0:04

Welcome to Citations Needed, a podcast on

0:06

the media, power, PR and the history

0:08

of bullshit. I am Nima Shirazi.

0:10

I'm Adam Johnson. Welcome

0:12

to our live stream tonight. Thank

0:15

you so much for joining us tonight. Adam,

0:18

we'll be discussing the

0:20

so-called crisis on America's

0:23

campuses as our

0:25

beloved media continues to depict

0:27

the very rational, very organized

0:29

anti-genocide protests around the country,

0:31

whether it's in New

0:33

York City, Columbia University or NYU or

0:35

CUNY or across the country,

0:37

UCLA and elsewhere. This

0:39

idea that the media is depicting this

0:42

so-called crisis really is like

0:44

a social contagion, right? Spreading

0:46

throughout, zoomer hate mobs across these

0:48

bastions of liberal academia. Woe

0:51

is me. What are we possibly going to do? Obviously,

0:53

the last thing we're going to do is

0:56

actually listen to the students, actually listen to the

0:58

protesters. And maybe consider

1:00

not continuing to support genocide.

1:02

No, not an option. Yes,

1:05

thank you so much for joining us.

1:07

I'm really excited to talk to people

1:10

who've actually involved in the organizing itself

1:12

rather than sort of pontificating. By the

1:14

way, intermittently throughout this, you'll hear my

1:16

seven-week-old baby cry in the background. Oh,

1:19

don't give that a squirter. It's so much more

1:21

exciting. Well, it just happened. I was letting you

1:23

know that it wasn't the television or anything like

1:25

that. It is a real human. So it's just

1:27

having to talk to people who've actually done organizing

1:29

or actually sort of out there engaging in these

1:31

media narratives and media sort of counter narratives rather

1:33

than just doing pungentry from their couch. Yes,

1:36

indeed. So with that... Like a certain podcaster, I

1:38

know. With that intro,

1:40

we welcome our

1:42

two guests tonight. We are joined by

1:45

Leila Saliba and Jonathan

1:47

Ben Menachem. Leila is a Palestinian-American

1:49

graduate student at Columbia University studying

1:51

social work with a concentration in

1:54

policy practice. And Jon

1:56

is a PhD candidate in sociology, also

1:58

at Columbia, where he researches the politics

2:01

of criminalization and crime. Journalism, John and

2:03

Layla, thank you so much for joining

2:05

us today on Citations Needed. Thank

2:08

you so much for having us. I

2:10

want to start off by asking you a

2:12

general question for those who aren't familiar,

2:15

just to lay the groundwork. These protests

2:18

began in mid-April, if I'm not

2:20

mistaken, these encampments rather. I know protests

2:22

preceded that. I guess I

2:24

want to start off by asking what was the

2:26

impetus for the encampment model? I know there had

2:29

been historical antecedents, but do you

2:31

all know what inspired that? Obviously the situation is

2:33

very desperate, so I know people were doing whatever

2:35

they could. There had been protests, quite

2:37

a few of them, certain days of action. But

2:40

I'm curious why the focus on campus, I know there

2:42

are general ethos as you protest where you are. These

2:44

colleges, especially these hedge funds that

2:47

happen to teach schools like Columbia, do have a

2:49

lot invested in the war machine in general, and

2:51

specifically in Israeli companies. Obviously there's

2:53

historical examples with South Africa, et cetera. So

2:55

can you talk about the impetus for that,

2:57

other than you guys getting direct orders from

3:00

your handlers in China, as I'm

3:02

told by Republicans in Congress? Outside

3:04

of that, outside of the orders from Beijing.

3:06

Carrier pigeons arriving in Tehran. Right, yeah. What

3:10

was the impetus behind that, and what

3:12

was the urgency of that decision? Really

3:15

we felt that it was necessary due to

3:18

the urgency of the situation. Students

3:20

at Columbia had tried all kinds

3:22

of methods to really get the

3:24

attention of not only administration, but

3:26

also draw attention to the ongoing

3:28

genocide in Gaza. And

3:30

we tried all kinds of stuff. We tried

3:33

petitions. People have written op-eds,

3:35

walkouts, rallies, protests,

3:38

protesting outside of the

3:40

president's house, et cetera. And none of

3:42

that seemed to merit any kind of

3:45

response or even acknowledgement. And

3:47

as a Palestinian student, especially as

3:49

somebody who has lost family members

3:52

in Gaza, the way

3:54

that Palestinian students have been treated by

3:56

Columbia has been really, really horrible. It's

3:58

like as if we're not even... seen

4:00

as human, like how dare we

4:02

object to what is going

4:04

on in Gaza. And not

4:07

to say that like camping

4:10

on a college lawn is like the same

4:12

thing as what is going on in Gaza.

4:14

But the reason why we did tents is

4:16

because it was symbolic. Because

4:19

people in Gaza, they're having to stay in

4:21

tents, my family members are in tents. And

4:24

we also realized too, was that this

4:26

was a way to like physically take

4:29

up space, especially in

4:31

a university that is so

4:33

individualistic, that is so cutthroat

4:36

and competitive. Part of what was really

4:38

cool with the encampment was how we

4:41

were able to build such a sense

4:43

of community. I mean, we had a

4:45

free library, we had like a first

4:48

aid tent, we had regular hot meals

4:50

being passed out three times a day.

