At least 300 students have been prohibited from registering for classes at Northwestern University because they refused to watch a controversial antisemitism training video that they said was biased in favor of Israel, contained factual inaccuracies and could inflame campus tension over Gaza.
Good for them. Learning to defy the powers that be when they try to normalize immoral/unethical beliefs is a mark of becoming a responsible adult; something lacking in University Administrations apparently.
Idk. Look, fuck Israel, and I’m proud of these kids for standing up and saying no. But I also have to be true to my life experiences. Either northwestern caves, and I fucking hope they do (please email ug-admission@northwestern.edu, call 847-491-7271, anything to actively pressure them), or these kids are in for a world of shit. Non-college-educated jobs are fucking dystopian. I went to school in my early 30s, and even if I can argue for better working conditions for ALL workers, Jesus Christ my jobs before going back were in retrospect fucking insanely cruel and demeaning. And I promise you, one day protesting this genocide will be like remote work: Allowed and celebrated in white collar jobs, while a fucking joke elsewhere. I get that we all should be willing to give anything to stand up for what’s right. It just always breaks my heart when that cost is borne by kids.
I’m sure they can fall back on their masters and bachelors degrees but yeah agreed.
I mean just pragmatically speaking just “watch” the video like every other corporate mandated bs training video (2x on mute in a separate tab) no one is asking these kids to fundraise for Raytheon/thiel/the antichrist
Idk. I’d never tell someone not to stand for good things. I guess my biggest gripe is that we lionize people who do what they should and yet have no support systems for people who pay the price for doing so, and the people doing the right thing are the people with the most future to lose.
It’s personally known to me that the former President of Northwestern is in bed with student loan originators and he would also accept bribes from rich families to enroll students. It’s a sinister place.
Uh, Sir or Madam. That’s everywhere in America.
Weirdly enough, Transylvania University has had some of those scandals. It’s weird because that particular university doesn’t need any extra money. It’s tiny, and old. I worked in the admin office my freshman year, and as far as I can tell, they have enough grants and endowments that every single student could go there for “free.” The part that makes it doubly weird to me is that the administration middle managers confirmed that if they don’t give a student the endowment amounts or grant amounts for that year, they don’t get the money. It gets rolled back into the endowment.
But this is the only one that’s personally known to me.
Illinois, in case you were wondering.
You’d think northwestern would be in the northwest, but no. Shows the calibre of education they provide.
I know this is sarcastic, and I love it and I’m sorry the pedantic part of my brain must inform someone that when the school was founded, Illinois was the Northwest part of the United States.
- 1803 Louisiana Purchase
- 1809 Illinois Territory
- 1819 49th parallel agreement
- 1846 Oregon Treaty
- 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
- 1848 Oregon Territory
- 1851 Northwestern university founding
The full extent of the contiguous united states was established before the founding of northwestern university. Illinois territory wasn’t organized until after the louisiana purchase.
IIRC, it was sorta the NW for states admitted to the Union in 1851.
I didn’t name it, I just also wondered this and Googled it in like 2010.
deleted by creator
I guess the term “Midwest” was well established by then. Maybe anything further West was called “The Territories” or something?
The naming of the university was very likely just following accepted naming conventions.
If anything this shows the expansionist nature of the US. And an unwillingness to overhaul conventions (and there’s a lot to unpack there).
The United States is the inheritor of all of Rome’s evils. They are the same culture, the same empire.
GTFO with your proselytizing. Nobody is interested.
(yeah, I looked at your posting history)
edit: I agree with your stance on Paul though. But admitting even that much, people like you just keep coming back. No. Don’t even reply.
edit2: yep, just as I thought
I’d just like to take a moment to say that Hell doesn’t exist, and that nothing bad will happen to nonbelievers in Jesus Christ in the afterlife. When people who don’t believe in Jesus die, they go to whatever afterlife they do believe in, and if they don’t believe in any afterlife, they simply cease to exist. There’s no penalty for not following Jesus, it’s completely optional. Roman priests invented Hell to appeal to people who were used to the idea of the Greek underworld afterlife, there’s no basis for it in Jesus’ teachings.
