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Those of us who actually have a bit of common sense know exactly what you meant to say, regardless of how a journalist (!!) decided to spin the story. You are of course 100% correct and accurate in saying what you said. It is astonishing (but unsurprising) that someone would spin it a different way.
Indeed. Teachers owe a basic duty of care to their students. That means being as frank about what you're seeing as possible; it's the only way to ensure that undergrad/grad students will consider a teacher credible. Simply doing so isn't the equivalent of abandoning one's principles.
Honestly, especially in classrooms. The adults in the room (professors etc) are partly responsible for these young people who look to us for guidance while likely away from home for the first time. I would have done the same in my classroom.
is this commonplace in today’s newsrooms? the press is not reporting the facts, which are required to be a journalist. They are actively suppressing information to appease management. I would have been sick if the J-School dean at Chapel Hill made this mistake.
I completely agree, and I have taught young journalists about crime and disaster reporting. The first thing I emphasized, if your gut says you're in danger, leave. Be aware of people's body language. No story is worth getting hurt or killed for in the field. There are other ways to report.
Sure, but good journalism is a risk, and "going to the mat" isn't inherent protection when the other side fights dirty. It's important for students to know that what there doing can be a safety risk, and decide what they want to do.
They also need to know how dangerous speaking the truth is. We see how many people are capitulating out of fear. They need to know that sometimes seeking the truth means being willing to risk your life for it
They also need to know that anyone in power (like Cobb) won't have their back. They got their position because of a willingness to tow the line and therefore shouldn't expect an ounce of courage when the shit hits the fan from these people.
a) it's "toe the line", so don't use it if you don't understand it
b) his text is very clear that he means visa policy not journalism and I guess they don't have news where you are in Chicago?
Yeah, but they shoukd only hear that if it's true, and at this point it is EXTREMELY CLEAR that Columbia will do no such thing. So kudos to Cobb for not lying to his students.
That journalism school should fall into the lowest rank possible, maybe a tie for Trump University. I keep thinking about the Universities that survived during Stalin and they all caved to him and were under close scrutiny. Dissenters sent to gulags or disappeared like Mahmoud Khalil was.
They also need to hear when going to the mat still won’t stop the federal government. He didn’t say “Columbia doesn’t want to protect you”. He said they CAN’T, and that is the truth.
This is called complying in advance. Columbia really has failed as an institution. Columbia is actively targeting its own students. Rationalize your cowardice any way you like.
Thank you for giving your foreign students the right advice. Having once been on a student visa, it was quite clear to me what you meant. A student visa is a non-immigrant visa and while basic rights are technically guaranteed, anything out of norm can and do lead to threats of deportation.
Also, at the same time that the elected Democratic leadership is capitulating, why should anyone expect young foreign students, who are essentially visitors to the country, go out on a limb to protest anything?
I re-read this and the NYT piece b/c I thought I must have misunderstood.
After saying no one can protect students on international visas from arrest or deportation, you promised to put in a good word if anybody catches charges and faces academic expulsion and/or forcible ejection from the country?
What a mess all of this is, a soul shattering mess and we are the lucky ones. It is depressing that we are having these conversations instead of the one that lies behind them.
I never believed that isolated quote was the real story. Thank you for continuing to be there for your students. They are really going to need you in the days ahead. ❤️❤️
These are risky times, even for me. I'm poor and don't have the recourses to protect myself from the government. I'm also not well known.
I am convinced that things will get worse even for people like me.
No amount of context excuses cowardice. If you want people to respect you, either call out or resign from Columbia for its complicity in persecuting students.
Columbia can protect community members from DHS & ICE. They often have administrative warrants, which do not allow entry, search & seizure.
Columbia can educate community members to ask for a judicial warrant. Columbia can keep DHS officers who do not have judicial warrants off their properties.
The NYT and its editorial staff are a Right Wing disinformation project and stop giving them interviews or providing them content they will lie and distort it in favour of the right wing narrative of any given story
It’s been this way for at least a fucking decade ffs, stop cooperating with NYT
The meta-layers here about the accuracy of reporting are fascinating. A (the) J-school dean complaining about being quoted out of context by the newspaper of record.
It was cowardly for Columbia to fail to even try to protect its students against police-state abductions, but it's realistic to tell students that the university may not be able to prevent the abductions.
I agree that there is evidence that members of the Columbia community are implicated in the abduction, possible including trustees and other high officials. Cobb needs to confront that complicity.
If you issued a public statement about Mahmoud Khalil and the university's role in facilitating his arrest—in defense of the First Amendment, as the head of Columbia's J school—it would go a long, long way toward restoring that trust you spoke about so eloquently at your Reuters Memorial lecture.
United States government, universities, military, media and journalists supported & supports scholasticide, assassination of Palestinian journalists BY ISRAEL, genocide of Palestinians by Israel, and brutal military apartheid. Only zioNazis are safe.
Take a stand against your university in light of their continued expulsions, suspensions, and degree revocations of students, their continued kowtowing to Trump threats. Otherwise however innocuous or well-meaning your sentiment is worthless.
Considering you helped enable NYPD to come onto campus and beat the shit out of unarmed, peaceful protestors last year…maybe you need to own your fuckups
They aren’t protecting them already. The Columbia rape issue wasn’t met with one threat to federal funding. They did nothing to sufficiently protect American students raped by other American students on their American campus.