4:52

And it was like, at a university

4:55

where it's supposed to be like everything

4:57

is optimized, everything is always in

4:59

anticipation for the next best thing. This

5:02

was an act of reclamation. This was

5:04

us slowing down and saying, hey, we

5:07

want to take back campus. We don't

5:09

think the way that Columbia is treating

5:11

Palestinian students and Palestinians in general, we

5:13

don't think that's acceptable. We don't think

5:15

that's okay. And we believe

5:17

in something better. And it's also been

5:19

frustrating too. Like, I would

5:21

say, not only from like, campus

5:24

administration, but just like the media

5:26

in general, just the consistent dehumanization of

5:29

Palestinians, that's a big theme that we're

5:31

seeing. And you can kind of see

5:33

that in how media outlets how they

5:35

respond to us. It's almost

5:38

like, oh, why are they protesting? Why are

5:40

they protesting, etc. They're not

5:42

seeing us as human. Yeah, so at

5:44

the risk of being so much cheesy, I

5:47

visited the encampments at DePaul

5:49

with my family, my

5:51

three year old and my six week old baby. One

5:53

thing that sort of did strike me was the sense

5:55

of community, the garden, there was a sort of medical

5:57

tent, an area for kids to play. You

6:00

showed up and we were just you know, come here,

6:02

you know, he's your three-year-old. Let's give him some food,

6:04

etc There was obviously people doing learn ins all that

6:07

stuff. That is not the sort of

6:09

general impression I think the average person has gotten in the

6:11

media I know there's been some sympathetic coverage here and there

6:13

but the general vibe is that this is a Anti-semitic

6:16

hate mob that is full of people in sort

6:18

of terrorist garb and there and their blah blah

6:20

blah the sort of things You guys know about

6:23

now obviously guy only visited for an hour I'm this is

6:25

my sort of token dipping my dip, you know, my sort

6:27

of finger in the water and Token

6:30

activism but obviously I didn't see that

6:32

I know most most people in good faith don't see

6:34

that So I kind of want to talk

6:36

about if you could the way it was portrayed in the media

6:38

from y'all's perspective Was this idea that

6:40

it was inherently sort of sinister and kind

6:43

of vaguely menacing, you know They

6:45

would not pick here and there obviously pick people who

6:47

are not even in the protest or outside the protest

6:49

Obviously any kind of large protest whether it's Occupy Wall

6:51

Street or Black Lives Matter You're gonna have the occasional

6:53

crank that kind of goes without saying I want

6:56

you to talk about what y'all saw in the media coverage I know

6:58

this is a generalization if you want you can focus on the

7:00

New York Times or focus on I mean, we

7:02

can forget the New York Post. It's not even worth talking about but maybe

7:04

some of the more liberal Strains generally

7:06

what was your sort of general impression between what

7:09

you saw what you experienced versus how it was

7:11

perceived Especially by the president

7:13

who of course went on TV and basically said it

7:15

was a violent hate mob Well,

7:17

the New York Times before they even

7:20

came on campus They named

7:22

their slack channel about the encampments

7:24

like anti-semitism on campus Right

7:27

before they had even visited us

7:30

so it really goes to show like

7:32

these people pretty much had a perspective

7:34

or a view that they

7:37

wanted to stick to and They

7:39

were insistent on sticking to that view no matter

7:41

what it also felt like to it was like

7:44

The way that they are portraying students It's

7:46

like we were either these spoiled rich kids

7:48

who have no clue what we were doing

7:50

or we are like these trained Militants

7:54

who are like personally part of Hamas

7:56

or something. It was like the one or the other Was

7:59

the biggest thing. And it's like, the

8:01

media wasn't really taking the time to

8:03

listen to students. I would also say

8:05

too, is a lot of media outlets

8:08

felt really entitled to students. And

8:10

they were really pushy and really

8:13

aggressive, especially to, I

8:15

would say like outlets such as CNN,

8:17

for example, CNN was particularly bad. They

8:19

got videos of people being arrested, and

8:21

they were talking about like doxxing them

8:23

and they were sitting there and laughing.

8:26

And it was like, these are students, like

8:29

it felt as if people were so focused

8:31

on let's sell this story. Let's

8:34

get this narrative out there. Instead of

8:36

like treating us as actual students. It

8:39

was honestly like it was it was challenging to

8:41

be on campus because it was like, you

8:43

would go on campus and you

8:45

would be surrounded by ABC, NBC,

8:47

Bloomberg, CNN, the New York Times,

8:50

Washington Post, New York Post, etc.

8:52

And like the New York Post

8:54

wrote individual like hit articles about

8:57

us, the Wall Street Journal op-ed

8:59

section, which that's

9:02

its whole own conversation, the Wall Street Journal

9:04

op-ed section. But like you can always tell

9:06

that people in power whenever they're upset, one

9:08

of the best things to look at is

9:11

the Wall Street Journal op-ed section. They are

9:13

writing op-ed after op-ed about us.

9:15

And we really think that this media

9:17

attention was brought on us, A,

9:19

to villainize us, but also

9:21

because people in power are scared of

9:23

what we're doing. They know that Columbia

9:25

students are influential. I mean,

9:28

like you look at Anthony Blinken right

9:30

now, he's a Columbia alum, the White

9:32

House press secretary, she's a Columbia alumni.

9:34

So when people in power are scared of

9:36

you, they'll do anything they can do, they'll

9:38

use all of their resources in

9:40

order to make you look like the bad guy. Yeah,

9:43

there's the discrediting part and also the,

9:45

you know, anything they can do to

9:47

not engage with what you're actually saying.

9:49

John, I'd love to bring you in

9:51

as someone who not only goes to

9:53

Columbia, was present there at the encampment,

9:55

but also studies this journalistic approach. Would

9:57

love to hear your thoughts on this.

10:00

Yeah, I mean, I think the great victory for

10:02

the sort of like pro Israel

10:04

media apparatus is that we have

10:06

a large month long news cycle

10:08

about, you know, Ivy League campus

10:10

politics, like the whole point of the

10:13

protests in the first place was to draw attention to

10:15

Gaza. Now it's just like, hit

10:17

after hit on TV about sort of like,

10:19

how it doesn't feel safe to be Jewish

10:21

or whatever. I don't know. It's

10:23

been this very successful rhetorical trap. I

10:26

also wanted to add it on the New York

10:28

Times Slack thing. They had a front page vertical

10:31

called anti-Semitism on campus. Like the

10:33

Slack name corresponded to like how their

10:35

their front page was organized. And the

10:37

story that they wrote about the first

10:39

wave of arrests gone like April 17th

10:41

or 18th, that like was under their

10:43

anti-Semitism on campus vertical, as if

10:45

to imply that like this police

10:48

action that Columbia requested was about

10:50

protecting Jews when like many Jews

10:52

were arrested. But that's not even the important point,

10:54

right? It's like, why do Jews have to be

10:56

brought in so that Palestinians can say whatever they'd

10:58

like to say? Yeah, I

11:00

want to talk about that a little bit, because

11:02

I think a lot of sort of the proverbial

11:04

well-meaning liberal can sort of look at this and

11:06

say like, well, again, I think if one genuinely

11:09

believes if one kind of ingest the ideology that

11:11

criticism of Zionism is per se a form of

11:13

racism, they genuinely believe that that you can't sort

11:15

of oppose the project of ethnic supremacy in the

11:17

Levant without being a sort of

11:19

mindless anti-Semite. This is

11:21

why these kind of solipsistic criteria of do you

11:23

feel safe or not are not quite that convincing.

11:26

Because like we mentioned in the previous episode, like

11:28

a lot of right wingers are not safe around

11:30

pro-abortion rallies. You know, a lot of white people

11:32

don't feel safe around black people, like feeling safe

11:34

is in and of itself not a very meaningful

11:36

statement, because there has to be tethered

11:38

to some substance. You can't just sort of say

11:41

I feel unsafe. Again, me personally,

11:43

I'm going to concentrate on feeling unsafe because I'm

11:45

neurotic and weak. So I want to sort of

11:47

talk about that. Now, again, obviously, this is to say

11:49

there aren't instances of anti-Semitism. I think everyone can agree

11:51

that, people say stupid shit,

11:53

it happens, especially politically unsophisticated people say

11:55

stupid shit, clearly. And obviously, there's

11:57

a whole apparatus around they're sort of in the weeds to to

12:00

kind of nutpick and say, well, look at that. We've

12:02

seen this in every activist movement since Vietnam

12:04

or the civil rights movement. So I wanna

12:06

sort of talk about how you've perceived, how

12:08

you all have perceived this kind of what

12:10

we call cry-bullism, this sort of false narrative

12:12

of inversing the victim status. And

12:15

again, if one sort of skims the coverage of Donna

12:17

Bash and the New York Times, you

12:19

would be under the impression that this was a

12:21

pogrom or kind of proto-pogrom of

12:23

Jews in New York. And this strikes me as

12:25

I think not at all remotely related to reality.

