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It would, I think, be genuinely useful if Chuck Schumer were politically ruined after last week.
There’s a limit to how useful it actually is to direct our energies specifically at elected politicians right now. Politicians aren’t going to save us. BUT: institutional leaders of many stripes (.gov, .edu, .org, and .com alike) are still acting much, much more afraid of the consequences of •fighting• than they are of the consequences of •compliance•.
We can change that. Make compliance ruin some high-profile careers. Make examples out of a few people. Schumer. Newsom. The Columbia admin. Tar and feather them. https://flipboard.com/@vanityfair/top-stories-ur1oga9sz/-/a-CUoIJMw5TYa3em_8zTUjJg%3Aa%3A3195374-%2F0
Speaking of which:
What’s going on at Columbia? What’s the state of the resistance there?
Columbia just •rescinded• degrees they’d granted. This wasn’t even just a politically motived expulsion, which would already be utterly horrifying. They ••revoked diplomas•• already granted.
That means if you get a degree from Columbia, you might suddenly, at the political whim of any random president, not have a degree anymore. All that money you paid, all that work you did? Poof! It can disappear overnight!
Can you imagine?! Can you imagine what that does to the expected value of a Columbia degree??
If I were a prospective student, I would really think twice about accepting an offer from Columbia now. Nope nope nope.
And if I were a current student, an alum, faculty…well, I’d be out for administrators’ heads on pikes (figuratively speaking), because everything I’ve invested in that place is going up in smoke.
An elite college degree is an investment with a payoff horizon of 20 or 40 or 60 years. It’s costly — not just in money, but in time, energy, years of life. People are only willing to invest in it because they believe the investment will endure.
If a Columbia degree is like a cheap roof that might just leak or collapse at any time, what’s their case? “Give us four years of your life, drain your savings, go into debt! Everything you worked for •might not• suddenly collapse!! Our degrees are just cheap paper anyway, right??”
Yes, strategies like this from @jhlibby:
https://newsie.social/@jhlibby/114179160299839205
You don’t even have to sue them out of existence. You just have to make the administration believe that they •could• face a devastating lawsuit.
Make them more afraid of complying with fascists than they are of fighting fascists. Make compliance existentially dangerous.
And look, in the unlikely event that anyone reading this actually thinks this was a reasonable thing for Columbia to do, if you think “oh, •those• students deserved it“…
…I want you to ask yourself, honestly, whether you can imagine the Trump administration ordering Columbia to rescind the degrees of — say — trans graduates. Because I can.
And I want you to ask yourself, honestly, whether you can imagine the current leadership of Columbia refusing that order. Because at this point, I sure can’t.
Now •there’s• a good question from @n1xnx.
A good question, and a possible avenue for applying pressure.
I expect this from CMU. (It's an evil college.) But I had a little more esteem for Columbia... you know, just a little. This is wild.
@futurebird
Wild indeed.
(Did CMU do something too? I totally missed that.)
It's more what they aren't doing. If they aren't howling and crying right now they are still huffing DOD dollars as they always have.
@futurebird
Got it. Sigh.
A family member is faculty there. I can assure you, she is on the verge of exploding.
@Professor_Stevens
Honestly, I hope she does. I hope there’s a walkout. I hope the whole semester just…stops midway through. I hope the school finds itself looking down the slope of complete ruin as a result of this. I hope no administrator gets a night of sleep.
If she explodes, she’ll have my back.
@inthehands I wonder if all Columbia's graduates could pursue a class action to protect their academic credentials ... and sue the place out of existence.
Absent proven academic fraud, I don't honestly believe it's possible for a university to "revoke" a degree without opening themselves up to a huge civil lawsuit. And, hopefully, those civil lawsuits will manifest.
Aside from that, it's obvious that Ivy League schools are no longer rigorous institutions or capable of fulfilling their missions. I suspect that more and more of the *actually* talented people will choose lib arts alternatives, leaving the Ivy to the legacies.
@johnzajac @jhlibby
I mean, I teach at one of those alternatives that you’re talking about, so you’re singing my tune. But I do not celebrate the destruction of one of the Ivies; we’re all in the one boat here, and if it sinks, it’s cold comfort that the other end is sinking first.
I'm ambivalent about the destruction of these institutions. Higher education in general has been on an unsustainable trajectory for decades, and imo this is just the "cannot be sustained" part of that manifesting.
Also, there's nothing *particularly* special about Ivies that isn't entirely caught up in their faculty and the students they attract. Once the good faculty go somewhere else, the students will follow, and other unis will take their place.
@johnzajac @inthehands Sadly, there are few remaining schools that can offer faculty a sustainable living.
And lest we stray too far down the rabbit hole, I fully realize that the Unis would settle out of court long before they ever got close to taking a judgment against them.
Ah, but keep in mind that the people they're retaliating against are *principled and willing to endure hardship for their values*. They're not rescinding the degrees of like, shoplifters who mooned the President. They're doing it to literal freedom fighters and dissidents who have already put their bodies and futures on the line to stop a genocide.
A lawsuit isn't just about remediation; it's an opportunity to get press for their cause and highlight Columbia's complicity.
@johnzajac @jhlibby
I’m highly skeptical of the train of thought in that first paragraph. It’s true, to a very large extent, but the “unsustainability” of higher ed is much like the “unsustainability” of social security: the gap between the real problems and the imagined ones is •vast•, and right-wingers bent on institutional destruction prey on that gap.
What’s actually unsustainable about higher ed is our society’s vast and growing economic inequality: colleges want to remain accessible to people on the low end of the divide, but have to pay people on the “skilled labor” (hate that term) side of the divide. Those two are diverging faster and faster.
This could be an ideological difference, though I don't know where yours lie: I think private education at all levels should be outlawed, and all education should be free.
I strongly believe that the civic state is like herd immunity: if people are allowed to opt out, it will fail. To me, public education is one of the beating hearts of a modern equitable society, and so my criticism comes from that.
@johnzajac @jhlibby It’s an ideological half-difference. I believe education is a human right and something every human being should have access to. It should either be free or, that failing, withing financial reach for absolutely everyone.
I think it’s •extraordinarily• dangerous to concentrate all education under the single umbrella of the state. Too many eggs in one basket. That danger has never been clearer than it is right now: one of the reasons the admin is trying to make an example of Columbia is that the state schools are already rolling over for the fascists with no fuss en masse, and it’s private colleges that have been standing strongest on, say, sticking with their DEI mission.
It’s a miserable tragedy that mechanisms to spread public support to diverse institutions have largely been attempts to destroy the public ones (cf charter schools). I don’t have easy answers. But “outlaw private education” is a dangerous non-answer in my book.
@johnzajac @inthehands That failure stems, to some extent, from the Ivies' legacy traditions that DEI efforts sought to remedy. So there's that.
To the point of lawsuits, I imagine anyone whose degree has been affected could at least sue for a refund of tuition and whatever student loan interest has accumulated. A few successful cases like that should put the fear of god into uni administrations.
One side effect of commercializing education is that once you deliver the product you can't just break into the person's house and take it back because you've decided you don't like them.
I wouldn't be surprised if a lawsuit *both* reinstated the degree AND awarded large damages for the harm. It doesn't help them that universities' greed is on public display and has been for more than a decade.
This feels like "one more nail" to me.
@inthehands @n1xnx Considering what the accreditation boards have already let slide in Florida, North Carolina, etc. I am sadly convinced that threats of loss of accreditation are toothless against major institutions.
@inthehands @n1xnx In case you don't hate Colombia University enough already, their website also doesn't allow you to opt out of cookies, but does explain that they will share them with Google.
After every use, immediately go to your browser history and cache, then delete everything. Check your privacy settings; add Privacy Badger if you can.
@inthehands If they can just revoke degrees, where does it end? What's to stop them from retroactively revoking scholarships? Or from modifying the authorship of papers? Why not revoke the enrollment itself? If a president, or a donor, or a regent just doesn't like you or your politics, it seems that Columbia thinks they can just obliterate any portion of your life that has touched that university.
@jenniferplusplus @inthehands Not to diminish any of this, but it looks like the degree revocations are temporary, and for “students” (not alumni), with some kind of process for reinstatement. I can’t tell if this means they’ve revoked the potential to earn a degree, or revoked already-earned undergrad degrees from current graduate students, or what. But these details seem to have been overlooked by everyone posting about it.
https://communications.news.columbia.edu/news/university-statement-regarding-ujb-determinations
@dwineman @inthehands I'm not sure how that detail changes the fundamental dynamic, though? It sounds like a veneer of process laid over arbitrary self proclaimed authority.
