Harvard applications drop 5% after year of turmoil on the Ivy League campus
cbsnews.com
cbsnews.com
[0] https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/4/11/harvard-busines... [1] https://forbetterscience.com/2024/01/02/dana-farberications-... [2] https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/1/3/plagiarism-alleg...
Plagiarism is bad, but academia as a whole suffers from it. Stanford's last president stepped down when his old lab was found to have fraudulently submitted some research.
At the same time, advancements in human understanding take place in the messy real world alongside such problems. If those are continuing or even growing, then I don't really care whether powerful donors like or don't like what Harvard's talking heads do or don't do politically
You shouldn't 'offset' fraudulent research with "they won a Nobel" (which Harvard actually did last year, if you count economics), because even the work of Nobel winners can be called into question later [0, also has a Harvard degree btw]. Every instance of academic fraud is problematic, and multiple independent cases in a year, across a wide spectrum of disciplines and departments at the same institution, is definitely not common, and we shouldn't start normalizing it I think.
[0] https://forbetterscience.com/2020/10/07/gregg-semenza-real-n...
It's not though.
Every one of the top schools in the US has some amount of cheating done by its students. The students still tend to have an outsized degree of success and innovation in the world.
The US is a world leader in innovation, business, technology, etc. and it's also a country plagued by gang violence, homelessness, loneliness, isolation.
All human systems are not like scientific theories that once you falsify one aspect of them, the whole entire thing is spoiled.
Virtually everything that counts as a research accomplishment is predicated on studies that are vetted through peer review. Imperfect as this process is, it is not capable of flagging research misconduct reliably. So most things we could list under accomplishments will likely require some amount of trust in the researchers. If you don't see how multiple independent examples of this trust being abused constitute a problem in this regard, then I suggest we leave it there.
To be clear: the examples that I listed don't just relate to plagiarism, which would be misappropriation of results that are (hopefully) still true. Read the articles, there are many cases of suspected outright faking of results (often unlikely to be honest mistakes). I hope you never have a relative who has to rely on a cancer treatment based on fake research.
I'm also not saying that Harvard is necessarily an outlier in this regard (unfortunately). But when it happens, I think we should call it what it is: bad, without buts.
Academic fraud like the kind we are discussing occurred in many many universities across many countries. It was undetectable until recently when AIs were trained on almost the entire Internet and became very capable of showing similarities between papers from different places.
> convinced everyone to be snobs about choice of school
They did not do this. Many of these schools were not designed to be elite institutions. They reached this place in large part because of the success of the students who went through them.
> So they disproportionately screw up everyone with fraud, potentially more than whatever discoveries they make
My first point was, we don't know what way the scale tips if we only see the bad things and none of the good things.
> It can take decades and billions of dollars to undo bad research done at such a high level.
We already spend billions of dollars reproducing research for exactly this reason. Remember the unreproducible superconductivity research that had everyone excited here on HN a while ago? That wasn't able to be reproduced by many scientists. We spent definitely millions of dollars to debunk that one study. Given the scale of research in our world, we all as humans spend easily billions reproducing research already
What is the base level of variance in college applications? How often do applicant counts decrease y/y? Was last year’s especially high, and thus a drop is just a return to mean?
What were the demographics of the applicant pool this year compared with prior years? Is it related to the Supreme Court decision? The school’s response to Hamas attacks?
If the latter is true we should expect similar drops at MIT and UPenn which gave similarly unpopular answers to Congress.
The decision would have two potential effects, which go in opposite directions. On the one hand, some students might decide they don't have a shot at getting in without official race-based admissions policies, and choose not to apply this year.
On the other hand, there would be some students — particularly Asian students — who didn't think they had a good shot under the old system, but who might stand a chance in the wake of this case.
Importantly, Harvard immediately made clear their dedication to diversity following the SCOTUS decision, signaling to applicants that Harvard would not simply do away with overtly racial criteria and leave the rest of the process the same. This would tend to mitigate both effects, until we see how things shake out. Either way, I doubt that the 5% drop could be based on the net effect of these two opposing forces.
That said, the SCOTUS decision alone doesn’t explain why Harvard would be affected differently than Yale. Whatever the affect is, Yale has to follow the same laws. Perhaps I should’ve left that hypothesis out.
If you're a poor white male student in America, you're kinda screwed from both sides. America is divided by class, but responds by addressing race. The end result is that poor white kids get held to the higher standard as if they had the advantages of their rich white peers, magnifying the discrepancy between merit and privilege even further.
If even a tiny percent of the discouraged and disenfranchised white students in flyover country believed they had a fair chance at admissions and scholarships to elite schools, that could be a huge increase in applications.
That said, I am somewhat hesitant to ascribe much impact to the poor-white-kid effect. I doubt that most of these kids would even be aware of the recent changes. Maybe in a couple years word will get out (if in fact selective colleges do implement more class-based affirmative action, which is still an open question).
Yes, none of the other questions or speculations even matter until this is sorted out. The article even mentions Columbia's applications increased 10% in the same season.
That an entire news article can be written about a simple percent change without including a confidence interval is poor reflection of our collective data literacy.
The usual response was: "I can't join a protest, because I'd miss Physics class!" and the organizers failed.
It made perfect sense to me, because missing even a single physics lecture was a very, very bad idea. I was hanging on by my fingernails.
RIP Prof Goodstein, my physics prof, who recently passed away. You were an awesome professor. He was also the prime mover behind "The Mechanical Universe"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtMmeAjQTXc&list=PL8_xPU5epJ...