Only the east coast matters.
Yeah, it’s still a corrupt quagmire here. It’s better than it used to be, but that’s like saying you’ve managed to remove two tons of shit from a 20 ton heap.
I hate universities that do this patronising nonsense (which is probably most of them tbh).
Things like this should be taught at school and assumed knowledge at uni. University is (generally) for adults.
Having adults teaching other adults ‘how to respect other cultures’, ‘how not to rape someone’, ‘how to work in a group’, ‘how to be ethical’, is condescending af.
how not to rape someone’ […] is condescending af
Colleges do that to cover their ass. There is a ton of sexual violence that happens on college campuses, especially fraternities. Clearly some adults do need to be taught not to rape others.
That’s not a university’s job
Universities are obliged to keep their students safe. It’s not even a just doing it for compliance thing, it also looks really fucking bad for a university if people are getting raped there. They want students to feel safe, high profile sexual assaults tend discourage from students applying to go there, or even more importantly, donors.
Yet, look at the US and the divide in thinking. Look at the rise of toxic masculinity and incels. Then you can also look at what schools in much of rural America are doing to promote PragerU or even fighting critical literacy and DEI.
These people are all going to universities with some very fucked up beliefs. Sadly, universities need to cover this shit because people still don’t understand lines.
Regarding this particular training? Yeah, not needed. Israel is a state and Jewish people are worldwide so criticizing Israel’s bullshit is not anti-semitism by any means. Morals seem to be difficult for many despite religions claiming they not only understand them, but exemplify them while doing the opposite in reality.
Luckily they’re only teaching adults how to disrespect other cultures, how to rape other people, and to not work with people who aren’t like you. And now these woke pink haired collage students won’t even go along with those basic principles.
Colleges are just part of people’s indoctrination, so it doesn’t surprise me.
Dunno what college you’re talking about but that was one of the first places where I learned history without a incredible spin. Was also taught that a lot of history is/was written by the victors in their favor and how to approach the study of history to try and remove some of those biases.
Maybe some institutions are shitty at teaching, and slant one way or the other, but I don’t think that’s the norm.
You didn’t need that college to teach you about history.
Part of the indoctrination is convincing people that college is required to be successful and proficient in their field of study. It’s how they can get away with abusing their students in this manner because the young adults don’t have enough world experience to know that college isn’t necessary to learn.
It’s also funny, because the students pay for this abuse. And then, like you, they display symptoms of stockholm syndrome whenever anyone dares to mention that abuse has even occurred. It’s always easier to pretend you haven’t been taken advantage of than to admit you got played.
Yeah, you end up “doing your own research” and just falling into right-wing grifts and bullshit because if you lack background in a field, it’s pretty damn hard to do actual meaningful research.
College isn’t absolutely necessary to learn, but for most people, it really is. Or even if people don’t fall into right wing fever swamps, they often cannot distinguish between appropriate sources. You try to teach yourself engineering, and all you end up doing is watching a bunch of infotainment engineering youtube channels.
What information are professors giving you that you can’t get anywhere else?
As far as history is concerned, everything they teach should come from a source other than the professor.
Your history course boils down to them walking you through a textbook. If you can read and comprehend what you’re reading, then the professor is unnecessary.
But hey, you already realized this, right?
What information are professors giving you that you can’t get anywhere else?
A reading list and critical analysis.
Because an autodidact will end up reading the ‘good’ books and not reading the critiques or counter-narratives. An algorithm feed will serve you the consumable content that keeps you engaged, not the information that you need to sit with to digest and re-examine what you thought you knew to be true.
You gain the most understanding during the un-learning and analysis process. Reading one book won’t do that. Hence, a reading list.
What information are professors giving you that you can’t get anywhere else?
None. The value-add that good schools and curriculums provide is curation of information, and presenting it in a time-efficient way. For a practical demonstration of the value, try learning Linux shell scripting only from man pages.