12:27

I'm trying to sort of talk about this idea

12:30

of using the liberal, I'm trying to be

12:32

understated, using this kind of

12:35

liberal safetyism rhetoric and

12:37

sort of piecing together. And obviously also the

12:39

sort of conflation of Zionism with Judaism, right?

12:41

So you sort of say any kind of

12:43

liberatory slogan is inherently gonna be a form

12:46

of sort of metaphysical genocide as

12:48

opposed to the actual one, but that's

12:50

a separate conversation. While also doing everything

12:52

they could to avoid actually honestly reporting

12:54

on anything, but also when they were

12:56

like Passover Satyrs literally held in encampments

12:58

that like was so contrary to the

13:00

narrative that it was not allowed to

13:03

be kind of a sticky media point.

13:06

So there's all this focus

13:08

on campus safety,

13:10

but it seems as if

13:12

that concept of safety

13:14

is only for a select group

13:16

of students. And if you are

13:18

Arab, Muslim, Palestinian, if you support

13:20

Palestine, safety is something that is

13:22

not given to you. At

13:25

Columbia, for example, like they've

13:27

been so focused on protest

13:30

chants, for example, especially the

13:32

term Intifada, that's really made

13:34

people upset. One

13:36

of the reasons that they say it

13:39

makes them upset is that Israelis were

13:41

killed during the Intifadas, but also many

13:43

Palestinians were killed. And

13:45

yet it's not a threat to our

13:47

safety. So it's like what they're doing

13:49

is they're weaponizing this use

13:52

of language, the safety threat, to

13:55

kind of shut down

13:57

or silence and all

13:59

speech related. Palestine. I mean, I've been

14:01

told before that me wearing my kaffia is

14:03

scary. And I was like, I'm not a scary

14:05

person. Y'all like I'm five one and I rescue pigeons.

14:08

I'm not a scary person. And

14:10

so that's been frustrating. And what's also

14:12

going on too is like, there's

14:15

all this concern about protest chance, but then

14:17

when it comes to students being put in

14:19

actual physical danger. Like for example, when we

14:22

were attacked with chemicals, I was one

14:24

of the students that was attacked. It was

14:26

by two ex Israeli soldiers,

14:29

and 15 students had to

14:31

go to the hospital. Yet Columbia

14:33

could not bother to send out a

14:35

campus wide email, even though

14:38

both of these students post a direct

14:40

danger to other students. What

14:42

they did do is when

14:44

students at a Columbia law school event,

14:46

or reading out the names of people

14:49

who had lost their lives in Gaza,

14:51

that was seen as a threat

14:54

safety, simply reading the names of

14:56

dead Palestinians. But then

14:58

people getting attacked with chemicals, that's

15:00

not a threat safety. And

15:02

you can also see it too with the language that

15:06

Manu Shafiq, the Columbia president,

15:08

her whole justification for shutting

15:10

down the encampment was student

15:13

safety. But NYPD

15:15

did not keep students safe.

15:18

Both times and NYPD also injured

15:20

students. During the second round of

15:23

arrests, we have students

15:25

who got concussions. We had

15:27

one student who was kicked in the face

15:29

so hard, the bone behind their eye, the

15:31

orbital bone it fractured from being kicked in

15:33

the face so hard. We have

15:36

students who have nerve damage from

15:38

handcuffs and zip ties being around

15:40

their wrists so tight. Yet,

15:44

that's not seen as a threat to

15:46

student safety. So it's like

15:48

they're trying to weaponize this concept of

15:51

safety to silence any and all dissent.

15:54

And also what they're doing is

15:56

that with this concept of

15:58

safety, it's ever

16:00

evolving and ever changing. Sometimes

16:02

some things are scary, but then

16:04

they're not. It changes to however

16:07

they view us as a

16:10

threat. Yeah, I'm gonna touch real

16:12

quick and then John, I'll let you jump in.

16:14

You see this a lot, this kind of

16:16

deliberate demagoguery around misinterpreting Arabic words, especially

16:18

around the word martyr. And sort of seen

16:20

as this, it has obviously is a totally different meaning because people

16:22

are brainwashed by watching 24 and watching all this

16:25

shit and you say, oh, martyr, and they're much, dar, dar. Without

16:28

really understanding the context of what these words mean.

16:30

And then you see people deliberately pander to that

16:32

without explanation. Everything that's Arabic, again,

16:35

due to I think 2025, going

16:37

back to sort of Delta Force, like 50 years

16:39

of just constant sort of association of Arabic

16:42

as being inherently sinister or terroristic or anti-Semitic.

16:44

And they know that they're playing to this ignorance. And you

16:46

see this a lot with intifada, with martyr. So

16:50

then you have to sort of spend 20 minutes doing a

16:52

little lesson about language. And you're already on your back

16:54

foot, right? And that's kind of the point. The

16:56

whole point is distraction. If you're sitting there

16:58

and you're talking about campus safety

17:01

and you're talking about, oh, what this word

17:03

means, you can't talk about the

17:05

genocide that's going on in Gaza. Yeah,

17:07

I mean, I really wanna just keep harping on

17:09

the safety point. Like we had a vehicular salt

17:11

on one of our demonstrations like on May 7th.

17:14

Rovane Kahane, this like middle-aged real

17:17

estate developer, like drove his car

17:19

into like a demo, right?

17:21

Like there's an Associated Press article about this,

17:23

right? And we thought the last name was

17:25

a coincidence, but it turns out he's the

17:28

cousin of May, or Kahane, like actual sort

17:30

of like JDL family members doing

17:32

like Charlottesville tactics. And the NYPD

17:34

arrested the assault victim and another

17:36

bystander who was on the security

17:38

team. Yeah, and of course the

17:41

Washington Post reported that Eric Adams was, yeah, in

17:43

direct talks with pro-is-real donors, basically saying you need

17:45

to send in the police. I

17:47

wanna go back to the chemical attack. You sort of casually mentioned

17:50

that for those who aren't familiar, I feel like

17:52

we sort of casually dropped the idea of being attacked

17:54

by an unknown chemical agent and kind of moved on.

