Re: The CPH Protests 

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Editor:

I admire the moral concern of the protesting students around the nation, even as actions by students, faculty and administrators differ from school to school ("On Siemens Hall Hill," May 2). Disruptive, but peaceful, civil disobedience is an acceptable form of protest, and it comes with personal consequences.

The revulsion against the unimaginable Hamas attack is clearly the right impulse. But as Israel's genocidal reaction became evident, the focus changed, and the possibility of stopping it emerged as the goal. But, the utter stupidity of threatening Jewish students or institutions diminishes the credibility of the protestors.

Except for the focus on the protests by the news and personal media, the effect on policies they oppose is very limited. So, without leverage to achieve it, protestors are left with symbolic results like faculty votes or campus-wide teach-ins. 

The real rub, of course, is that the U.S. is an accessory to the Israeli actions, meaning the protests implicate all of us, even as many avoid facing the uncomfortable truth. 

My suggestion to protestors is that, now that the message of the protests is clear, it's time to substitute disruptions with legal, political and technical work necessary to disconnect schools from the military industrial complex.

Greg Movsesyan, Fieldbrook

Editor:

It's dumbfounding to me that Rep. Jared Huffman could vote to approve another $20 billion toward Israel's genocide in Gaza, and, in his lengthy excuse for doing so, and in nearly a single breath, write, "I support continued funding for Israel's security needs," and yet, "innocent civilians in Palestine are out of time."

Shame on Jared Huffman. He is a smart man. He knows the scale of the human atrocities now being committed in Palestine. He knows that American munitions comprise about 70 percent of the bombs and drones and bullets being wielded in Gaza. He knows that children are being blown to pieces in front of their parents or otherwise starving, that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal and that none of this would be happening if the U.S. denied Israel its political and economic support. We expected more of Rep. Huffman, but he has hewed to a dangerously centrist party line. He will never again get my vote.

Greg King, Arcata

Editor:

President Jackson, I just read your statement regarding the protests and the arrests that occurred last night ("Large Police Operation Clears Cal Poly Humboldt Campus; No Injuries Reported," posted April 30).

Your statement opposes the peaceful expression of civil disobedience. When you make false claims about the protests, I wish that you would consider the safety of the protesters. To claim that what they were doing was not in fact a protest, but fundamentally just crime mischaracterizes them. Mischaracterizing protestors as criminals endangers the protestors. It invites the alt-right to attack the protestors.

Closing the campus at the end of the semester was entirely unnecessary. The students were never a threat to their fellow students, you or anyone else. I believe, and I will continue to believe, that the reason you closed the school and summoned out-of-town SWAT teams is that you heard Speaker Mike Johnson call for universities to establish order. Mike Johnson is an agent of the alt-right. Don't listen to him!

Did you personally witness any of the actual protests? One of the roles of a leader is to be present, observant and cognizant when something unfortunate occurs. The university relies on you to do your best to negotiate in good faith, to attempt to understand what the protestors are asking for and to at least consider the demands. If you did any of this, I never heard about it.

I personally am appalled at the ongoing attacks on Gazan civilians. A bare minimum response by you should be to examine the ways in which CPH may be contributing to the killings in Gaza. You still can. You have not yet been fired. I'm not holding my breath.

Geoffrey Robinson, Blue Lake

Editor:

Will the Cal Poly Humboldt protestors' parents — and grandparents — have to indemnify some or all of the $1 million in flagrant and useless physical damage that their youngsters inflicted?

And to what end? Their politically ignorant and jejune vandalism helped not a single soul in Gaza and changed nothing in Israel's ultra-nationalist, criminally anti-Palestinian government.

Only the tiniest fraction of Cal Poly Humboldt's 7,000 student population joined in the protest, strongly suggesting that the 25 to 32 arrested protestors were politically impotent, even on campus, never mind the larger world.

What is free speech worth if it isn't effective and productive? 

If you've seen the local media's videos of the students — with their fancy smartphones and cameras — rampaging through the president's office, the Corbett Conference Center and Siemens Hall at large, you've witnessed an adolescent joyride with no purpose other than gleeful destructiveness.