Unlike high school where an A meant nothing at all. My dad (Air Force) called such things "PX ribbons", meaning you could buy them at the base exchange. The only one he ever valued was his DFC.
1. When NBC cancelled Star Trek in the late '60s a group of Caltech students went and protested with signs and chanting outside the NBC offices in Burbank.
2. In 1973 people from Dabney House hung a big "Impeach Nixon" sign on Millikan library. There's a picture of that here [1], along with a copy of the letter that the President of National Oil Company then sent to the students of Dabney informing them that he was cancelling a $1 million dollar donation because of that sign. (That would be about $7 million today).
There was an on-campus sit-in about Gaza a couple of days ago [2].
[1] https://campuspubs.library.caltech.edu/3325/1/TheCaliforniaT...
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2010-dec-26-la-sp-cr...
That one was their second Rose Bowl prank. Here's the first [1].
Some students, like Hal Finney, did maybe 3 or 4 hours a semester and aced everything. Me, I did around 50 hours a week. Doing less did not work out well. The PreMeds did a lot more studying.
And then there were the poor souls who couldn't hack it no matter how much they worked, and they wound up quietly disappearing 1 by 1. The ones who needed someone to yell at them in order to work disappeared as well, and so on for the ones who could not manage their time (like me, I almost flunked out before getting my act together).
Yes, we wanted to be there, we wanted to learn the stuff. There was no compulsion. It all came from within. I would have been angry if other students tried to disrupt it for their selfish political purposes. I'm pretty sure the others felt the same way.
This was a long time ago. I don't know what Caltech is like today. I hope it hasn't drifted too far away.
P.S. I liked the way Caltech operated so much that I run the D Language Foundation the same way.
It brings to mind the Lockheed Skunkworks, a one-of-a-kind immensely successful engineering operation. Many tried to copy it, but always "fixing" it in the process, and failing.
My theory-in-development about such environments is that they require three things: First, a mission or goal that is 'good' (in the perspective of the people there), that brings out the best in people. 'Make lots of money' or 'monopolize the book trade or 'squeeze $$$ out of nursing home patients' demand values that affect how personnel treat each other. Second, they need a sufficient proportion of personnel who have passion for the 'dream' or 'mission', and who also have a certain level of humanism - not as much philosophically as their norms for behavior, especially trust and compassion for each other. Third, they need a small enough group that it doesn't need to be administered by bureaucractic rules, which become necessary as groups grow too large to run on interpersonal relationships. Also, it is of course hard to change cultures in existing organizations.
Could all of Lockheed be run like the Skunkworks? The full company can't be as selective about personnel and it's very large. There are many people, of course, who couldn't care less about such culture and will destroy it offhand. When I've been lucky to be in such magical cultures, the proportion of a-holes was small enough that they complied with the norms of the group; on one team of about only 14, when two leading proponents of the culture left then the a-holes tore apart everything - they resented the culture.
For $750K, that had better be all-inclusive -- don't come back to me and say you need more money for random staff bribes.
Smart kids are earning degrees that are very prestigious because of how smart they are.
Then dumb kids pay $25m in donations and bribes via their parents to get degrees right alongside the smart kids.
So now when you see a Stanford degree, is it from a smart kid or a dumb kid? That's why it's devaluing.
All the great programmers with Stanford degrees who earned them through really hard work, smarts and discipline are devalued because that one guy who Stanford said was good enough by awarding him a (paid for) degree, wasn't good enough.
If you can pay for admittance, most likely you can pay for grades too.
For a software developer, you shouldn't.
The smart kids can tell that this is a dumb kid with a Stanford degree. It does not look good.
Also, there's a smart poor kid out there should've been in his place.
Do you mean paying for tutoring (in which case you actually learn the material), or more devious shenanigans like faking your work, cheating or hiring lookalikes to sit for exams, bribing professors, etc.?
Interestingly enough, Stanford does seem to be changing its honor code (after more than a century?) to permit exam proctoring. Now that we are in the chatGPT era, I suspect in-person exams will become more important for grading purposes.
The latter of course. Academic integrity standards have been in place for centuries.
Did the kids parents live in the right school district or pay for the right private school? Did the kid play a sport well enough to play on the college team? Are they an underrepresented minority? Are they a legacy? Did they have adults in their lives that encouraged them to apply? That knew the secret do's and don'ts about how to write an essay or talk in an interview?
Admissions to elite schools is based on several dozen variables, among which "smart" or "hard working" are not weighted any higher than the others.
A student is probably not thriving at Stanford if they're actually "dumb", but the median computer science student at any of the schools I mentioned above could be swapped into a Stanford classroom and remain an average student.
A privileged upbringing could very well benefit brain health, and intelligence: better nutrition, more exercise, lower stress, more stimulating environment, etc.
If (elite school) students have higher SAT scores and better grades, does that actually correlate with "intelligence"[1] or college success[2]? Or are they just average students who got better coaching for tests or happened to get lucky?
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6963451/
[2] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-12-22/grades-v...
> “I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” ― Stephen Jay Gould, The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History
That's fine for billionaires, but the rest of us scraping by will have to do it the hard way, by paying a consultant $750K to get the right unmarked bills to the right people, with plausible deniability.
I guess it feels too tenuous a connection because I never thought about university politics when applying but maybe the marginal student is thinking about different things. I decided not to apply to some schools because the essay requirements were too long, or I didn’t they’d give me enough financial aid.