17:57

But again, this is not, because it isn't registered. This was

17:59

barely covered in media. I will

18:01

eventually will do an analysis of that coverage, but we

18:03

don't have the empirical evidence, but I think it's fair

18:05

to sort of assume or rather fair to based on

18:07

a kind of cursory knowledge that this was not made

18:09

a big deal of it certainly wasn't brought up in

18:12

these Republican congressional witch hunt dress downs They're doing so

18:14

talk about that. Tell us what happened and what happened

18:16

to the sort of alleged perpetrator. Yeah,

18:18

so the alleged perpetrators They

18:21

were found guilty and they've

18:23

been suspended by the school But notably

18:25

the school did not expel them Even

18:28

though the school is looking to

18:31

expel students who have protested

18:33

for Palestine So just I'm sorry. I wait

18:35

back up they they unleashed a chemical weapon on other students

18:37

and they were not expelled Yes,

18:40

Wow people got expelled for much worse in

18:42

Animal House. Yeah, I mean think about yeah if it had

18:44

been the other way Yeah, exactly

18:47

and also too is like

18:49

notice there was no congressional

18:51

hearings it was never brought

18:53

up and What

18:56

happened I really thought

18:58

that this happening to us Because

19:02

Columbia hadn't taken us seriously for so

19:04

long I thought that once this happened

19:06

this would change how Columbia would

19:09

respond surely 15 students being hospitalized

19:11

Surely Columbia would have to do something different,

19:14

but they didn't they try to shove this

19:16

under the rug as much as possible I've

19:19

talked to Different members of Congress

19:21

and they're all like yeah, we know about it,

19:23

but we're not allowed to talk about it Which

19:26

means there must be some kind of like gag

19:28

order Being placed on

19:30

politicians or politicians being instructed to not

19:32

talk about this Something

19:34

else too is like NYPD. They have not

19:37

arrested the people who attacked us They've just

19:39

told us this is an ongoing investigation

19:41

and will not give us any kind of

19:43

updates But this the university knows who they

19:45

are in theory, right? Yeah,

19:47

and they haven't arrested anyone Nope, holy

19:49

shit, and we found we

19:51

filed five police reports

19:54

and also Two

19:56

is like when it happened like

19:59

the University thought we were like joking

20:01

at first. I remember the day that it

20:03

happened, it was January 19. And

20:06

so there's the smell and

20:08

the air I was at this rally. And

20:11

it just smelled like somebody had just died. I

20:13

was like, what is going on? What is that

20:15

smell? And then it ended up being the chemicals

20:17

that they used on us. And

20:19

so we have Palestinians from the West Bank

20:21

at Columbia. And they were like, Oh, this

20:24

is probably skunk, because it

20:26

sticks your hair and your skin and your

20:28

clothing. And so people were

20:31

really sick after the rally, they were like

20:33

throwing up, they had headaches, and

20:35

like our clothes smelled like sewage. And I was

20:37

just like, this is not normal, like something

20:39

is going on here. And so

20:42

I reported it that night to

20:44

the police. But it was like,

20:46

Columbia didn't even address it until

20:49

four days later. And they still did

20:51

not let the entire school know, like

20:54

we were literally posting photos

20:56

of people like at the hospital and

20:58

at the ER, and like tagging Columbia.

21:01

And being like, you need to do something about this.

21:04

And nothing. Yeah,

21:07

I mean, I think, you know, look, we've

21:09

seen media coverage of

21:11

any kind of protest against

21:13

genocide, ranging from, you know,

21:16

as you've kind of covered in all

21:18

the different levels here, patronizing and head

21:21

padding to completely hysterical and racist, you

21:23

know, assuming things right off the bat,

21:25

even as we've said, kind of where

21:27

you place this coverage in your newspaper

21:30

vertical or online, right, kind of gives

21:32

a framework to how this is being

21:34

covered. But something that we really want

21:36

to get your take on is

21:39

a clip from CNN Newsnight, which

21:41

really is much more in the

21:44

patronizing camp, the more kind of liberal

21:46

concerned trolly elements really, really come alive

21:48

in this kind of punditry. So we're

21:50

going to watch a clip. It is

21:52

a little over two minutes long, but

21:54

I think it is worth it to

21:56

watch this and then we can comment

21:58

on it. It is with

22:00

Frank Bruni on, as I

22:02

said, CNN Newsnight. The most

22:04

unremarkable and forgettable New York

22:06

Times columnist, you know, that

22:08

includes Gail Collins. So

22:11

he wrote this book, he's doing promo for this book

22:13

about how there's a grievance politics on the right and

22:15

the left and both play to extremes. And I don't

22:17

know if you guys have heard this before, but what

22:19

if there's like extremes and like

22:21

there's a center and the extremes are bad and

22:23

the center is good. You guys heard this thesis

22:26

before? It's a new provocative thesis he's working on.

22:28

He did, he did, he poured over mountains

22:30

and mountains and decades of social science and came

22:32

to this conclusion that the extreme things are bad

22:35

and things in the middle are inherently good. So

22:38

he's trying to shoehorn in this incredibly

22:40

banal eighth grade thesis into

22:42

the current protest movement. And here

22:44

he gets a softball interview with

22:46

CNN where they do nuanced trolling,

22:48

complexity trolling, and of course,

22:51

completely misrepresent everything the protests were saying and

22:53

doing. Play the clip. Totally.

22:56

Two weeks ago, CNN, Frank Bruni talking

22:58

to Abby Phillip on Newsnight. Let's

23:01

take a listen and a watch. I

23:04

want to start kind of with the big picture here because

23:06

we've been seeing these images from the schools. But

23:09

what's beneath them is what

23:11

I see as a strain of absolutism.

23:15

What do you see and where do you think that that comes from?

23:17

No, I think you're absolutely right. Some of what

23:19

we're seeing is specific to the war in Gaza,

23:21

right? Some of it is particular to

23:23

the environment of a college campus. But

23:25

I think a lot of this is about a larger

23:28

culture in context and a

23:30

way in which every disagreement in American life

23:32

right now gets raised to or near the

23:34

boiling point. And that happens

23:36

because the opposite sides dig in. Nobody really wants

23:38

to understand where the other side's coming from. We

23:42

confuse conviction and confrontation. And then

23:44

as you saw in what Donald

23:46

Trump was saying just then, you have various

23:48

political actors come in to score political points,

23:51

right? And they have no interest in calming

23:53

the situation. They just want to exploit and

23:55

inflame it. Right now you have the right

23:57

saying this shows an entire generation brainwashed by

23:59

wokeness. And you have the left

24:01

saying that this shows the dawn of an

24:03

oppressive police state. It shows neither of those

24:05

things. But when you shout those complaints in

24:08

the public square, you guarantee this is going to go on

24:10

and get worse. Yeah, I'm so fascinated

24:12

by the pro-Palestinian movement in this

24:14

country. I mean, of course, what's

24:16

happening in Gaza is important. And

24:19

it's important to point out when you have

24:21

34,000 dead, many of them children, that's notable.

24:24

But one of the things about the protesters

24:26

is that they don't want to

24:28

talk about the complexity of the long running issues

24:31

in this conflict. And you talk about how

24:33

you tell your students it's complicated.

24:36

Right now there's an allergy to complexity. There's

24:40

an allergy to complexity. There's an allergy to

24:42

nuance. It is really complicated. This is a

24:44

difficult situation. We cannot condone

24:47

or be silent about anti-Semitism,

24:49

right? That's non-negotiable. We

24:51

also do protect the right to free speech. And

24:54

when protests are peaceful, that's

24:56

really important. There's a grand tradition of that, and that's

24:58

an important American value. Figuring out

25:00

how to protect Jewish students and

25:02

faculties, how to fight anti-Semitism, but at the

25:04

same time how to protect free speech, that

25:07

is not easy. So

25:09

we never say it's complicated. We never

25:11

acknowledge it's difficult. What we're trying to

25:13

do right here, right now, is difficult.

