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Thank you for the write up. I never would have had the patience to wade through all that university politics myself, your summary was much punchier.
It's amazing how impactful the Vietnam War was on our culture, and that we never really dealt with it. Dave Barry once said that untangling Vietnam is impossible in America because of the conflicts between two groups: draft dodgers who didn't fight in Vietnam but supported the war (George W. Bush, Donald Trump, Joe Biden0, and veterans who served in and opposed the war (John Kerry, Al Gore, Tim O'Brien). Twenty years after he wrote that, most of those people are dead, but we never got any closer to really figuring out what we thought about it. American society has never really come to grips with what we did in Vietnam.
Who was right between the Kill 'em All Caucus who thinks that We Didn't Lose We Left; and the protestors who said we never should have been there in the first place?
Forrest Gump is an entire film devoted to relitigating the boomer generation's trials and tribulations, and of course Vietnam is a major plot; but when Forrest has to get up at the national mall and say what he thinks about Vietnam, they cut the mic.
The protestors were objectively correct about basically everything they said: Vietnam was a pointless war, Ho ho ho Chi Minh did in fact win, the dominos didn't fall, and fifty years later a Vietnam run by the same Communist Party is a close Capitalist trading partner and just on the border of becoming a direct military ally against Red China. It's hard to see how the destruction of several million Vietnamese and the incineration of billions of dollars of treasure made the world today better in any way, compared to a counterfactual in which the United States simply let North Vietnam reunite with the South without outside interference. One has to posit a lot more hypothetical counterfactual moving parts to get there, and I don't think that justifies the costs.
On the other hand, the establishment won, The Man still stands. The institutions survived and thrived, Nixon and Reagan came back. If the pinko protestors turned out to be right about everything they said with regards to Vietnam, they turned out to be wrong about a lot of other things, and anyway their tone was considered a national shame. I grew up hearing these horror stories about returning veterans being spit on in airports, and so much of the GWOT era of "Support Our Troops" and our subsequent combination of distance from and lack of criticism of the military stems from this era. The colleges and police departments that crushed the campus protestors changed their politics, but they never fell. The direct institutional heirs of all the people who committed the crimes of the Vietnam era are in power today, running the same institutions that did committed those crimes, mostly without any formal apology or real effort to avoid such mistakes in the future.
And they never really squared up what it meant to be the President of Columbia University: the campus protestors of the Vietnam era were right, they were correct, especially according to the liberal leading lights of Columbia; but what does acknowledging that mean to an ordered institution that cooperates with the same US Government that dropped the Agent Orange?
So you end up with this generation of students that have been taught that the Protestors Were Right, and that the 1968 Columbia protests were heroic, and it's really hard to come up with a fact-based argument against them; and then you have the institutional heirs to the organization who have the same incentives to restore and maintain order on campus, and the result is this mishmash of actions.
But what's telling here is that the universities completely lack even a semblance of pain tolerance. Nobody, from the president to trustees to faculty to students, seems to be willing to countenance the idea that they can tell Trump "NUTS" and just go on without federal funding indefinitely. While taking a significant haircut in terms of funding, costs, educational opportunities, etc; the Federal Government can't actually force Columbia to do anything. If Columbia really, truly said as an institution: we're a University, we take academic independence seriously, we're not going to let the federal government get involved in hiring decisions or what we teach... Then there's nothing Trump could do about it.
This was the inevitable endpoint of identity politics, a total inability to tell anyone they are wrong.
It can force it to comply with Federal law. All of it. Including all those juicy parts about hostile workplace, discrimination, etc. which the ancestors of the current wokes worked so hard to institute. None of it is predicated on getting any federal funding. And then there's federally funded education loans. Check out how many students use those - is Columbia ready to develop its own loan system (and ensure Feds can't dismantle it for violating one of approximately 10 million banking regulations in existence)? And those juicy kuffye-wearing foreign students - guess who controls their visas? Federal Government is a monster - the Left worked for many decades, since the forefather of all, FDR - to ensure it can force anybody to do anything they want. So I have no sympathy for them if that monster turns on them now - but they would underestimate its power at their own peril. Their only hope is friendly federal judges would allow them to stretch things out, and Trump only has 4 years...
The entire history of the debate around wokeness: "Everyone is folding to wokeness, all the time. That's weird"
But also "so-and-so folded because he, specifically, is a pussy".
It's funny that even reversing the dynamic in favor of antiwokes doesn't change the assumption.
I agree that thinking academia admins fold to wokes because they are just pussies is wrong. They fold because they sympathize to them, but want plausible deniability. They don't want chant "kill the Jews" by themselves, but they are OK with shielding people who are willing to, from any negative consequences (and may throw in a couple of positive ones). It's not only about the Jews of course. Now Harvard seems to have abandoned the fig leaf completely, while Colombia is still pretending. It's certainly be interesting to see which strategy works for them and whether their remaining cultural status would allow them to openly defy Federal law.
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Bob Jones university gets away with racial segregation.
