The Point However

This week, Palestinian students and others at Columbia will be mourning al-Nakba—the Arabic word used for the catastrophe suffered by Palestinians in 1948, when more than 700,000 were driven from their homes. Organizers invited both Hillel and one of its subgroups, the Progressive Jewish Alliance, to endorse.

There was no national protest on the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. The event that essentially took the place of a big march, The Winter Soldier organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War—a gathering of more than 200 veterans giving heart-wrenching testimony on the roots of civilian deaths and detainee abuse in official policy—was nearly ignored by the mass media. However, there are signs of a renewal.

Columbia activists like myself who do not stick within the bounds of establishment politics are often accused of being nostalgic for 1968.

As we wait for the big announcement on financial aid that Columbia is expected to make early this week, we need to remember that the students’ reaction matters.

The Israel-Palestine debate is such a perpetual issue at Columbia that it can be easy to neglect new developments.

The university system in the U.S. is deeply militarized—and increasingly so. While Columbia is, thankfully, not leading this trend, Columbia's record has some definite black marks. More recently, at the end of winter break Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investing rejected a proposal recommending that Columbia divest from military contractors, at least for the duration of the war in Iraq.

The organized antiwar movement is in terrible shape—fragmented, demoralized, and without forward momentum. This description applies to the Columbia movement as well as to the wider U.S. movement—and those of us who want to stop the war need to figure out what’s wrong as a way to start figuring out what can be done to fix it.