Jamie

Weinstein

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January 27, 2009

The Occupation is Over! (At the London School of Economics, That Is)

Alert the presses. The occupation is over. That is, the occupation of the Old Theatre of the London School of Economics (LSE).  

Last week I wrote an article for The American Spectator Online about tensions on the campus of the LSE as a result of the recent conflict in the Middle East. (Full disclosure: I am a master's candidate at the school.) Pro-Palestinian students passed a resolution through LSE's Students' Union condemning Israel for perpetrating a "massacre" and then decided to occupy a main lecture hall on campus. Amazingly, the long-winded resolution forgot to mention those small details about Gaza being controlled by genocidal terrorists who were shooting rockets at their free and democratic neighbor. But then again who needs facts when you've got feelings?

Anyway, this is the sort of thing that happens from time to time on college campuses. When I was an undergrad at Cornell University, left-wing students occupied then-Cornell President Jeffrey Lehman's office to protest the school's decision to bulldoze some brush to build a parking lot. The students called the brush a pristine "woods" that needed to be protected at all costs. After the revolutionaries were forcibly removed from the president's office by local police officers, they proceeded to occupy that veritable rain forest which they termed “Redbud Woods”.

To such radicals, this is fun. Sure, they care about the cause (at least some of them). But I think they just like playing revolutionary. They read about 1960s student protests with a sense of awe and try to recreate the atmosphere in modern times.

For most students on campuses across the country (and the world), these demonstrations are annoying and sometimes disruptive. But what is so astonishing is that these "occupations" are allowed to occur at all considering they are so easily preventable. My advice to Cornell's administration when Cornell's cadre of left-wing rebels infested the Redbud Woods was to issue an ultimatum. Tell the protesters they have 24 hours to leave. Then tell them that for each 24 hours after that deadline they insist on remaining chained to trees, the administration would seek out another area of "woods" in addition to Redbud Woods to bulldoze and build another parking lot.

One of two things would have happened: 1) The protesters would have unlocked their chains and left the woods, thus saving Cornell the embarrassment of appearing incompetent and allowing the university to proceed with their parking lot plans. 2) The protesters would have stayed for a while longer but eventually left, ultimately helping solve the parking space shortage on campus by contributing to the creation of many new parking lots where "woods" once stood.

Unfortunately, as so often was the case, Cornell's administrators didn't heed my advice.

At LSE, the situation is a little different, but the remedy would have been similar. The administration needed to get tough with the protesters and warn them that if they continued to occupy the Old Theatre there would be penalties. You cannot just flout the rules of the university without suffering consequences. If there were serious penalties (even threats of suspension and expulsion) attached to "occupying" a campus building, the ordinary Che Guevara t-shirt wearing student would save their revolution for another day.

As it happened, the LSE administration didn't do this and instead parlayed with the occupiers as equals, ultimately ending the "occupation" through some sort of agreement. Predictably, this will lead to more occupations down the road. In fact, a friend and fellow master's student quipped to me that he may try playing the occupier card next time he is told the LSE library is closing. If they insist he leaves while he is in the midst of writing a paper, he told me, he would just inform the librarian that he is launching an impromptu occupation of the building in protest of the university's failure to condemn Hamas rocket attacks against Israeli civilians, or whatever his cause du jour may be. If the administration of LSE was intellectually consistent, one would imagine that he would have a lot of ground to stand on.

No one is suggesting the issues animating the protesting students are trivial. I happen to think they are profoundly misguided and that if they really wanted a tangible change in the quality of life for the Palestinian Arabs of Gaza, they should be supporting responsible leaders to emerge and take charge of the territory – you know, as opposed to the genocidal murderers now in charge who exalt not only in the destruction of Jewish life, but in the propaganda value of the loss of life of their own people.

Playing occupier isn't going to get anybody anywhere substantive. All it does is make the cause you are supporting look like a joke – most especially when the cause you are purportedly championing is to end an "occupation."

Then again, they apparently did get a note of support from Noam Chomsky!

© 2009 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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