Or it could be a blip for some reason.
I wonder what the over-acceptance ratio is for ivy leagues. Just because you got in doesn’t mean you can afford to go.
It's hard to accept the right number of applicants when yield isn't exactly linear year to year
You can sacrifice a little faculty and class space for freshman and sophomores if you know some fraction will not be showing up to 400- (or at some universities, 600-) level classes.
Intuitively, the turmoil likely causes the decrease.
Let's say we have 3 groups:
1. Support Palestine 2. No strong opinion 3. Support Israel.
Before the Hamas massacre, the 3 groups already apply to Harvard.
Now that Harvard showed to support Palestine borderline Hamas. It alienates Number 3 and partly Number 2.
Number 1 already applies to Harvard therefore doesn't increase in size.
The administration's response to protests has a chilling effect and discourages students who care about their right to protest.
I think your first sentence is completely accurate and as a result I'm going to pay less attention to my intuition.
I doubt this is true. Harvard suppressed protests many times in the past. That didn't seem to discourage students in the past. This is not new.
> I think your first sentence is completely accurate and as a result I'm going to pay less attention to my intuition.
Because it merely goes against your intuition. That's all. Let's not act like you would require definite proof for everything.
Could you share some history with us? How was it the same and how different than what happened recently.
Also, the suppression of the president of Harvard by outside forces seems new?
> Also, the suppression of the president of Harvard by outside forces seems new?
Yeah, many are disappointed that it needed outside force. They are less likely to apply to Harvard now compared to then. That definitely contributes.
Do you have evidence of that, both that it's a commonplace point of view and that it affected admissions?
Intuitively, I don't think there are new people who start liking Harvard because of this fiasco. Most people already like Harvard. However, people who stop liking Harvard are probably plenties due to different views.
> that it's a commonplace point of view
You can look at comments on Hacker news, Reddit, and twitter.
Emphasis on "many". I didn't claim "majority". I know what you were trying to get at, so it seems like a good thing to clarify.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/4/11/harvard-sat-act...
Harvard stopped requiring the SATs, and then started again.
> The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based school received 54,008 applications for the class of 2028, according to the Harvard Crimson, the campus newspaper. The undergraduate college at Harvard University accepted 1,245 of those applicants, giving the incoming freshman class an acceptance rate of 3.59% — the highest admission rate in four years, the publication noted.
There are schools like UF, FSU, Purdue, Auburn, etc that offer great educations with good name recognition. Obviously not the same recognition as a Harvard or similar but kids are not assaulted and brain washed into getting kicked out or arrested
You get wonderful things and 'good trouble'.
One of the most noteworthy instances of student activism in the history of the university I went to was recruiting people to fight for the enemy in WW1. Those people then formed the core of the army that won the subsequent civil war. Things were bad for a while, but the country turned out to be mostly fine 15-20 years later.
Do you have a source? I don't think this is true.
In Europe universities have always been hotbeds for protest and debate. It's why they exist. They have a role beyond being a fucking diploma mill.
Although if I had to get myself into 100k student debt I might think differently...
These protests typically harm the cause and this is especially true for these protests. What would be the result?
Biden might lose and Trumps Israel policy would be pretty brutal.
Even in the short term, these protests are encouraging Hamas. As a result they're delaying the ceasefire. Israelis look at the protests as ignorant and antisemitic which is strengthening the Israeli right wing. All is the exact opposite of the two state solution goal.
Because there's no better signal to potential employers for recent college graduates?
The media ignores them, but there's tons of protests at state schools as well. Guess you could send your kids to some religious university I suppose.
There were also protests in TX state schools, same result essentially.
Some schools don't allow other students to take over the campus and prevent other paying students from access or attending class. They also don't permit violence. Obviously each of those schools has their own political agenda controlled by their govenors but kids can go to class.
People hanging out on lawns don't prevent anyone from attending class. The encampments have been, to the best of my knowledge, entirely peaceful. Certainly the one at Columbia has been.
You can disagree with the protestors. You can think they're trespassing or that they're being too disruptive. But you don't get to lie on my watch.
https://nypost.com/2024/04/22/us-news/columbia-cancels-in-pe...
what about when protestors seize and vandalize an academic building? Is that not preventing anyone from attending classes?
https://www.al.com/news/2024/04/columbia-university-israel-h...
What about the Jewish girl that was sent to the hospital at UCLA? https://twitter.com/kleavittnh/status/1785495804393701780
probably hard for her to attend classes that day?
Hows your watch going?
Where did those things happen, specifically? At Columbia, the university administration shut down campus; it was functioning fine otherwise (except for one building on the last day).
"except for one building on the last day", lol except for the one building that was vandalized likely for millions of dollars in damages. That was an escalation, how much more would it escalate if the police had not stepped in?
A crime is a crime, it does not matter if its state / federal or misdemeanor. Do we just allow crime if some of us decide that its for a good reason? Who gets to decide if the reason is just? That's a pretty slippery slope you are looking to walk up.
1: Examples of "counter protest attack"
https://twitter.com/TeresaWatanabe/status/178557561046900747...
https://twitter.com/caitiedelaney/status/1785562553025765774
Let's say the protesters get their way and their university "divests" from Israel. This is not going to help Palestinian civilians in any way. There's even a chance it results in more Palestinian suffering and death. The protesters aren't looking for a solution, they're looking to punish Israeli civilians for the war Israel started in Gaza after being attacked. That makes zero sense. If their argument is that civilians shouldn't pay the price for actions of their government then why are they so intent of exacting a price from Israeli civilians while at the same time doing zero to actually help Palestinian civilians? Not only is there no solution offered but some of the messaging calls for the destruction of Israel (i.e. the killing of Israelis which is deemed "ok").