They have separate drinking fountains and lecture halls "for whites only"? I kinda find it hard to believe, any documentation to that?
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Bob Jones is already buck broken. They’re 10% minority now and haven’t restricted interracial relationships for a quarter of a century.
They even let women wear pants these days.
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Who said anything about sympathy?
Nonetheless, they can resist. Just not as the thing they are now.
There's a Unitarian Church down the road from me in a beautiful old building, and a mile away a Lutheran church in a crappy 1960s building. The beautiful building used to be the Lutheran church, until the minister wanted to convert it to a Unitarian church. The Lutheran church has the unofficial motto: "We kept the faith, they kept the furniture."
Columbia University, the concept, can't be forced to do anything, except maybe close its doors.
I want people, even the ones I disagree with, to stand up for what they believe in.
Churches are directly protected by the Constitution, so the government has to be kind of careful around them. Even if specific part of what the church does is not protected, a friendly judge can always spin it that way, and attacking a religious institution is an automatic PR problem for the government. Universities used to have same kind of deference, but their wokification lost them this stance on the right, and given that the left regularly sets their own university campuses on fire, if they claim "you don't respect The Sacred Institution enough!" nobody would really believe it by now. So right now they are much less protected than the churches.
I'm not sure what "the concept" here means, but the government can put Columbia in a world of hurt, causing them a lot of direct (fines, lost court cases) and indirect (limiting their access to things) trouble. Of course, technically this is not "forcing" to do them anything, the same way as "give me your wallet or be shot" is not forcing - you can choose to be shot, a lot of people survived being shot. But I don't think any sane board would be willing to fully explore how deep the rabbit hole goes. Because with Feds it can go very deep.
Yes. Inasmuch as anyone at Columbia actually believes that this is tyranny, they should be willing to let the institution's current incarnation collapse before they give in. Inasmuch as the liberal arts teachers actually believe in their own bullshit, they should believe it would be better to teach in Central Park than to teach falsehoods. If they don't believe those things, they should shut their mouths about them.
Time was that we had a concept of honor that required that one actually tested threats of violence before one gave into them. Now we think that idea so insane that nobody on the Left or the Right believes in getting into a fist fight.
Oh but they never would. Just as "socialist" and "oligarchy fighter" Bernie Sanders would never give up his third house and be left with only two, to help the poor. Just as various rich "eco warriors" would never give up their personal jets. And they wouldn't need to - their followers, as it is evident, are fine with that.
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Or you recognize that Trumpism may be temporary and letting him destroy Columbia before that would be useless or counterproductive since institutions like that will be needed come the counter-counter-revolution.
I grant it's totally hypocritical if you think there's an active genocide though.
If Trumpism is temporary, then he can't destroy Columbia in three years. If it isn't, then giving in will destroy your institution.
To survive, liberal arts educators have to be willing to become St. John's College. They might not have to buy they have to be willing to.
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Yes, but no. The protestors (not each of them personally, but in general the movement) was part of the reason why US lost this war. And if US didn't lose the war, Vietnam could be what South Korea is now. Which is better than what it is now. So is the lost war "worth it"? Probably not, that's why it's called a lost one. But if you approach every war with the premise that you may lose and therefore you can't fight, then you lose all the wars in advance. And one of the reasons that Vietnam is now quasi-capitalist is because the US did not lose some other wars, including winning the main one - the Cold War. Did Vietnam war make the world better? No, it did not, because the good guys lost. If they didn't, it would. That happened in other places where the good guys didn't lose.
In that counterfactual the US stops fighting the Cold War, USSR still exists now, owns major parts of the world, and half of the US is thinking when we stop being so stupid and join the societal model that is clearly winning, namely socialism. I don't think it's a good future to be in. Yes, losing a war sucks. But losing all wars in advance would suck much more.
How exactly?
By every sensible measure? Income, GDP, opportunities, quality of life, technological advancement, etc. SK is a highly advanced modern nation, while Viet Nam is "developing". If you take pretty much every criteria that common people would use when comparing one nation against other, SK would come ahead.
Vietnam is just an average, mostly functioning Asian nation free of extremes of any sort. South Korea is a realized cyberpunk hellscape afflicted by every conceivable form of degeneracy and blight brought about by modernity and late-stage capitalism, whereas North Korea somehow managed to the realize the horror of Confucianism and Communism being combined and ruled over by a dynasty. And yet you’re arguing that the long-term outcome of US victory for the Korean Peninsula is preferable to the long-term outcome of US defeat for Indochina.
I'm sorry but I vastly prefer "degeneracy and blight brought about by modernity and late-stage capitalism" - aka civilized living in good conditions, decent income, nice job and all trappings of modern civilization - to "mostly functioning nations" (side note - did you notice how "mostly" became the most deceitful of words in English recently? Take "mostly peaceful"...). Given how many people move from "mostly functioning" to "degenerate late capitalist" nations and how many move the opposite direction, I somehow suspect I am not a rare exception.