You have a very poor understanding of how to learn history and what historians do professionally. I only have a history minor but know several professional historians. What you’re describing is a historian hobbiest. Ironically this misconception is one that a lot of people clear up by going to college.
What information are professors giving you that you can’t get anywhere else?
everything they teach should come from a source other than the professor.
Oh, please tell me what you learned in history that disproves this statement. I’d love to understand how you came out of those courses thinking you can just take people’s word at face value.
Edit: Look, I get it. Part of “learning history” isn’t even history related at all. It’s learning how to understand the information that you have in the context that it was given. You can’t just assume that because you read something in a history book that it’s automatically true. Hopefully, it opens your eyes to just how little information we can “know” and how difficult it is to obtain even that. (I assume your eyes are already open to this because you took the courses.)
However, none of that requires college in order to learn. It’s honestly something that our parents should be teaching us, because it’s relevant to considerably more than history.
What information are professors giving you that you can’t get anywhere else?
It’s more the experience of learning from someone that is highly experienced in their field. They can guide you through multiple sources, and help understand your misconceptions and correct them. There’s also the advantage of having a question about a source and having someone who can help bring more context, and additional sources, to the discussion quickly. There’s just a lot that I personally gained from learning from another professional and I don’t think there’s a ton of on the job training, or independent study, that gets you that sort of intellectual understanding nearly as effectively.
Maybe my educational experience varies greatly from yours? There’s just an absolute ton I learned in college that wouldn’t have been nearly as efficient, quick, broad, or dense compared to doing independent study. I think that’s probably mostly true for most people in most fields as well. Having the experience of learning from someone that has already experienced many pitfalls of learning a subject is quite valuable.
I think you have some wires crossed somewhere because I didn’t say the thing you quoted me as saying here:
everything they teach should come from a source other than the professor.
I’m not sure how to rebuttal this section because it seems to rest on the fact that I said the aforementioned quote.
However, none of that requires college in order to learn. It’s honestly something that our parents should be teaching us, because it’s relevant to considerably more than history.
I will say I think it’s incredibly silly to put the burden of learning a highly specific subject on your parents. There’s just no way for anyone’s parents to give you a complete understanding of any field out there that’s comparable to someone who has devoted decades to a highly specific subject. That’s just incredibly naive and honestly gave me a chuckle.
It’s not about the information itself. All of human knowledge is at your fingertips. Unfortunately, that knowledge is buried under an ocean of bullshit. And if you haven’t studied in a field, you likely cannot tell the difference between quality sources and bullshit.
You bemoan a course that consists of studying a textbook, but how do you even know what textbook to read? If you do not know the field, how do you know that it’s an accurate work of reliable history and not some right-wing slop like PragerU? And it’s not just reading the book. It’s knowing what parts to read, preparing writings, participating in discussions, and a thousand other activities that are designed to advance the learning objectives of a course. Hell, just having a course with a fixed schedule to it can be immensely beneficial to most learners. Studying is hard. It’s time consuming. And it doesn’t generate any immediate returns in your life. Most people who try to teach themselves a subject end up learning less in five years than they could in a single semester of enrolling in one or two college courses. When you’re teaching yourself something, it’s far too easy to just put off the hard dull work til tomorrow or avoid it all together.
For the love of god, without looking it up, do you even know how to pronounce the word pedagogy?
If you had taken even a single course in education or course design, you would know there is so much more to designing a course than simply reading a textbook. I’ve taught and designed numerous college courses. If you think it’s just a matter of reading from a textbook, you are standing atop a mountain of ignorance.
but how do you even know what textbook to read?
I’m lazy and I don’t feel like putting more effort into arguing with your other nonsense, but you can just look up what textbooks are used by each institution.
I’m going to ignore you now because you’re not worth my time or energy. I hope you have fun defending how you wasted money on something you could’ve done yourself for free; it’s how you people operate.
College didn’t just teach me about history, that’s just one of the many things I learned there. The biggest thing I learned was strategies for learning (learned how to learn better), and that learning from an expert in their field can accelerate that learning more than most other methods.
