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Damone5000's avatar

The crackdowns really took off as soon as wealthy donors started pulling money. Students understand where the power lies and have (smartly) requested that the endowments change rather than merely protesting about the cause. The general public likely doesn’t understand how powerful and influential university endowments really are, so it seems like the students aren’t really asking that much.

Those in power know differently. They know that any power ceded to students will have major impacts on the amount of money they make. Hamilton mention there are larger institutions like unions involved in these issues. However, I’d be surprised if the unions are as large (financially) as the combined value of only the Ivy endowments. As soon as something or someone starts fucking with the money the “grownups” emerge to protect their investments. Think about what it takes for an ex senator to be content as a public university president. It takes money and power and that’s only UF.

This is a long winded comment that probably could have been simply stated as boomers love to wax poetic about things they did (protest, have ethics) while allowing the pursuit of money to crush ideals and the younger generations.

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QOTM31's avatar

They have to recast and divert from the real reasons for the protests. Addressing the true motivations would require arguing why the US is righteous in helping Israel torture and annihilate Palestinian civilians. They would have to explain why they are on the side of the people “targeting Hamas” by shooting toddlers. They don’t want to have that conversation, so they are making it into a different conversation and dismissing/degrading/denying every way they can.

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