A Reconfigured World

There will always be an England, or not? And: Columbia

Apologies for the radio silence, I have been on the road. I was in London last weekend and had the strange sensation of visiting my old apartment block thirty-two years after I closed the door behind me there. Returning and seeing how the area did not change at all - even the notice to close the entrance door behind you was still there - was a weird sensation. There is indeed some truth to ‘there will always be an England’: the unchanged neighbourhood I returned to, but also the royal family and the NHS who remain headline news, the Sunday roast at the pub and the bookstores that have survived the online retail assault. It was good and for a fleeting moment I caught that feeling of my younger self, the person feeling on top of the world walking to Gloucester Road tube station with the traditional brown leather briefcase in my hand. For a few seconds it felt the world had not changed.

Yet they have and London is a key exhibit of that of course. The city has grown so much more cosmopolitan and diverse that in a way it is less English than it ever was with entire neighbourhoods transformed. Some areas feel like you’re in Beirut or some other Middle Eastern city, not to mention the many Polish and Ukrainian voices you hear everywhere. And more police, more sirens and speeding ambulances. And some things have completely disappeared: no more street vendors selling the latest newspaper edition while giving it to you verbally with a loud voice. These were the people through which I learned in 1990 that Thatcher had resigned, it wasn’t my phone. And yes, London is a contender as one of the top Western capitals for pro-Hamas rallies. I decided to have a fun day on Saturday and to not go and see any of them in central London and instead we indulged in some nostalgia with a Jewish twist and watched the newly released Amy Winehouse movie. It’s good and Marisa Abela really nailed her performance.

Chaos and Reconfiguration

Of course, at the same time when I was busy with other things Columbia University exploded in protests and they ignited a wildfire across other campuses in North America. Things are getting out of control rapidly and last night police in New York started to engage and remove the protestors.

And it is no longer about the suffering in Gaza or a call to find peace in a two-state solution. It has morphed into a pro-Hamas call to ‘burn Tel-Aviv to the ground’ and to decline a two-state solution because ‘we want it all’. For clarity’s sake: ‘we want another October 7th’ is also part of the repertoire. Jewish students are harassed and driven from campus, and Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar added fuel to the fire by making the distinction between pro-genocide and anti-genocide Jews. If you were wondering how this is putting the Democrats and their nominee for the 2024 election in an ever tougher spot, here it is. Watch how their convention later this year might be an eventful one.

The worst part however is how university administrators and faculty are silent, often complicit and thus utterly incapable of managing the crisis where many politicians are also largely absent. Things are being reconfigured as universities have been turned from open institutions of debate and inquiry into bastions of hate and dogma where a new generation is trained not to think, but to adhere to the most radical and abject, sometimes racist, ideologies that are promoted today. The case for a ‘Free Palestine’ has now become so deeply intolerant and anti-Semitic that 1930s language and attitudes to marginalize and exclude Jews has crept into the curriculum of progressive academia. The next step is, of course, violence. If our institutes of higher learning are reconfigured into drafting stations to attack respect, debate, compassion, collaboration, then this is an assault on the core liberal values of the open societies we still are.

The person to follow here is Columbia professor Shai Davidai who has been calling out in particular the lack of action and accountability from the university leadership.

And yes, these protests have crossed the line to such an extent that they are now endorsed by Hamas and Iran’s leadership as they are helpfully repeating their talking points and creating more division in the West. Some have pointed out that the anti-Israel movement is unusually well organized and coordinated and that in the case of the universities outside radical elements have taken over from the students. And that is what probably prompted the decision to have a massive police force ready last night to restore order at Columbia, it was more than just removing a few students.

As I mentioned the events on campuses include glorifying October 7th with the added wish to have another one. Murder, violence, rape all in the name of destroying the Jewish nation. And when it comes to sexual violence I want to point you too Sheryl Sandberg’s (ex Meta/Facebook) recently released documentary about that called ‘Screams before Silence’. It’s is here for you to watch in its entirety: