ACHAEANS: As Blue America earns its way out...

MONDAY, MAY 6, 2024

...are we all Achaeans now? We start today with a question:

What is the total student enrollment at Columbia University?

You're asking an excellent question! At this site, we have a close relative who will be a freshman there in the fall. Her exploits as a schoolwide spelling bee star were described in these pages way back when she was in the third grade!

How many students will she be joining in September? According to Columbia's provost, these were the enrollment figures as of the fall of 2022:

Columbia University enrollment, fall 2022:
Undergraduate schools: 9,739
Morningside graduate and professional schools: 22,063
Medical center graduate schools: 4,825
Special programs: 22 

Total enrollment: 36,649

That's the best we can show you. As of the fall of 2022, there were over 36,000 students enrolled at the well-known Gotham school.

Now for our second question:

How many Columbia students were arrested last week—arrested for their participation in the takeover of the school's Hamilton Hall?

As we noted yesterday, the numbers have been all over the place in the New York Times. That said, according to this report by NPR, "city officials" have set the total number of arrests at Columbia at a whopping 112.

We're never happy to hear that someone has been arrested. (Sometimes such action is necessary.) Meanwhile, here's a supplementary call of the roll from the Times:

HARRIS ET AL (5/6/24): After pro-Palestinian demonstrators occupied a building on Columbia’s campus this [sic] week, demanding that the university end all financial ties with Israel, the New York Police Department moved in and arrested more than 100 people there.

[...]

A New York Times review of police records and interviews with dozens of people involved in the protest at Columbia found that a small handful of the nearly three dozen arrestees who lacked ties to the university had also participated in other protests around the country. One man who was taken into custody inside Hamilton Hall, the occupied campus building, had been charged with rioting and wearing a disguise to evade the police during a demonstration in California nearly a decade earlier.

On Saturday, that account appeared online. Today, the report appears in the Times' print editions.

According to the Times report, of the "more than 100 people" who were arrested, there were "nearly three dozen arrestees who lacked ties to the university." 

If we stick with the semi-official number of arrests (112), that suggests that something like eighty people who did have ties to Columbia were arrested last week.  

If all eighty of those people were students, that would mean that 80 Columbia students—out of more than 36,000 in all!—were arrested in connection with the building takeover which produced so much commentary nationwide.

Something like eighty students tops, out of something like 36,000! Using the numbers we have, 360 students would have been one percent of the student population. Eighty students—or maybe just sixty or seventy?—would be something like one-fifth of one percent.

In short, a tiny percentage of Columbia students got arrested last week. We doesn't necessarily mean that those students were "wrong" in what they did, though we ourselves aren't major fans of their highly dramatic behavior.

The small number of participants doesn't necessarily mean that the takeover of Hamilton Hall was "wrong." It may suggest that something is "wrong"—that something is lacking—in the way we, as a floundering nation, report and then pretend to discuss such high-profile events.

In fact, ludicrous conduct has been observed at some of our floundering nation's largest, best-known "news orgs." Consider what happened on the Fox News Channel when Howard Kurtz attempted to discuss the protests at UCLA.

To its credit, the Fox News Channel has seemed to be making an adjustment in the way it presents such events. At issue is the following question:

When students conduct the protests in question, how should those students be described?

Should they be described as pro-Palestinian? Should they be described as anti-Israel?

On Fox News Channel programs, hosts were frequently describing such students as "pro-Hamas," full stop. This is the way the jackals are inclined to behave on the clown-car "cable news" channel.

Over the weekend, the term "pro-Hamas" had seemed to disappear from this channel's chyrons. But sad! Sunday morning, on Kurtz's MediaBuzz program, the rank designation was suddenly back in a chyron you can see simply by clicking here:

4 UCLA REPORTERS ATTACKED 
PRO-HAMAS ATTACKERS SEND ONE TO HOSPITAL

That's what the chyron said. To his tiny credit, Kurtz didn't use that noxious term of art as he discussed this topic. Somewhat oddly, though, he failed to describe the people who conducted this attack in any way at all.

We decided to fact-check the incident. When we did, sure enough! 

In fact, the handful of people who conducted this violent attack were actually pro-Israel! For the Daily Bruin's report, click here. Headline included, here's the relevant part of the report from the Los Angeles Times:

Four UCLA student journalists attacked by pro-Israel counterprotesters on campus

Four student journalists who work for the UCLA Daily Bruin were attacked shortly before 3:30 a.m. Wednesday by pro-Israel counterprotesters during a campus demonstration that turned violent.

Daily Bruin news editor Catherine Hamilton, 21, told The Times she recognized one of the counterprotesters as someone who had previously verbally harassed her and taken pictures of her press badge. The individual instructed the group to encircle the student journalists, she said, before they sprayed the four with Mace or pepper spray, flashed lights in their faces and chanted Hamilton’s name.

As she tried to break free, Hamilton said, she was punched repeatedly in the chest and upper abdomen; another student journalist was pushed to the ground and beaten and kicked for nearly a minute. The attack was first reported in the Daily Bruin.

This handful of violent people were actually "pro-Israel." Somehow, Kurtz failed to say anything, one way or another—and someone inside the belly of the breakdown tagged them as "pro-Hamas."

That's the way this garbage frequently works at the Fox News Channel. That said, how well are we the people of Blue America doing over here?

Long ago ad far away, the western world's first poem of war was composed. As the famous poem begins, Achaean forces had spent almost ten years conducting a siege of Troy.

Judged by conventional modern norms, the Achaeans were pretty much out of their minds. That said, the current "hush money" trial in Gotham reminds us of their early ways.

Are we all Achaeans now? Is it possible that our own tribe, here in Blue America, is in the process of earning its way out?

This morning, a new survey by ABC News/Ipsos has Biden leading Trump by four points in the nationwide popular vote. On the down side, that's a margin which might suggest a close outcome in the Electoral College.

It's entirely possible that President Biden will be re-elected this year. But are we all Achaeans now? And is it possible that this bromide is actually true:

Everything we ever needed to know we learned from reading the Iliad.

Over here in Blue America, are we all Achaeans now? We'll start to explore that complex question this week—though in our view, the anthropological answer may possibly tilt toward yes.

A tony percentage of Columbia students took part in the Hamilton Hall takeover.

Despite that fact, a deluge of media coverage followed. This may well best we best we know how to do, even at this point in time.

We Blues! Are we earning our way out? Perhaps more to the ultimate point, are we all Achaeans now?

Tomorrow: Before the Magna Carta