@jenniferplusplus @inthehands The only thing it would change in my mind is the notion that it devalues a Columbia degree because they can claw it back once you’re no longer affiliated with the university, perhaps studying somewhere else or years into your career. Instead it seems to apply only to current CU students. It’s possible that those students are already under a code of conduct that allows this to happen.
But yes, either way it’s a very bad line to see crossed.
@dwineman @inthehands that doesn't make any actual difference, though. This is a power they gave themselves, and used arbitrarily. Whatever restriction they've self imposed can also be self removed. It's just an illusion make this seem more palatable to you.
@dwineman @jenniferplusplus @inthehands
Let's make a fucking example of this shithole university with a heart of ICE. Nothing crosses a red line more than throwing a student to ICE.
First pressure point is to get a boot on their economic air hose by harassing donors until they stop giving money. Then campaign against their funding everywhere else. Create a scenario where they are being simuiltaniously punished for complying with Trump and for being ineffective in doing so.
@dwineman @jenniferplusplus
AIUI, the degrees were •already granted•. In what sense that means “not alumni,” I’m not sure.
And yes, it’s “temporary” as in “we’re gauging the reaction and trying to figure out what we can get away with.” Executives tend to be profoundly fear-driven people, especially at large institutions; they’ll hedge and waffle until the end of time.
That’s why pushback now is so important. If this blows up in their face, I’m sure they’ll have been “just reviewing” and never mind; if it buys them favor, then of course the “temporary” part was just a bit of perfunctory due process on the way to permanent recovation.
@inthehands
I assume they'll try to get a federal law like the one proposed in Texas re: "misrepresenting your gender to an employer or the government" being a felony, by which they mean wearing a dress, not just paperwork, and then they'll void all trans degrees on grounds of 'fraud'.
@dymaxion @inthehands They need to understand that locking people up for being trans means war not just with trans folks, but ALL of the LGBTQ community.
CisQueer men: I am one of you and I understand we are next if trans folks are defeated. The time to fight is NOW! Boots on, asses in the grass, ready to go.
@LukefromDC
They're fine with that. That's the goal.
@inthehands
@dymaxion @inthehands Trouble is, it only takes one side to start a war. Once they make that decision the only thing the intended targets of aggression can do is fight like hell and try to win the war
@LukefromDC
Si vis pacem, para bellum
@inthehands
@inthehands problem is who wants to be the first to call for heads on pikes, when they've already demonstrated willingness to revoke degrees for wrongthink
@aburka Has to be a coordinated effort.
@inthehands yep. And I have to imagine a lot of people are thinking at the moment "well, the leopards would never revoke MY degree... right?"
seems like sueing if you get your degree yanked will make an interesting test case.
also turns a degree into a transactional item, if it works. not sure how universities will like "pay for play" categorization being explicitly spelled out.
@inthehands I wonder if the students affected could sue to recover tuition and other costs, damages?
@inthehands yup. I have a masters in physical therapy from Columbia. Good thing I'm retired & no longer need the degree, so the fear of revocation cannot muzzle me.
If anything, Columbia also made it abundantly clear they only whish to educate subservient slaves for the rich and powerful to exploit.
Dare to object and their expensive titles will become worthless.
@inthehands Well, anyone worth dealing with will understand that having EVER held that degree is proof of academic achievement unless the reason for revocation was cheating.
NOT worth the money though! Anyone who degree is revoked should immediately hide their assets, then default on any student loans.
Along the same lines, when cities passed laws 30 years allowing the cops to steal the cars of those looking for sex workers, the bankers were in the bill hearingd every time.
The banks understood that almost all johns and sex workers who had cars stolen by cops and had car loans outstanding would immediately stop making car payments. The car dealer would then be "welcome" to attempt to reposess the car from the cops.
The banking lobbyists forced these jurisdictions to either not steal the cars or pay off the car loans if they siezed a car with outstanding loans on it. The result was that sex workers themselves (also targetted under these laws) quickly learned to always keep a car title loan outstanding, so their cars could not be stolen by the cops. Probably so did the smarter johns.