LOL...is this what you unironically associate late-stage capitalism and existing cyberpunk conditions with? "good conditions, decent income, nice job"? Do you think this is the lived experience of South Korean normies, for example? People who cannot even reproduce themselves?
I meant "mostly well-functioning Asian nation". English isn't my mother tongue. Either way, I think Vietnam, as unified through force of arms, represents an overall outcome that is clearly preferable to both those of all other former COMECON member states and that of the partitioned Korean nation.
Yes. It is the living experience of the normies of virtually every Westernized country, I don't see why SK would be an exception.
Viruses reproduce themselves excellently, and they aren't even alive. I think you need a better criteria. And as far as I know, Koreans are capable of reproduction no less than any other human.
Preferable to whom? Again, migration patterns show a lot of people prefer the horrors of "late stage capitalism" to the paradise of "mostly functioning". The only exception maybe are wealthy retirees that prefer being rich in a poor country. But the "being rich" part is rarely achieved outside of the capitalist hell. If Vietnam and USA declared that citizens of each country could freely move and remain in the other country indefinitely, without any impediment, how do you think migration patterns would change? Would the oppressed people of capitalist cyberpunk hell rush to escape it into the mostly well-functioning paradise?
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HOLY FALSE DILEMMA BATMAN
The US didn't stop fighting the cold war when China became the PRC, or when Cuba fell, or when Vietnam did in fact fall. Why would the US have suddenly given in because Vietnam went Red?
The time to make a decision in Vietnam was before Dienbienphu. After that Vietnam was always going to be united under a Vietminh regime.
Not expending national credibility on that lost cause would have made the Capitalist American system more attractive on the global stage, not less. We can tell because US prestige declined after the defeat in Vietnam!
The Sino-Soviet split was already happening before the US entered Vietnam.
What would have helped Vietnam develop significantly would have been ending the destructive war earlier, so they could have gotten along with the industrialization process and started selling me cheap workout clothing. You can tell because Vietnam today is where South Korea was 30 years ago, and Vietnam fought a series of destructive wars for 30 years longer than South Korea did.
No, you approaching it with the wrong end. The US that would willingly give up Vietnam to the reds, without trying to do anything, would also give up without trying Poland, Afghanistan, and many other things that together brought the Cold War to victory. By itself, the loss of Vietnam obviously weren't fatal - obviously! - but becoming a type of country that doesn't even try to fight may be fatal for the chances to ultimate victory.
You are comparing it to the situation where US won in Vietnam. Compare to situation where it didn't even try.
The US DID give up Poland without trying! That's a thing that really happened! Not ten years before the Gulf of Tonkin, the US failed to help the Hungarians who were ready to stand against the USSR. During the Vietnam War the US would abandon the Prague Spring to its fate. The ding to US prestige from failing to aid the Hungarians or the Czechs was small, in fact it was probably less than the debit to USSR credibility worldwide resulting from those invasions. In fact the damage done to the US was so small, you don't even remember it! The ding from losing in Vietnam was large, and the damage done by the United States' behavior in Vietnam (and the rest of Indochina) was even larger. From this we can deduce that US global prestige suffered less from scenarios in which they didn't try than scenarios in which they tried and lost.
Nope. Solidarnosc had a lot of support from the US, though it was not all in the open. Reagan lead a lot of it.
With Hungary and Czechia it was different - those were already considered owned by USSR, so it was USSR atrocities in their own space rather than the US losing to them.
If it didn't try, what "prestige" you are talking about? Prestige of doing what? Sitting in their corner of the world and silently watching as USSR eats the rest of it?
Wait, I missed something, who was Solidarnosc fighting against? Because I'm pretty sure they were fighting against a regime the US simply let walk into Poland.
You seem to be confusing different historical periods. When USSR took over Poland, there wasn't even the Cold War - in fact, most of it happened while US and USSR had been allies and fought together against Hitler. Opening that question back then would hardly be possible. However, things were much different years later, when the Cold War was in full swing.
I disagree with that historiography, the first red scare happened decades earlier. Enmity between the Capitalist USA and the USSR started with the latter's birth, or preceded it.
I don't know how you're making your assumptions about what does or doesn't impact credibility other than assuming the consequent.
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This ignores the actual history of South Vietnam, which transitioned from a corrupt Catholic theocracy to being a brutal and corrupt military dictatorship that tended to appoint generals for political reasons because of their tendency to meddle in politics.
The South Korean dictators were development oriented; the same cannot be said for their Vietnamese equivalents.
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Columbia is an influential non-state institution, but it isn’t sovereign. Really us moderns tend to think of sovereignty as so tied in with statehood that the whole idea of institutional rights and prerogatives is undermined. The USFG won’t send in the 101st airborne every time; there are institutions right now who just accept minor sanctions to do thing the government doesn’t like very much. Relevantly for the topic, hillsdale and Bob jones universities. These have a limited sovereignty, not the full non-state sovereignty of, say, the order of Malta, but if the 101st airborne showed up at Hillsdale, well, Andorra wouldn’t exactly fair any better.
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