25:15

I also think it's important to

25:18

say, although this is spreading and we just

25:20

saw Dartmouth and where I live at UNC,

25:22

there's a big problem right now. We

25:24

haven't seen this at Duke. We aren't seeing

25:27

this on every campus. This is not an

25:29

entire generation. This is not every college campus.

25:31

This is not America going crazy or whatever.

25:35

This is a particular situation. Okay.

25:38

I'm sorry. That obviously... I should

25:40

have given the trigger warning. So

25:43

guys, I don't know if you've heard, but keep

25:46

in mind, by the way, the obvious implication

25:48

of this is that killing 40, 50, 60,000

25:51

people, who knows what the real number is, and

25:53

maiming tens of thousands of children, that is

25:56

not extreme. That is not an extreme position.

25:58

That is not an unknown position. nuanced

26:00

position, right? That is nuance. Opposing

26:03

that is strident moral binaries. So I wrote

26:05

an article for in these times about this.

26:07

We had weeks and weeks because nobody really

26:09

wants to address the substance of the protesters

26:11

claims. What we got was what I call

26:13

anti-Zoomer psycho babble. Chinese psy up

26:15

on TikTok. Neurosis, they want to feel

26:17

like they're part of something. They're strident

26:19

moral binaries. They're all a bunch of,

26:21

you know, sort of sexless, mask-wearing scolds.

26:23

Talk a little bit about the sort

26:25

of psycho babble that you've seen. And

26:27

we can start with Frank Bruni doing

26:29

the whole like, oh, they see everything in moral

26:31

binaries. The implication being is that we should all just

26:33

kind of nuance ourselves until we don't do anything at

26:36

all. Just pull the lever every two years. We'll

26:38

say you forgot one of the tropes, which

26:40

is that we're being funded by Qatar. They're

26:43

all like, oh, you guys are getting massive

26:45

checks. I was like, unfortunately

26:47

not. I've still got student loans.

26:50

Yeah, I've heard China. I've heard Iran, Qatar,

26:52

I guess it doesn't matter as long as

26:54

it sounds vaguely oriental. But talk about this

26:56

idea that y'all don't have nuance, that

26:58

you're sort of strident, militant. Yeah,

27:00

please, John. I love this idea

27:03

when especially there are, like you

27:05

said, Leila earlier, libraries on these

27:07

encampments. But also plenty of people

27:09

who know a lot about the

27:11

issues that they're talking about or

27:13

entire posters that really give full

27:15

rundowns or written demands and statements

27:17

that are very clear. I'd

27:19

love, John, for you to kind of talk

27:21

about that idea that, you know, no one

27:23

is really engaged in nuance though, right? Yeah,

27:26

I mean, divestment organizing

27:28

at Columbia is like 20 years

27:30

old, right? That's not a brand

27:32

new thing. There's a material analysis

27:34

behind it, which is that Columbia's

27:36

endowment is not fully transparent. So

27:38

we don't know the full extent

27:41

of their investment in companies that

27:43

profit from, you know, Israeli apartheid

27:45

and genocide. You know, for this

27:47

sort of, like, respectability politics discourse

27:49

with nuance, I want to just

27:51

mention that there are already several

27:53

successful divestment referendums at the various

27:55

bodies across Columbia that the university

27:57

has just repeatedly ignored across, like,

27:59

multiple president administration. So people for

28:01

decades now have been organizing through

28:04

the quote unquote appropriate channels. In

28:06

the beginning of the show, Layla

28:08

explained the sort of motivations for

28:10

the encampment. The encampment is like

28:12

a nonviolent escalation, right? Literally

28:14

we're setting up tents on like one tiny lawn

28:17

and like to create a space of like

28:19

mutual care and solidarity, right? It's

28:21

not the scary thing. I don't know the

28:24

whole, bringing

28:26

the discourse back to like the problem

28:28

with college students, which is what Op-Ed

28:30

writers produce every year. So

28:33

as long as I've been alive anyway,

28:35

like bringing it back to that again,

28:37

just distracts from Gaza. Like did you

28:39

know that in Palestine Israel is using

28:42

armed drones that play a recorded audio

28:44

of children to lure people to

28:46

their death? Did you know that? Well,

28:48

you did because we were talking about

28:50

Colombia, you know, Israel supporting undergraduates. Yes,

28:53

and also the idea that you know,

28:55

there's not nearly enough complexity because complexity

28:57

lives, as you were saying

29:00

Adam in the middle, right? Complexity is

29:02

in the middle whereas these kind of

29:04

opposite sides are just digging in. They're

29:06

not actually, you know, thoughtful

29:08

at all, but the complexity lives

29:11

in the middle to nuance

29:13

this to death because clearly

29:15

being anti-genocide, where's the complexity

29:18

in there? We need, I think

29:20

we need a little more nuance there. I mean,

29:22

it's just an utterly fatuous thing to say, like it's

29:24

just noise. You just blah, blah, it's the Muppets blah,

29:26

blah, blah. That's all I heard when I listened to

29:28

that. Nothing was said of substance or meaning. This is

29:30

why they do it because nobody wants to talk about

29:32

the substance of the demands. My favorite was when they,

29:35

you know, a couple of people, well, you know, it's

29:37

Peggy Noonan to this. Their demands are inscrutable. Like what

29:39

do they want? It's like they literally have a website.

29:41

They have little pamphlets. Yeah, there's footnotes guys. Yeah,

29:44

we literally had like the demands at

29:46

the side of the encampment. Like before

29:48

walking into the encampment, you could see

29:50

what our demands are. You

29:52

demands have been on flyers. They've been

29:55

all over social media. They've been clearly

29:57

communicated to administration and to the general

29:59

public. And so for

30:01

people to like not know or just

30:04

pretend that they don't know, it shows

30:06

a real, they're

30:09

not negotiating with us or like taking us

30:11

in good faith, which is very obvious.

30:13

And then also too is like, it just

30:16

speaks to like the dehumanization

30:19

of Palestinians, because, and how

30:21

Palestinians like being Palestinian, it's

30:23

inherently seen as political because

30:25

like, and people are

30:27

also kind of frustrated with the

30:29

hypocrisy. Because when it comes

30:31

to Ukraine, for example, people

30:33

were seeing their universities do stuff

30:36

to support students from Ukraine, or

30:39

events, or was at events,

30:41

they would do things to support Ukraine,

30:43

they would fly the flag, etc. But

30:45

it's like, you don't see that with

30:47

Palestine, because it's too political. And

30:49

it's like, is it just because we

30:52

aren't white? Like, that's really how it's

30:54

felt. That's part of it. Yes. Yeah.

30:56

Another big like myth that they tried

30:58

to do too was like, Oh, this

31:00

is like religious indoctrination, like the students

31:02

are trying to indoctrinate their classmates. And

31:05

it's like, no, it's not that

31:07

at all. It's just people teaching and learning

31:09

and being in community with each other. And

31:12

it's really too, it's because people

31:15

in power, they do not

31:17

view Palestinians as human beings.