Given it makes no sense, and given there is an overflow of hate, I think there's reasonable grounds to be worried about the hate having real world impact (and it certainly has).
Gaza is not starving is also I think the objective truth right now. There is a lot of food going into Gaza. The markets are full of food and the prices have gone down significantly. That can't ensure that everyone can get it, especially if it's stolen by armed gangs or resold for profit. But yes otherwise, life in Gaza right now is terrible. I don't see the protests showing us a path forward here.
Rafah is definitely a problem. It's a problem with two sides though. We have Hamas and Israel. What are the protests asking Hamas to do here?
I'll put an even finer point on it and point a finger at the ultra-orthodox community. We like to think of nice Jewish neighbors who have a menorah instead of a Christmas tree as decent, normal folks, but the ultra-orthodox are extremists in every sense of the word and thoroughly isolated from mainstream society. And they are driving the excesses of Israeli policy. And, maybe not coincidentally, if you look at the rise in anti-jewish bias attacks even in the US, ultra-orthodox make up a majority of targets.
The dictionary says of Apartheid "(in South Africa) a policy or system of segregation or discrimination on grounds of race. segregation on grounds other than race."
Israel does not segregate based on race or anything else. There is no such observable reality. Palestinians or Arabs (if that's even a race or an ethnic group) serve in the IDF, they work in tech, they are judges in courts, they are members of Parliament. Many of them are advocates for Israel. Your "observable" reality doesn't exist.
Israel does not treat Palestinians living in the occupied territories the same as Israeli citizens. That is the observable reality. That is also not Apartheid at all. The use of this word is absolutely a fabricated story. The story of the occupied territories can't be summed out in one sentence but is not a racial (or ethnic or any other) segregation story at all. A Palestinian from the west bank who is legally in Israel isn't "segregated" from any activity or location (e.g.). Blacks in the USA are arguably treated worse than Arabs in Israel. Palestinians aren't even segregated in the west bank or Gaza. There is no accepted definition of the word Apartheid that fits the fabrication. The restrictions on local population that is under occupation has never been called Apartheid in history.
I don't think you really know the ultra-orthodox Jewish communities. Some of them are anti-Zionists and are marching and camping with Palestinians. Some of them live in their own world of Torah studies and couldn't care less about current events. And yes, some of them participate in Israel politics (and society btw, not necessarily as isolated as you suggest) and are part of the government to help their constituents not serve in the IDF and get funded by the state. The attacks against ultra-orthodox relate to them being visibly Jewish, that's about it. That's just pure antisemitism and trying to paint them as "extremists" is to be honest also antisemitism. It's like saying the Amish are extremists (I think those guys do get some hate as well).
EDIT: To expand on the Apartheid thing. The word conjures some very specific images to those that hear it and are familiar with things like South Africa or the segregation against blacks in the US. None of those images apply to Israel. There's no "blacks sit in the back of the bus", "blacks can't be members of this club", "black can't stay in this hotel", "blacks live in their own neighbourhoods". None of that. The situation in Israel is quite unique. OTOH there are many countries with actual racial/ethnic discrimination (like China/Tibetians or Russia/Chechens or Qatar) where nobody cares.
Israel basically has two or three options with respect to the occupied territories. It can annex them and give everyone equal rights. A move that the international community will likely not accept (e.g. see the Golan heights). The Palestinians will also not accept that since they demand the right of return for refugees living outside the region and they have no wish to become Israeli citizens. E.g. many Palestinians in East Jerusalem who have the option to become Israeli citizens refuse to do so. The Israelis are also afraid they will lose the Jewish majority in the resulting "democracy" (though some Israelis consider this a workable solution). It can withdraw from them unilaterally. Another move the international community or the Palestinians will not accept (e.g. see Gaza). Or it can try to reach some sort of settlement (e.g. see the failed Oslo Accords). Most Palestinians demand that Israel cease to exist and Israelis "Go back to Europe" (which is a cute story but also disconnected from any reality).
So basically no options but to perpetuate the current situation. The current reality of wars, violence, right wing government, religion etc. is simply overlaid on top of this problem with no solution. Even if you didn't have a right wing government in Israel and you didn't have a war in Gaza there's still no solution (and we've been there before) and there's still violence.
The gradual annexation/settlement of the west bank is a different story. I am opposed to that. But just like there are two sides to the story in Gaza there are two sides in the west bank. The west bank isn't a story of peaceful people that are being abused, it's a story of a violent struggle between two groups (well, more than two groups if we include the surrounding countries). The Israeli settlement activity is a side story in this conflict, not the root of it by any means. You're letting the Palestinian side off too easily here, when the peace process was in full swing they could have gotten complete control of most of the west bank and dismantlement of most of the settlements. What was their response? Suicide bombings. You are removing agency from the Palestinians when you say the distinction doesn't matter. They as a people made choices the led them to the current situation.
The Palestinians want to dismantle Israel by force. Israel is opposed to that. What we're seeing broadly is the meeting of those two objectives. I think it's wrong of Israel to build settlements in occupied territory of undecided status and it's not helping a possible future resolution but the reality on the ground would look pretty much the same if there were no settlements at all given the irreconcilable differences between the parties here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gaza_(2007)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Palestinian_legislative_e...
