Meanwhile on the International front....

I don't think students are missing much when the main stage commencement is canceled. When my son graduated from the University of Virginia there was a main stage commencement that was a bunch of speakers. Then the individual departments had separate ceremonies where the students went up and shook the hands of the department chair and received their diploma. The department ceremony also made ii easier for the students to interact with their friends. None of the speeches I heard at the larger ceremonies was worth sitting through largely because they were basically self congratulatory.

 

Or, just like in the George Floyd protests right-wing hate groups infiltrated the protests and are antagonizing authorities. Just a thought.

 

Oops. I feel like Devil93.

 

Port construction is going well.

 

Some community members are pushing for local leaders of - Wilmington, NC - to pass an Israel-Hamas ceasefire resolution.
I'm sure there are a bunch of Israelis and Palestines clamoring to the bargaining table right now because they certainly don't want to draw the wrath of a city that once overthrew a duly elected government and sparked a bunch of race killings.

 

I wonder the same every time I read about a government meeting that has this on the agenda. Do they really think either side is going to back down because of the actions of the Podunk City Council?

 

https://theconversation.com/college...-tried-and-true-trap-laid-by-the-right-228732

Tangentially, I’ve rather enjoyed what I’ve read on The Comversation lately.

 

I think you're on to a bit of something here, and that's the kids are trying to think that the opinions of the president of Columbia University matter to the world at large.

There was also a Gaza resolution that came before our city council here, and it failed on the grounds of "not our job to comment on world affairs," a point carefully cultivated by the new mayor, who unseated a two-term incumbent partially because that incumbent was a woman who irritated sexists and businessmen and partially because that incumbent spent a lot of time fighting perception battles (for example, trying to phase out the word 'chief' from job titles out of a belief that it constituted an Indigenous slur) instead of getting roads plowed in the winter.

Anyway, I think part of what these students, or these people pushing hyper-local Gaza resolutions, believe is that making a public stance on this issue constitutes something of a moral fitness test.

And though I would suggest that being publicly opposed to the killing of thousands of innocent Gazans is a fairly low bar of moral backbone, even if it is in pursuit of dozens of un-innocent Hamas operatives, it is very hard to make that condemnation with sufficient fervor to appease both the people supporting the Palestinians without condemning the ethnic group doing most of the work, which views that work as self-defense and security against a clear and present existential threat. And that's just fine for a bunch of bad-faith right-wingers, who just want to de-motivate groups (young people and Jews) who normally turn out for Democrats in elections, and can delegitimize academics who hate them and who they hate in the process.

 

The students are protesting in general but also pushing to have university investment funds divest from companies tied closely to Israel. And Ivy League endowment funds have a decent bit of dick to swing around.