31:20

They just simply don't. Because if they

31:22

viewed us as human beings, what's

31:25

going on in Gaza right now, it wouldn't

31:27

be happening. They view

31:29

the death and destruction in Gaza,

31:32

they view that as normal, as acceptable,

31:35

as profitable. And all

31:37

of our work, whether that's the encampment,

31:40

whether that's the rallies, whether that's the

31:42

protests, etc. It's not to

31:44

please people in power. It's not

31:46

to make everybody happy. It's

31:48

to make a difference for people

31:51

in Gaza. And really,

31:53

it meant so much to me that people

31:55

in Gaza were having hope because of our

31:57

protests. I mean, we are seeing like tents

32:00

that said Columbia University and

32:02

New York University and UCLA

32:04

tents with our

32:07

names and stuff on us and children of Gaza

32:09

thanking us and saying that we had given them

32:11

hope and it's like that's who this is for.

32:14

Yeah, I think that's sort of one of the things that gets lost

32:16

here which is that there's

32:19

a whole media apparatus that's built around concern trolling, head

32:21

padding, protest this way, not this way. It's like a

32:23

sort of space shuttle reintering the earth. It has to

32:25

be at the right angle at the exact speed. Otherwise,

32:27

it's sort of, oh, that's too intense. It's like, you

32:29

got to do this, you got to do that. And

32:32

of course, it's all bullshit. Nobody just wants to discuss

32:34

the substance. This sort of brings me

32:36

to my next question which has to do with this sort

32:39

of concept of the outside agitator was a popular

32:41

one because they were kind of just throwing shit

32:43

at the wall and seeing what stuck. Like how

32:45

many different ways can we try and discredit this?

32:47

If it's just like goofy students bad, they don't

32:49

know what they're talking about. Oh, wait, they do

32:52

know what they're talking about. So now it's got

32:54

to be someone else. It's gonna be outside agitator.

32:56

So I want to talk a little bit about

32:58

this kind of outside agitator trope that was central

33:00

to a lot of the NYPD's justifications for cracking

33:02

down on students. Of course, it ended up the

33:04

vast majority were not quote unquote outside agitators. But

33:06

even if they were, who cares? As

33:09

a point, a lot of activists have made it

33:11

sort of trivial distinction. Like again, technically speaking, my

33:13

six-week-old baby was an outside agitator when she showed

33:16

up to the encampment. But the

33:18

idea of creating community with the idea that having

33:20

this strict sort of steel

33:22

wall with the university and the plebes, right,

33:24

is being central to that. I thought

33:26

it was worth debunking just because it was obviously bullshit,

33:28

but in ideological, it's sort of also you're on the

33:30

defensive there as well, because yeah, some

33:32

guy lives in Morningside Heights and thinks that genocide's bad

33:35

and he wants to bring us some bagels and some

33:37

tacos. That's good. That's called human solidarity. Because everyone has

33:39

to be fucking atomized, right? Everyone has to be, they

33:41

don't mind you being angry and posting alone in your

33:44

house. But the second you get in the same physical

33:46

space and you start sharing ideas and start living in

33:48

community and then it starts to get a little dicey,

33:50

right? Yeah, because power building is very scary. I'll

33:52

never forget in 2011, I was bartending some

33:55

party, some private event in some houses. I

33:57

was bartending, I overheard these guys talking and

33:59

one said, and can you believe they're feeding

34:01

homeless people? So they're attracting all these homeless people.

34:04

And I remember thinking my first heard that I was

34:06

like, to Occupy Wall Street. It's Occupy Wall Street. This

34:08

is 2011. It's way before Yale's time. And I remember

34:10

thinking like, but you're attracting homeless people like

34:12

they're sort of vermin. And I'm like, wait, this is

34:14

the great crime. They're feeding homeless people. Like this is

34:16

the sort of great tragedy of our, of our, this

34:18

is the thing we urgently need to reconcile. So they

34:21

did villainize us for, um, giving

34:23

food to other people

34:25

and just like sharing with the community.

34:27

Yeah. The worst sin possible. Yeah.

34:29

They were like, Saliba admits

34:31

to sharing food and resources

34:33

with the outside community. And

34:35

I was also labeled as

34:37

a, as a Jew hater

34:39

too. And it's like, these

34:41

people, they don't

34:43

know me, but they're just

34:46

like, whatever, whatever we

34:48

can say to insult them. Like, why not? I

34:50

can chime in on the outside

34:53

agitator, like history thing. So it's

34:55

actually interesting because the outside agitator

34:57

smear has been historically deployed against

34:59

particularly black activists and student activists

35:01

since like the year 1960. Like

35:03

a group of black students in Atlanta took

35:06

out an ad called an appeal for human

35:08

rights. And segregationist politicians said it was created

35:10

by foreigners. And like, that's where the outside

35:13

agitator thing comes from. Martin Luther

35:15

King Jr. writes about this in his letter from the

35:17

Birmingham jail in 1963. Like it was this constant refrain

35:20

during the civil rights movement. And it's still

35:22

like, it's not, it hasn't just returned now.

35:24

Like we saw this in Ferguson in 2014,

35:26

you know, the George Floyd protests in 2020.

35:28

Like I lived in New York during 2020.

35:31

And like they basically accused all of the looting

35:33

from, like as if it was coming from outside

35:35

of the city, you know, as

35:37

if like the burned down cop cars can't just

35:40

come from New Yorkers for mad at things that

35:42

cops have done here. But like coming back to

35:44

Columbia and how the outside agitator smear was

35:46

used here. Like I actually think it was

35:49

very strategic that Eric Adams started using it

35:51

when he was trying to ramp up the intensity

35:54

of police action. Because it's like the sort of

35:56

war on crime to want terror link. When you

35:58

like the we have like an NYPD

36:00

counter-terrorism unit and its deputy

36:02

commissioner adjuncts at Columbia and

36:05

did a press conference with him. So

36:07

there's this existing carceral capacity that

36:10

the media narrative creates a pretext

36:12

for using. And he

36:14

had a press conference the day before the

36:17

raid, sort of like doing the terrorist wife

36:19

smear, you know what I mean,

36:21

and saying, there are these outside agitators, we think

36:23

they might have weapons. So the 600 cops are

36:25

now justified because there are these spooky outside agitators.

36:28

I want to note that Columbia journalism

36:31

school Dean Jelani Cobb repeated the outside

36:33

agitators smear on MSNBC before the police

36:35

raid. Very interesting. Well,

36:37

naturally, that's how you get that position. In the

36:39

context of the civil rights movement and unionism, especially

36:42

in the South, outside agitator has huge history of

36:44

being an anti-Semitic slur as well. The

36:46

idea that like all these leftist Jews come

36:48

down here and otherwise the blacks were content

36:50

and happy to be poor. Yeah, James Baldwin

36:53

wrote about that very, very specifically, you

36:55

know, saying that if there are, you know,

36:57

civil rights protests, anti-white supremacy protests in the

37:00

South, then obviously it's the outside agitators from

37:02

the North. And if there are those protests

37:04

in the North, then they're being directed by

37:06

the Kremlin. So he was onto this. Everyone's

37:09

been onto this smear and

37:11

it just keeps being recycled again and

37:13

again and again. And somehow those who

37:15

are using it clearly know

37:18

what they're doing or, and,

37:20

or are so just incurious

37:22

about the history of this. Yeah, it's a

37:25

playbook. It's so self-serving. It's so transparently self-serving.