We haven't had an election since mostly because Hamas would win it. [EDIT: Clearly opinionated, we can/should look at polls since 2006 till today to get a sense of where Palestinians are leaning]
"In light of the Fatah movement’s fragmentation, Hamas holds a clear advantage in potential legislative elections, as shown by public opinion polls indicating a likely landslide victory." - https://carnegieendowment.org/sada/84509
As we know from other countries, not all elections are decided by a super-majority, Hamas won by the rules of their "democracy", it would have won in any other elections, and it and its actions enjoy broad support.
[EDIT: I guess we can't tell for sure what results we would get in an election that didn't happen but here is some more colour on the elections of 2021 that were cancelled by the PA:
https://www.npr.org/2021/04/29/992065009/palestinian-authori...
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/30/palestinians-polls-...
https://www.timesofisrael.com/abbas-officially-delays-palest...]
"Despite the devastation, 57% of respondents in Gaza and 82% in the West Bank believe Hamas was correct in launching the October attack, the poll indicated. A large majority believed Hamas’ claims that it acted to defend a major Islamic shrine in Jerusalem against Jewish extremists and win the release of Palestinian prisoners. Only 10% said they believed Hamas has committed war crimes, with a large majority saying they did not see videos showing the militants committing atrocities." - https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-palestinians-opinion...
Where I will agree with you is that the Israeli government has chosen a strategy of divide and conquer and were happy to see the internal battle between Palestinians and use that as an excuse/weapon. But again, you're giving the Palestinians too much of a pass here. Also it's inaccurate to say that Israel funded Hamas (something another comment said). Israel allowed Qatar to pass money into Gaza to pay for government officials salaries.
https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1NE1ET/
Many countries funded Hamas because every penny sent to Gaza goes to Hamas. Gaza received billions of dollars from many countries.
https://apnews.com/article/business-middle-east-israel-forei...
That's not a thing. If you have to make (or keep making; I say random things all the time, but I'm calling you on this one) this kind of argument, it's because all other arguments have abandoned you. I think you should concede it; either way, I can't imagine there being a point to us continuing to talk about this if you're not going to; maybe our premises are just too far apart.
Also what are you wanting me to say? That we can't tell the result of elections we haven't had? Or are you pointing to other reasons why the Palestinians haven't had elections?
I don't think taking this back reduces the strength of my argument. If you want me to delete that comment from the protocol I'm happy to. EDIT: I made some amendments to my commentary there and put in some more references.
EDIT2: since you're calling me out I want to circle back to your comment that triggered my response: "A supermajority of Gazans are simply not old enough ever to have voted, since Hamas slaughtered PA members to "win" the 2006 election"
as I said Hamas didn't slaughter the PA members to win. It won and then it slaughtered the Fatah people in Gaza.
Hamas won the 2006 elections: "The Central Elections Commission released the final results on Sunday, 29 January 2006, and announced that Change and Reform (Hamas) had won 74 of the 132 seats, while Fatah trailed with 45". The popular vote is not the factor here (though it also got more votes than Fatah).
I'm not sure why the point about the majority of Gazans today haven't voted in 2006 matters. It's a factual piece of data but I'm not sure it's relevant. Do we have any evidence to support those people are more likely to be in favour of peaceful coexistence with Israel and/or be opposed to Hamas? Is there an "opposition" in Gaza? It's clearly not a free or functioning democracy, I'll grant that. So if your point is that Gazans are oppressed by Hamas and don't enjoy democracy or other freedoms that's fair.
If we agree about that, do you feel like the comment you wrote reflects that sensibility? Like a reasonable person reading it would get that vibe? It wasn't the vibe I got, but this is a message board, so I want to be careful not to let my expectations get out of hand.
If you say that Israel handing over Gaza to the PA and withdrawal from the Gaza strip ended up being a big mistake I can agree with that in retrospect. At the time I personally thought there's a chance for peace. But that sort of brings us way back to the question of how is this conflict going to be resolved when all paths lead to bad outcomes.
Hamas was a death cult way before 2017.
The relationship between Palestinians in Gaza and Hamas is also more complicated then "victimized". I mean you're right but there are nuances there.
Hamas isn't oppressing people in the west bank. What explains the polls showing strong support for Hamas there?
EDIT: another random btw, I think your comments regarding the conflict are generally well informed and with good intentions. I appreciate that. It's sorely missing from online conduct on this topic.
If there's a thru-line to my comments on this issue on HN, it's this: (1) we're never going to resolve it on HN, and (2) Israelis aren't Europeans and Gazans aren't Hamas. Here, I'm just being consistent.
I am pretty familiar with ultra-orthodox. I've spent a lot of time with chabad people. Their culture is genuinely pretty nuts. They suck up public money, put their kids into private religious schools that don't teach basics, run their own private police forces, extort politicians as a voting bloc, run private towns (see Kiryas Joel) where they take over county government.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/11/nyregion/hasidic-yeshivas...
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/nyregion/kiryas-joel-a-vi...
Sure, fabricated stories exist and plenty of morons believe them. Judaism is fabricated too as far as I'm concerned, but people can believe what they want. I am judging people on their actions.
The oppressor in Gaza is Hamas. An oppressor in the west bank is the PA. Israel is also in that mix, yes. It is putting extreme restrictions on a population inside an occupied territory that is using violence against it.