Painting the word "Gaza" in big letters on the walls is childish and useless, bordering on nihilistic. What a repudiation of responsible political activism and civic-mindedness. Surely the students are not learning these tactics in the university's political science classes.

Paul Mann, McKinleyville

Editor:

I would hope that not all who express consternation over the direction taken by some of the CPH protestors would lead them to be considered more affected by the demonstrations than the suffering in Gaza ("Desperados Under the Eves," May 2). I, for one at least, fear that the images of graffiti, screaming confrontations and the disruption of the closing of the school year with its final exams, projects and ceremonies will obscure the legitimate concerns of the protestors. I agree with the sentiment and agree that the response by CPH was both overreactive and insensitive and displayed a serious abdication of leadership at the highest levels of administration.

I'm just afraid that what will be remembered is not the righteousness of the message but the scrawls which cheapened it.

Scott Graves, Eureka

Editor:

As a Jewish resident of Humboldt County for 50 years I would kindly like to state that the Antisemitism Task Force of Eureka's Temple Beth-El (TBE) is not representative nor expressive of my views or opinions of local occurrences of Jew hatred masked as "anti-Zionism," recent political issues nor of Jewish Torah values.

May I also add that the one local Jewish organization that has actually served the students of the local university on campus for the past 12 years; Rabbi Eliyahu and Rebbitzen Mushkie Cowen, of Chabad of Humboldt, has provided student and community spiritually.

Furthermore, I strongly advance that the leadership of TBE is hardly representative of Humboldt Country's Hebrew or Israelite-adjacent population. I also have my doubts that the majority of TBE membership endorses or supports the report regarding incidents of antisemitism, the intimidation of Jewish students on campus, and the letter of endorsement of "no Jew hatred here" regarding the recent campus vandalism and occupation by agitators and the resulting school closure, that was sent to California congressional district leaders.

Hatred of the only Jewish country on the planet and denial of the ancestral Jewish homeland in the land of Israel is essentially antisemitic to its core, no matter what terminology is used be it "Zionist" or "Israel," and, yes, Jewish people can be antisemitic too.

I personally find the letter sent by the task force to be a message of self-contradictory appeasement that does little to help the situation other than scold state officials for daring to address instances of antisemitism by these activists on university campuses statewide while making nice with agitators at Cal Poly without really concerning the experiences of students, faculty, of the university who may have had an adverse impact of their judgement to publish the declaration to state officials.

Luta Belcher, Eureka

Editor:

Democrats equate spending money with success, the more money spent the larger the success. That mantra has been demonstrated twice at Cal Poly Humboldt. First by hiring Thomas Jackson as president of HSU back in May of 2019. He was the savior of the moldy campus from the awful Lisa Rossbacher. She set the stage for Jackson's success by giving him the opportunity to return the football program, return KHSU to the airwaves as local radio, institute a nursing program, engage the community with honest communications, return the college to WSJ College rankings and make HSU a smaller desirable institute of higher learning.

Unfortunately, Jackson — despite being paid about $600,000 in salary and benefits — was unable to capitalize on the gifts Rossbacher left him.

Enter the Democrat regime in Sacramento. Looking for another way to waste the taxpayers money they decided to make HSU a polytechnic university. A half billion dollars was allocated for changing the signs at the Spanish style/modern/old/disjointed campus to reflect the pride of a third polytechnic teaching the same stuff they already did.

All that money has gotten CPH into the Wall Street Journal. The lead editorial "Rules for Campus Radicals, 2024" in the May 3 newspaper includes the line, an analysis of the protests at Cal Poly Humboldt, "the pro-Palestinian movement must be a movement against the police." Also that student occupations should take over buildings whenever possible. And, "We can wield the most power by occupying the spaces where classes are held and administrators have offices."

Under Jackson's leadership, the quad has an unpronounceable name and a destructive riot costing the taxpayers a million dollars and probably millions more. The good news for him is he is eligible for the same exit Rossbacher used, five and out. His five years are up this month and he will be able to leave with a pension.

Dennis Scales, Fortuna