37:27

Cause if I'm in charge and people are

37:29

upset and they're protesting or they're burning things,

37:32

obviously it has to be people outside of my

37:34

jurisdiction cause I'm perfect. I'm the perfect leader. My

37:36

subjects cannot possibly be upset. Therefore it has to

37:38

be fifth estate is Jesuits or

37:40

something, right? Sort of coming from the East. So

37:43

yeah, and I, and I want to sort of touch

37:45

a little bit on this idea of the sort of

37:47

contagion aspects. So obviously the protests

37:50

spread quote unquote to other universities are still ongoing

37:52

in many places. What do y'all

37:54

perceive as the kind of current state of

37:56

play in terms of there, there was a very concerned

37:58

role piece in the Washington. today saying the Palestinian

38:01

protesters failed to win hearts and minds that

38:03

you know sort of two to one people

38:05

opposed them and then of course you look

38:07

at polling from 1963 1964

38:10

support for sit-in support for freedom writers exact

38:12

same number 65 66

38:14

percent opposed I mean almost identical

38:16

like literally identical because that's not how protests

38:18

movements work they're more long-term plays they're more

38:21

about agitation they're not necessarily about winning over

38:23

Joe Blow especially because people what they're reflecting

38:25

is the sort of media narrative so

38:27

if the president United States and CNN tell you 24 hours a

38:29

day that these protests are a violent hate mob full of

38:32

either spoiled rich kids or outside

38:35

agitators we're not sure which one sort of whatever needed

38:37

that naturally people are going to begin to internalize that

38:39

but if you could I want you to talk about

38:41

the sort of current state of it obviously you said

38:43

it a lot of it brought hope to people in

38:45

Gaza just to see that people aren't

38:48

totally indifferent to their plight struggle right

38:50

within the sort of borders of the United States

38:52

so talk a bit about the current state of

38:54

it what the current status is on other universities

38:57

and how you think the tactic can escalate because

38:59

clearly it's not working I mean in terms of

39:01

like the there Biden doesn't appear to be wanting

39:03

to change anything ever well we

39:05

saw I think a new encampment set up

39:08

at UCLA right there was one set up

39:10

like in a public park in Philadelphia I'm

39:12

pretty sure and CUNY took a building successfully

39:14

like and like negotiated with an administrator recently

39:17

I would say like CUNY and within our

39:19

lifetime are some of the more active organizing

39:21

groups in New York right now on this

39:23

issue obviously like we're

39:26

gonna keep looking for whatever levers we

39:28

can pull in the long run I'm

39:30

not gonna share you know tactics plans

39:33

and media hits right now yeah

39:35

but you know people

39:37

people are thinking about what the next move is and

39:41

I definitely think that the movement that we

39:43

are a part of is still ongoing it

39:45

never was Colombia's movement so to speak it's

39:47

open to everyone and we'll participate

39:49

alongside everyone else yeah I

39:51

was gonna say there's encampments

39:53

all over the world now which is

39:55

something that like we were never expecting

39:57

to see there's encampments in New Zealand

40:00

Japan, Belgium, Brazil, all over

40:02

the place, which is so

40:04

incredible to see. Like my

40:07

dad, he's in his fifties and like, he's

40:09

never seen this type of support for Palestine,

40:11

like in his life. So it's

40:13

like, I really do feel like with the

40:15

encampments that we're in the

40:18

middle of a paradigm shift with

40:21

how we view Palestine and how we view

40:23

Palestinians and what is going on in Gaza,

40:25

they can condemn me all they want. And

40:27

they have, I'm on Canary mission. I'm, I've

40:29

been doxed and I get, I get tons

40:32

of death threats, but it's like, I know

40:34

that at the end of the day, history

40:36

will absolve me and that I'm doing the

40:38

right thing. And we

40:40

also realized that like, even though

40:42

this is scary for us, like

40:44

many students, they've lost job opportunities

40:47

because of what's going on. They've

40:49

faced suspensions. They've faced

40:51

different academic consequences. They've lost internships, but

40:53

it's like, we realized that this is

40:55

trivial. Compared to what every one of

40:57

Gaza is dealing with. Like it also,

41:00

it just, it feels so silly. You

41:02

know, you see all these media narratives

41:04

talking about like, build campus safety, campus

41:06

safety. And it's like every single university

41:08

in Gaza has been destroyed. Like

41:11

that's really what's important.

41:14

And we're going to

41:16

continue fighting. Like even though we're

41:18

tired and like, even

41:20

though there's been a lot of repression thrown

41:22

at us, we're not giving up

41:24

any time soon. And I'm excited

41:26

to continue doing the work. I

41:29

want to ask a follow up if you'll indulge me

41:31

a little bit. Wait, wait. Um, somebody had made an

41:33

observation and I regret that I can't recall who, but

41:35

basically they said that there's a

41:37

dynamic of not only are Palestinians

41:39

being obviously dispossessed, bombed, starved, subject

41:41

to disease. Obviously prior to October

41:43

7th, they were living in an

41:45

open air prison, all this sort

41:47

of horrific stuff, but

41:50

there's this, cause you kept talking, you keep talking about

41:52

the dehumanization. And I want to talk about these efforts

41:54

to kind of humanize themselves and

41:56

the added layer of kind of humiliation of constantly

41:58

having to kind of. that is an added layer,

42:00

I think, of dehumanization. And

42:04

I want you to sort of comment on what

42:06

it's sort of like to constantly have to have one's most

42:08

precious, most traumatic moments videotaped and played for the world because

42:10

nothing else fucking works. And I think that's an

42:12

added layer of humiliation that isn't really

42:14

being discussed. And I want to get your thoughts on that. And to still

42:16

have that be condemned or questioned. No,

42:20

it absolutely is. And

42:22

it's like Palestinians, it's

42:25

like we, they're showing the

42:27

worst moments of their life to an artist. To

42:30

an audience that isn't always receptive

42:32

or outright hostile, speaking in

42:34

a language that is not their own.

42:36

I mean, in order to appeal to

42:38

Americans, like begging for the bombing to

42:41

stop. And like, I

42:43

know the dehumanization that I'm facing

42:46

isn't the same as what Palestinians

42:48

and Gaza are dealing with, but

42:50

it's still been really awful. Like

42:52

I lost 15 family members, 15

42:55

members of my extended family. And

42:59

the way that I am treated,

43:01

like I've told that to people.

