering that they use to write their books, paint their pictures,
and get tenure.
The carnage of other peoples lives that comprises the position of this “Core” at Columbia and other places would turn your stomach.
I made this machine in order to survive the swallowing one has to do in those circles in order to survive.
Insane in their membranes.
I started to ditto that and then realized, I’d have more fun reading that then trying to decode it!
Teddy!!! What’s for dinner?
I had a W. decoder ring so it all came out in Espanol.
Ragman,
Mine said almost the same thing but threw in a boo-freakin’-hoo
I went on a hunger strike for a year once.
SOS!
“Draft Beer, not boys”, “Hell no, we won’t go”, “Make love, not war”, “Eighteen today, dead tomorrow”, and “LBJ – pull out like your old man should have!”
BTW,GFY!
I strike hunger every time I eat a meal.
Back in my active duty Navy days, I remember a junior officer on one of my ships who had done his undergraduate degree at Harvard, and was a College Republican, or Young Conservative. He used to keep us in stitches with stories about how he and his cohorts would taunt the liberal demonstrators who had constructed a shanty town on Harvard Common to show solidarity for the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. During the day, when the local media was present, the shanty town was authentic, no power, no running water, and so on. But after the cameras were turned off, the demonstrators fired up their Honda generators, and ran the refrigerators and stereos.
Not that their cause wasn’t a good one, but I can only assume some of them might be on the faculty at Columbia today.
Going inside at night because it’s cold? Come on, grow a Richard.
I had to drop off line about 30 minutes ago to start a batch of home made bread. After reading about these clowns I’m really going to enjoy eating it!
Oh for the days of military schools and convents for dimwitted, wealthy brats like them….
And into the cafeteria because they were hungry?
“Gentrificationisim”… LOL.
I think it is amusing they think that a strike will change the curriculum at the university. When I went to college, I chose a school that had the curriculum I wanted and did not choose the school, then strike for them to change their curriculum for me! This is what happens to kids who are taught from day one that they are #1 – it’s the lame self-esteem era junk that’s led to college kids having over-inflated egos and thinking the world owes them. After all, isn’t that what Mommy and Daddy say?
Someone should remind these “faculty” members that these students are, in fact, adults and are responsible for their own actions. The school is not keeping them from eating, therefore their worry for their health and such is just wasted. Their discussion with the higher-ups, trying to force a discussion based on their childishness is just out of line. I am willing to bet that not a single one of them will suffer ill effects, nor will this go one that much longer. Guaranteed, they will suffer from a bad case of “What the Hell was I thinking” any minute now.
Once again, it is the Liberals treating grown adults like they are children. Classic.
It is good to be Conservative. And good to be taking my wife to dinner tonight for her birthday. Mmmm…Mmmmm
Happy B-day Mrs. Fireman!
I thought this guy played for the Red Sox?
#23,
I’m not saying it’s not a real person, I’m just saying I can’t picture any parent with a surname of Fusco saying “I know, let’s name here Coco!”.
This one girl I went to high school with is participating in the strike. She also was the only one to walk out on one of those disrupt-everything anti war days.
#47 – lol
Coco Crisp….as AJ mentioned. There are some Strange birds out there…
OT-
Happy Birthday bear!!!
Cake!
and the yanks have Milky, cmon they need to be on the same team.
Michelle, why don’t you bake them a cake since you recently did so for your sons birthday? This time use a George Bush mold from Wilton or better yet a Dick Cheney face cake. They’d eat it alive then! You could decorate it with Hillary Clinton fallen flags or even plant something in the cake!
I’m going to enjoy my dessert & coffee watching the NFL tonight.
Oh, off the subject but not entirely, Keith the Olby plans on roughing up Fox news tonight on his show. Fortunately for me my cable company dropped MSNBC from the grouping.
Obviously, the fasting clowns were clued off and have now adopted a Muslim fasting technique … only during daylight hours.
They obviously lack the forethought necessary in order to make their protest work. And we’re supposed to take them seriously?…right.
Applause for those who suggested parking a hot dog stand close close by, or cooking steaks and hamburgers upwind from the protesters.
Jackson’s Never Neverland is up for grabs. Why don’t these angst-filled protesters move over there?
I recommend that somebody start baking cookies next to this hunger strike and lets see how long it lasts. Or have a counter-protest where every half hour, a pizza is delivered and eaten in front of their hungry faces. Power to the Pepperoni!
All those suggestions are all well and good, but nothing, and I mean absolutely NOTHING gives someone the munchies more or faster than fresh popped popcorn. It is cheap, easy and will have them drooling link the brain damaged morons they are in under five minutes.
Don’t forget the butter.
Ooooo…even better…Kettle Corn. Mmmmm…
I was in NYC yesterday, but am home in San Francisco now. If I had known about this, I would have run up there with a selection of food to eat in front of these morons.
Why do these types always look like they need a bath and a cheeseburger?
#28, Ragman, careful, you’re getting Bill Clinton excited. (Except for “blah-blah” which he does get at home.)
Unbelievable…well, no. It would appear that the Columbia University hierarchy can be intimidated into diversity focus by a handful of people laying off their hummus and sprouts for a couple days. They are caving.
On a side note. Perhaps a group of conservative students should hold a “Red Meat-a-thon” in the same fashion…demanding more conservative staff as well as a couple extra credit points for the true on campus minority, ‘common sense Conservatives.” Yeah…that’ll work…especially if they butcher the poor cow right there in front of the library.
TASTE OF VICTORY AT COLUMBIA– Today’s NY Post