The narrative does not fit. In terms of international law, Israel has occupied the territory of Jordan in the west bank. If the residents of that territory e.g. conduct suicide bombings against Israelis then Israel is allowed to take measures against that. It is in fact allowed to take significantly more severe measures than it has (e.g. including a death penalty).
I would say in some sense you're right an the Palestinians are oppressed. I would also say the restrictions on them are in place mostly for security reasons. If there was no violence against Israelis there would be no restrictions (and that in fact was pretty much the case before the first intifada when violence levels were much lower restrictions and "oppression" was also significantly lower). There is also the problem of settlements in the west bank and Israeli ideologies of "the full land of Israel" (strangely enough aligned with your idea of the Palestinians being disenfranchised Israelis). The wall that was built around the west bank, which is called by some "the apartheid wall" was built for security reasons and as a direct response to wave of terrorist attacks in Israel. No attacks - no wall.
Is this all insane? Sure. Is it just a story of "Oppression" or "Apartheid"? It's not. The primary mechanism at play here is a violent struggle between Israel, Arab countries, and the Palestinians. Nationalism and religion.
The Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza, by the way and as far as I know, have no desire to be Israelis and anyways there is no legal framework or agreement in place that will facilitate land taken from Jordan or Egypt to become part of Israel (I think that's illegal under international law and I'm sure the world would not recognize the annexation of those territories). The peace agreements between Israel and Jordan don't allow for that either. It doesn't address the demands of the Palestinians either.
If you want to look up this term in the dictionary—or better yet, an encyclopedia—you should look at the disambiguates “Apartheid (Crime against humanity)” or “Apartheid (International humanitarian law)” in which case you’ll probably be referred to the Rome Statute Part 2, Article 7, Paragraph 2(h):
> "The crime of apartheid" means inhumane acts of a character similar to those referred to in paragraph 1, committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime;
Israel does segregate inside the territories they control, and the inhabitants of some of those territories are predominantly of one racial group (Palestinian Arabs), which suffers systematic oppression and domination by another racial group (Israeli Jews). The practices and policies of Israel in its occupied territories do constitute a Crime against humanity, and in particular, the crime of Apartheid. I will refer to an ongoing ICJ case 186[1] which lists these accusations and how they constitute a crime against humanity. In particular the South Africa testimony[2] (Page 36, Paragraph 93)
> While the Palestinian experience is not entirely identical to the South African one, a number of apartheid-style atrocities are being reproduced in Palestine, such as the permit system which applies only to Palestinians travelling to and from the Gaza Strip, annexed East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank. This includes the creation of a dual legal system consisting of an intricate and obscure system of military orders and regulations, which “often racialised in implementation rather than on paper makes the depth of Israel’s systematic discrimination less immediately conspicuous than its counterpart in South Africa”.
1: https://www.icj-cij.org/case/186
2: https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/186...
This is still a fabricated story.
Israel does not "segregate" inside territories it controls. Israel is taking security measures in territories it has occupied to protect its citizens and military. When the US occupied Afghanistan or Iraq or Germany or Japan did those Afghans, or Irqais, or Germans, or Japanese require a permit to travel to the US or could they travel freely to the US? When Afghanistan and Iraq were under US occupation could Afghans and Irqais travel freely between those countries without permits or Visas?
The west bank was occupied from Jordan in 1967. Gaza was occupied from Egypt. Gazans could not travel freely to the west bank before 1967 and so Israel has no obligation to facilitate such travel without requiring permits.
The different legal system is a consequence of military occupation. e.g. "jurisdiction could pass, for example, to military courts of the occupying power if the local courts are not able to function properly." - https://www.icrc.org/en/doc/assets/files/other/law9_final.pd...
As far as I know Jordanian and Egyptian courts are not functioning in the west bank or in Gaza respectively.
Anyways, it's not "Apartheid". We may not like it. We may not like the length of time that has elapsed (since 1967). We can challenge the legality of specific actions by the different sides. But Apartheid it is not with all due respect to South Africa's political manoeuvring and other political bodies and story tellers.
Executive Order 9066 is now considered one of US’s heinous human rights violations. After WW2 the victims of executive order 9066 were given the right of return, in 1948 Harry Truman signed an act giving the victims reparations, and in 1988 Ronald Reagan signed a formal apology.
This was an act of segregation. Roosevelt claiming it was a security measure did not make this excusable, or otherwise justifiable.
Civilians have rights, even when territory is occupied. In fact, it is the responsibility of the occupying power to give the occupied civilians protections, and preserve their human rights. Israel may be claiming these are security measures, and Israel may be correct in their claims, however, what they are doing is still crimes against humanity. If they want to secure their own citizens, they must do so without stripping human rights away from their occupied civilians.
But anyway, there is a whole Wikipedia article which explains this much better than me:
Or the muslims killing hundreds of christians in Africa?
Or is it for some reason only the Jews that are getting protested against for killing far less people while trying to stop a terrorist organization embedded in Gaza responsible for the rape, torture and murder of hundreds of Jews.
No antisemitism here at all.
https://www.facebook.com/reel/375773352130251
Just hard to imagine what you're talking about in particular, because you write in very general way.
Now do Islamophobia. Without insinuating that defending the freedom of religion is equivalent to support for Hamas, please.
If anti LGBTQ+ groups took over part of a university and had offensive signs and chants would you support their right for free speech? Is that sort of the analogy we're looking for here? Did that happen or did I miss it? This is not about policing people's minds. Breaking into a hall in Columbia e.g. is not free speech.