43:03

And the first question they ask me

43:05

is like, oh, was your family like part

43:08

of Hamas or do you condemn Hamas? And

43:11

it's like, first of all, my family

43:13

members are Palestinian Christians. They're

43:16

not part of Hamas. But it's like,

43:18

I shouldn't even have to like mention that in

43:20

the first place. It's like you

43:22

can't say, oh, I'm sorry for your loss,

43:24

like a normal person. Like there's

43:27

no just like empathy given to

43:30

Palestinians in general. Or

43:32

it's like, too, it's like the way that

43:34

they're like, oh, like, you know, just like

43:36

bombing the Middle East, like, oh, no big

43:38

deal. Like people will make like casual little

43:41

jokes about that. And it's like, if

43:44

that happened to the US, people would be

43:46

freaking out. Like, you know, if we destroyed

43:48

every single university in New

43:51

York, if NYU and Columbia and CUNY

43:53

and stuff, if they were all bombed,

43:55

people would be outraged. People would be

43:57

furious. But it's like Palestinians are not

43:59

allowed. allowed to express any kind

44:01

of outrage or any kind of

44:04

upset because we automatically get labeled

44:06

as a terrorist. Like how

44:09

dare you be upset about this? Just

44:11

to chime in a little bit, it's also interesting

44:13

that like any sort

44:15

of Palestinian organization that supports

44:18

like vocally, any sort of

44:20

form of like resistance at all gets

44:22

singled out, right? Like the terrorist near

44:24

is deployed against within our lifetime since

44:26

like right after October 7th, right? Like

44:29

it's doing a kind of work, this

44:31

dehumanization. Yeah, of course the

44:33

whole thing is a double standard. I mean, the standard is

44:35

just not applied to, you know, again, you could say the

44:37

most psycho genocidal thing in the world towards

44:40

Palestinians and there's pretty much no professional repercussions

44:42

whatsoever. And like you said, I think that

44:44

the fact that the, that the Russian invasion

44:46

of Ukraine happened the year before, and again,

44:49

one wants to be careful not to like compare

44:51

tragedies, but it really does put in stark contrast

44:53

how all of these liberal institutions that act like

44:55

they're above politics and they can't, they don't want

44:57

to weigh in like pen America. They

45:00

did that literally 18 months

45:02

prior, I mean, to the T. So then

45:04

we know they can if they want to. So

45:07

all the sort of phony above the fray kind

45:10

of fart sniffing liberalism just was completely exposed

45:12

as total horse shit because there was so,

45:14

so recent and so obvious, so

45:17

obvious a double standard. Yeah. And

45:19

I mean, I think there's so much

45:21

incredible power in the lack of deterrence

45:23

that the kind of

45:25

media approach and political approach,

45:28

it has not deterred you all

45:31

and others at whether it's

45:33

campuses across, across the country

45:35

or across the world or elsewhere. I mean, it,

45:37

the fact that now we're kind of in like

45:40

college graduation season and you're seeing it

45:43

again and again, again, like there's a

45:45

commitment to justice that will not be

45:47

silenced despite all of

45:49

the efforts, all of the threats

45:51

from universities, all of the loss of, you know, whether

45:53

it's, you know, career opportunities

45:56

or personal smears, physical

45:58

threats of violence. if not

46:00

actual violence. And yet there is a

46:03

commitment that I think is really daunting

46:05

to those who sit in positions of

46:08

extreme power, that this is not going away,

46:10

that it wasn't one

46:12

police raid. And then back to the so-called

46:16

status quo where genocide is

46:18

allowed to go on with

46:20

no one saying shit about it. Oh, they're

46:22

terrified of us. They're absolutely terrified of

46:24

us because I've done organizing

46:28

in other contexts, like I'm

46:30

in school for social work. And so

46:32

it's like, I've done disability justice organizing

46:34

or organizing for free menstrual products, for

46:36

example. And I did this

46:38

in North Carolina in a pretty

46:41

conservative political environment. And we didn't get

46:43

near the amount of backlash and heat

46:46

that we are facing right now.

46:48

And that is because what

46:51

we are doing is a threat to people

46:53

in power. And it is a threat to

46:55

their wallets. It is a threat to their

46:57

resources. So they are going to use every

46:59

tool that they have at their disposal to

47:01

shut us down. But really, having solidarity and

47:03

a strong community is really

47:06

important to what we're doing. We

47:08

are nothing without our community members

47:10

and the people who've shown up

47:12

to support us. There's been incredible

47:15

faculty at Columbia who've honestly, they've

47:17

gotten heat too, just for supporting us. Professor

47:20

Mohammed Abdu, we

47:22

saw in Congress, like they were, Manu

47:24

Shafik was debating his employment

47:27

status in Congress, which

47:29

is completely inappropriate, but just like

47:31

going after him because

47:33

he supports us. But it's like at the end

47:35

of the day, we're doing the

47:37

right thing. And it's

47:40

also a little ironic too, because it's like

47:42

Columbia really is a school that like markets

47:45

protests to people the 1968 protests,

47:47

they're all over like campus advertising.

47:49

They talk about it so much

47:51

front page of the website. Yeah, yeah,

47:54

they talk about it all the time. And then it's

47:56

like when they and they're

47:58

confused that like students are

48:01

organizing and advocating for stuff. I'm

48:03

like, y'all literally selected me to

48:05

be here based on these skills.

48:08

And now you're surprised that I'm using them, that

48:10

I'm taking what I learned into the

48:12

classroom. **J.B. WOGAN-WILSON-WILLIAMS** Well, they

48:14

wanted you to do the sort of fatuous women's

48:16

march thing. I mean, they didn't want you to

48:18

actually annoy rich people. They

48:21

wanted you to work for a nonprofit within

48:24

the funnel of acceptable activism, not

48:26

agitate and annoy people.

48:29

It's an aesthetic. It's not

48:31

an ideology. **J.B. WOGAN-WILSON-WILLIAMS** Well, look,

48:34

it's my cue to go. The

48:37

boss is yelling at me. **J.B. WOGAN-WILSON-WILLIAMS**

48:40

Thank you both. That will then do

48:42

it for this live stream of citations

48:44

needed. Of course, you can follow our

48:46

show on Twitter at Citations Pod or

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Facebook. Citations Needed become a supporter of

48:50

the show through patreon.com/Citations Needed

48:52

podcast, all your sports and patreon

48:54

is incredibly appreciated. We are 100%

48:57

listener funded. We have been joined

49:00

by two amazing guests, Leila Saliba

49:02

and John Ben-Manakam. Leila, again, is

49:05

a Palestinian American graduate student at

49:07

Columbia University studying social work with

49:09

a concentration in policy practice. As

49:12

you can hear, very passionate about disability

49:14

justice and justice in general. It wants

49:16

everyone to have free healthcare, accessible, affordable,

49:18

for free. And you can follow her

49:21

at It's Leila S on

49:24

the Twitter machine. John Ben-Manakam, PhD

49:26

candidate in sociology, also at Columbia

49:28

University, where he researches the politics

49:30

of criminalization and crime journalism. You

49:32

can follow him on Twitter at J.

49:35

Ben-Manakam. But that will do it. Thanks

49:38

everyone for joining us on this Citations

49:40

Needed live stream. I am Nima Shirazi.

49:42

**N.I.M. JOHNSON** I'm Adam Johnson. **J.B. WOGAN-WILLIAMS**

49:44

Our senior producer is Florenceborough Adams. Producer

49:46

is Julianne Tweaton. Production assistant is Trendell

49:48

Lightburn. The newsletter is by Marco Cardolano.

49:50

Transcriptions are by Mafnor Imran. The music

49:53

is by Granddaddy. Thanks again everyone. We'll

49:56

catch you next time. you