No, the NYTs, where writers and reporters with zero journalism ethics training and educational credentials go to subvert the facts and make money for their corporate boss. If half the J-school graduates in America were first in line for these jobs, you’d have a more strident and educated workforce.
wait a sec...journalist is falling back on the "I was misquoted" crutch?
also...you go on and on about caution.
How about courage? You are a tenured professor. maybe don't be such a schumer.
Idk man, this kinda makes it out like youre a pussy willing to let the institute you work for sell your students out to the gestapo, but what do I know? Im not a big fancy lad footman of a Nazi university
2/2 universities in this country employee millions, Raise staggering amounts of money and are perhaps the most important economic drivers in their communities. And FFS people love their Alma mater.
Use your collective power - hang together or you all hang apart.
Those students have a lot to lose, so hearing the truth about the consequences puts them in a better position to weigh the potential consequences to any action they may take. I absolutely hope that their optimism remains in tact, but as a POC I sincerely doubt it will.
In 1971, after the killings at Kent State, a large group of students held a vigil in front of the house of the UGA president to protest the Nixon admin’s war policy & as a memorial to the murdered students. We sat in the street in front of the house with candles. The governor, like many across
…the country, had activated the National Guard during the anti-war protests that spring. As we sat there, their vehicles blocked the road on both sides of the protestors. They weren’t looking outward to protect, they were facing inward to intimidate. The dean of students (the legendary Dean Tate)
…surprised us and walked into the center of the crowd. He looked around and took a seat with us. His message was that he would (do his best to) protect us against violence with his presence. He earned a lot of respect that night.
That’s one way an administrator can support the students.
I read the article. I suspect a lot of readers took your quote and misunderstood. But a lot of us, me included, know you. I took that quote to mean exactly what context you presented. That the government is a threat and that the risks to journalists are real. Stay committed to the truth. 👊🏻
I'm sorry, Jelani - but the phrasing was accurate. The University's action plan all but says they won't defend people who criticize Israel, journalists or not, and you know damn well if Katrina Armstrong tells you to fold, you're folding. So stop with the fucking empty rhetoric and mock outrage.
Or maybe those who know him and his work need to look past his reputation and judge his current failings. If he were truly brave, he would resign his position with Columbia for its persecution of activists.
Truly appreciate that clarification on what is a tricky question (i.e. who can protect whom against a lawless assault on constitutional rights?). I was more than a little surprised when I read the Times quotation.
I saw that quote and understood the meaning of your words. I read that as a transparent truth that you were arming them with. No one is made safer with false security. It didn't read to me like you were the perpetrator of promoting censorship at all, but that you were warning them to stay sharp.
Do you have any comment on Columbia actively assisting ICE as was the case here? The limits of resistance seem kind of irrelevant if you are actively assisting the repression of your students.
Thank you for clarifying this. It was really terrifying to read your words without this context. I worry no one is fighting to protect students; this government is going after and silencing those it deems powerless. Hope you can compel Columbia’s leadership to stop expelling students protesters, too
Wait, so there was none of this talk about protecting the students when you were actually talking to them, only later when relating what you MEANT to say while speaking with NYT? That’s what this says right??
I think you are wrong. I read this as saying this is what he told the students (and told NYT). Also, it is unwarranted to assume he didn't say something merely because it's not repeated in this statement. Finally, your tone is unnecessarily aggressive, particularly when it's based on speculation.
Are you aware that many ppl have formed the impression from the reporting that Columbia (you) were essentially saying 'we will not lift a finger to help you because it would be pointless'? eg get involved in any way with legal representation or advice.
Have you considered clarifying that aspect?
Comments
Please use ALT text with your images full of text for those who need it.
Accessibility is journalism praxis.
Also the NYT... WTF?
You've got the intelligence of a gnat. Stay mad! 🤡
b) his text is very clear that he means visa policy not journalism and I guess they don't have news where you are in Chicago?
https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/02/07/cjrs-error-at-word-18/
There are plenty of faculty who have stood up for students
Thanks, visually-impaired users everywhere.
The institution of US journalism, not just "your" students, may not recover from its actions.
After saying no one can protect students on international visas from arrest or deportation, you promised to put in a good word if anybody catches charges and faces academic expulsion and/or forcible ejection from the country?
Is that a takeaway.
I am convinced that things will get worse even for people like me.
I hope your students learn how damaging some formerly respected outlets have become .
Columbia can educate community members to ask for a judicial warrant. Columbia can keep DHS officers who do not have judicial warrants off their properties.
It’s been this way for at least a fucking decade ffs, stop cooperating with NYT
People were willfully misunderstanding you.
also...you go on and on about caution.
How about courage? You are a tenured professor. maybe don't be such a schumer.
Make all the excuses you all want. But they don’t fly. Deeds not words. No one cares about your words.
And NEVER trust the NYT. Oligarchs plaything. I guess like Columbia.
Use your collective power - hang together or you all hang apart.
And fucking fight for Khalil.
Escalating obsequiousness is not going to lead the fascists into giving up. It hasn’t yet.
Here’s an idea. Stop listening Bill Fucking Ackerman and the Betar shitheads. Coordinate with other universities to fight back.
We are there, but we must resist.
That’s one way an administrator can support the students.
Thanks for being ethical here & shame on me for (subtly!) falling for the rage bait.
This is why I canceled my nyt subscription. They've strayed from professional and ethical reporting.
I won't support that type of reporting and editing.
Have you considered clarifying that aspect?