I agree there should be zero police brutality against lawful protests and when laws are broken police should still pursue the least violent methods to ensure law and order.
Targeted anti-LGBT violence is on the rise. Literal book burnings are underway. Our voices are being censored. It is legal to discriminate against us in employment, as students in schools, and even as patients hospitals. I get verbally assualted in public on account of my cultural identity on a regular basis. And I live in a progressive major metropolitan city.
I'm sad that Jewish people are experiencing this today, but my friend, you are late to the party. How late? It was the nation of Israel that forbade homosexuality some 3000 years ago. Before your people's story of persecution even began, we were being persecuted by your law.
But it doesn't justify censorship, revoking the freedom of speech, nor the freedom of peaceful assembly. Be careful where you read about this violence, because anti-Islam is a popular sentiment amongst anti-Palestine protests, and when the cops start a fight with or between protesters, they're writing history.
And come on now, you're not blaming the Jews for anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments. The Jewish people have moved on from what's happened 3000 years ago while in Iraq and Iran today (e.g.) those are criminals. In Tel-Aviv and Jersualem there are yearly gay parades and in the Arab countries they jail and kill gays.
The crazy thing is that I as a Jewish person need to contemplate voting for right wing politicians because I feel the left wing is assaulting my people.
Should do, yeah; but I've known anti-Black Jews, antisemitic Blacks, racist-af queers; etc. Clarence Goddamn Thomas.
> And come on now, you're not blaming the Jews for anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments.
History is a real motherfucker, isn't it? Yes, modern Israel is a lot more tolerant of us today, but do not pretend that the Israeli right wing -- the party in power today -- has any love for me. As of 2023[1], 43% of Israelis were opposed to gay marriage. If Israel was in Europe, the anti-gay sentiment is on par with Nazi-ass Hungary.
And there's the rub; modern Israel is a result of Europeans not wanting Jews to live in Europe, and simultaneously seeing Muslims as vermin who should be eradicated -- I won't say that this hot conflict was "all part of the plan" but it sure looks inevitable to me. Queers and Romani were not so convenient; we weren't given a place to go.
> The crazy thing is that I as a Jewish person need to contemplate voting for right wing politicians because I feel the left wing is assaulting my people.
Well, we agree here, that is bat shit crazy. Why did Netanyahu fund Hamas? Seriously, why did Netanyahu fund Hamas? And don't get me wrong, the US is the real big bad guy here -- we meddled in the affairs of the middle east, we funded terrorism, we fought proxy wars with Russia; we collectively brought power to militant Islam. Israel's been a convenient patsy all along. And today, antisemitism is on the rise, in Palestine and the US. Just as Islamophobia is on the rise in Israel and the US.
Are there some antisemitic Palestinians hanging around in anti-Israel protests? Yes. Are there islamophobic Israelis hanging around in anti-Palestinian protests? Yes. Is this extremely natural consequence of an entirely predictable hot war going to make you vote for the party of white nationalism? That is crazy. Read your Niemöller; Republicans are not your friends, they want Jews to continue dying at the front in their war against Islam. And once that's over, you're just a Jew.
Do not mistake radical Islamists for leftists. They're right-wing hard-liners through and through. Just like the Jewish Supremecists in Israel who the actual leftists are gathering to protest. I've been to the encampment at the university in my town, with my Jewish girlfriend, and we saw none of what you're talking about. But what we did see was a lot of protesting against the Israeli government. I do read the news, there are definitely some incidents of Palestinian-aligned antisemitism; it's real, I won't deny it. But in the news, I see a whole lot more criticism of the right-wing government of Israel being portrayed as leftist antisemitism, than actual antisemitism from actual leftists. Be very careful where you get your information.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/11/27/how-peopl...
The speaker of the Knesset, from the ruling party, is openly gay ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amir_Ohana ). And sure, Israel has its share of "backwards" people and we need to work on that.
Yes, I realize that! We've royally fucked the entire region by supporting terrorist organizations, and by supporting genocidal conquest of Palestine. I think they really have strongly-motivated reason to hate the US, UK, Israel and more; but also, the arms that we provided to religious extremists have entrenched that.
With the IDF bombing playgrounds full of children, does it matter one whit if those kids are gay? You say Palestine won't be safe for anyone -- is it safe for anyone under Israel's current policy?
Get the boot off of Palestine's neck. That's the freedom we're asking for. People love humanitarian aid, when it's done right. Progress can be made. But Israel's current approach is genocide. And that's just as wrong as when it was Nazis throwing you and me in concentration camps.
Then seek that unity, friend. Do not vote for the people selling violence as a solution to fear that they have fabricated. And especially do not sacrifice our freedoms at the altar of fear. Now is the time for solidarity and bravery in the face of powers that would divide and conquer us.
https://lite.cnn.com/2024/05/02/opinions/university-of-texas...
The pro-Palestine protestors on campus have been, as far as I can tell, almost entirely peaceful everywhere in the country.
Can you provide a credible source for that?
> The pro-Palestine protestors on campus have been, as far as I can tell, almost entirely peaceful everywhere in the country.
Yes, agreed.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2024/may/01/firewo...
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/counterprotesters-sh...
A picture of a pro-Palestinian protester being hit with something I'd term a bludgeon is similarly easy to find:
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/ucla-stu...
The part about police just watching the students being beaten is also a nice reminder that police have no legal duty to protect anyone in the US. You can be beaten to a pulp in front of an officer of law and he can just watch and enjoy.
What does that mean, 'renting the lawn', and where can I read about that?
> The part about police just watching the students being beaten is also a nice reminder that police have no legal duty to protect anyone in the US. You can be beaten to a pulp in front of an officer of law and he can just watch and enjoy.
That's something that I've wondered about, and which seems to attract little attention. Wouldn't that depend on local law? And wouldn't it at least create liability for the city, just like not inspecting a building that collapses would create liability?
Can anyone just bring that kind of stuff to campus without university approval?
Some students will look at what's happening on these campuses and be disgusted by the protestors. Some of them will be proud of them. Some of them will be frightened of the crackdown from administration. Some of them will take it as a challenge.
I went to a decidedly unfancy university (WGU), I think it was fine, and then I went to a slightly fancier University for graduate school (University of York, UK), but I still didn't get callbacks for the Wall Street jobs that I applied for [1]. Obviously there are thousands of factors that could lead to me not getting a callback, but eventually one recruiter outright told me that I shouldn't waste my time applying because I didn't go to a "top 20 school", and to "try working for a bank instead".
Keep in mind, I'm hardly a "fresh graduate", I have like 13 years of software engineering experience and have worked at a FAANG and other very large corporations and have spoken at multiple technical conferences. For most companies that's more than good enough (I actually worked at Apple when I was still a dropout), but the Wall Street world seems to care a lot more about yuppie credentials.
What I'm getting at is there are some careers where the quality of the education itself is secondary. They want to see some fancy names on the resume and it really doesn't matter if you're "qualified". It's not fair, it's arguably classist, but they didn't ask me when making these policies.
[1] Though some people tell me that I might have dodged a bullet with that one.
I agree it's primarily finance and law, but I don't think they have a monopoly on elitist snobbery.
What is that based on? (Also, why those particular schools?)
Here's one way to look at it:
To learn something, some people want to learn from the best in the world and to study with the best in the world. They want to change the world and want to maximize their potential; they want professors and fellow students who can challenge them as much as possible, who can take them as far as possible.
Some people are more oriented toward a less maximizing path, which is fine - maybe more about learning what is in the textbook from a decent professor. Possibly they indeed wouldn't benefit from Harvard. I suspect when people say things like 'Auburn's education is the same quality as Harvard's', they mean that the kind of education they got at Auburn wouldn't be better at Harvard. Maybe that's true, but Harvard offers something far greater, not available at Auburn. It's a chance to work with (and build relationships with) the very best minds in the world, some of the best in human history.
Think of that kid in your high school who just blew away every class, even the hardest ones; who found other things outside school or at nearby colleges to challenge them. That kid wants to be around other kids like them, who challenge them, and around professors who can make the most out of their potential and passions.
I don't have any hard data, but I've worked with a ton of people who have been to a bunch of different schools, including Ivy League and they weren't appreciably better engineers than the people who went to decent state schools.
I mentioned those particular schools because the parent comment mentioned them.
> It's a chance to work with (and build relationships with) the very best minds in the world, some of the best in human history. > Think of that kid in your high school who just blew away every class, even the hardest ones; who found other things outside school or at nearby colleges to challenge them. That kid wants to be around other kids like them, who challenge them, and around professors who can make the most out of their potential and passions.
Ok, no, I call bullshit, that's a common thing I hear about expensive yuppie schools but I don't buy it. The really hard decent students can easily be priced out because they don't want $300,000 of student loan debt. Not everyone can get scholarships.
And "best minds in the world"? "best in human history"? Really? Think of nearly any politician that you think is a moron (I won't name names), and they probably went to an Ivy League school. I think it's utterly ridiculous to assume that only rich yuppies with rich yuppie parents are the "best minds in the world".
This is elitist horseshit, and frankly I think it's harmful. It's an absurdly reductive and honestly naive view of the world, that really only exists to have some feeling of smug superiority about how smart you are because you went to a school that was paid for by your multimillionaire parents or you got into $300,000 of debt to learn the same shit you could learn at a decent state school.
ETA:
Sorry, I was wrong, people that are going to college aren't "yuppies" because they're not professional yet. Their parents might be yuppies, or just rich.
The protests are docile. There are almost no reports of violence. I've seen more than one 'encampment' at various schools; it's just people hanging around tents. Most of the chaos and violence were introduced by law enforcement. How could the protestors be any less disruptive and still be protesting? Picket lines are more disruptive.
Protests with chaos and violence include large crowds destroying and looting. The reactionaries are so anxious to assume the protestors are awful that they just seem to assume or say there is 'chaos and violence' and people repeat it, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
For how much longer do you expect them to remain docile?
FWIW, your assumptions about the protestors seem to match the preconceived notions (conveniently serving anti-progressive politics) of the neoreactionaries - before the protestors even begin, they are terrorists, etc.
Judge them by what they do, not all that nonsense: they have been peaceful everywhere.
I suspect Harvard, Yale, etc. will always carry some cachet. But the days of the elite, universally recognized golden ticket are probably gone forever.
Harvard has long been the beneficiary of a reputation of “if you get in, you’re very likely to go, as it’s probably also your top choice or very close.” This maintained an upward pressure force in Harvard to keep it a top school, because short term a strong reputation drives top-ranking students that want to study with other top students, and long term those high quality students are likely to accomplish more and further reinforce the reputation.
The flywheel starts to break if when you’re choosing between Harvard and somewhere else, you pick somewhere else. These kinds of small shifts are the rumblings you’d expect to see if the edifice was beginning to crack.