The rest of your gripe seems to be misplaced understanding of what happens at a normal undergraduate institution and cost of education. I don’t think I can approach your misunderstandings in this format, but as for cost of education? Give me a piece of paper that says college should be free for everyone and I’ll sign it. The only thing I personally paid for to go to college was food. I don’t think starving was really an option for 3.5 years so I probably would’ve had to pay for that anyway.
Exactly! Who needs access to trained professionals when you can “do your own research”! Am I right or am I right?
It depends on the profession, but for most things people go to college for they can teach themselves.
College ends up being a place where they give you tutorials and walk you through books. If you can do that on your own, why pay thousands of dollars to have someone else hold your hand?
I’ll admit, a lot of you people lack self-discipline so you won’t learn without someone else forcing you to. In that way, college is a lot like rehab. It’s a place for rich people to waste their money because they can’t take responsibility for themselves.
But hey, all those smart people attending college can’t be wrong, right? It’s just not possible?
Imagine how stupid the average idiot would be if it turned out that most people attending college were just partaking in a scam.
Imagine that.
spoiler
If you get a full-ride to an Ivy League, then you’re exempt from any of this criticism. But that doesn’t apply to any of you because none of you actually took your education seriously enough when it mattered, so you got trounced by those who did.
Listening to you talk, maybe it’s where I learned humility and how not to make sweeping generalizations that make me look like a moron but who knows? I’m just a brainwashed college educated drone.
Oof, looks like dude’s been doing his own research alright–check out the modlog:
Removed Comment: This is all part of the trans agenda to cause trouble wherever they can and call whoever doesn’t bend the knee a fascist.
Oof is right haha.
Sorry you had to pay people tens of thousands of dollars over the course of at least 4 years to teach you that after you’ve become a legal adult.
I’m just a brainwashed college educated drone.
Admitting it is the first step. You’re already ahead of some of these other posters.
Ur fucking dumb bitch
How do they know it was biased if they refused to watch it?
Why are they requiring students to watch a propaganda video before enrolling?
Is it propaganda? I would think it’s good for everyone to take in the perspective of everyone. You can disagree and poke holes in their arguments, or challenge items presented as facts. Why does it hurt to see someone else’s perspective, unless you’re worried that your own agenda might get challenged? There is a lot of bias and closed echo chambers (on all sides). I’m not trying to defend Israel’s actions in Gaza over the last few years, or their other human rights violations, but there is so much silencing of any opinion that contradicts the popular narrative that the pendulum can easily swing too far. There are people calling for the destruction of Israel and the genocide of Jews. Some folk need to understand the history of Israel (the good and the bad) before blindly jumping deep into the Hamas fueled propaganda. I don’t think any video is going to make any sane people think Israel’s actions are ok. But more moderate discussions after seeing other perspectives would probably be more productive than blind hate.
Let me know when they’re also forcing students to watch a video put out by Hamas’s press wing.
You’re trying to present this as some enlightened attempt to force students to see all sides of an issue, but they’re only showing ONE FUCKING SIDE.
I think the idea is that they already have the blind anti-Israel mentality just like you and seemingly most of the people on Lemmy have. You can’t even talk about it without swearing!
Some people need to understand the history of the trail of tears (good and bad) before blindly jumping into the Indian fueled propaganda…
You are absolutely not arguing what you think you are arguing.
Maybe you misunderstand? Yes, I think people should understand the history of the trail of tears.
There is no video that will make me agree with genocide, and to try is insulting.
And that’s where reading comprehension is so important. I would hope no video would make you agree with genocide - as I already said! I would also hope that some of the more radical anti-Israelis might be convinced tho that genociding the Jewish people would also be bad.
Yet here you are, trying to justify genocide.
Seriously, that’s what you got out of that? Are you trolling - or just blinded by hate? Or is it a language thing? I can try to rephrase for you if you’re honestly having trouble with non monosyllabic words.
I’ve heard all I need to hear from you - you are trying to claim that the current genocide is justified based on the potential genocide that could happen if Israel doesn’t completely exterminate Palestine. It’s a bullshit argument, I’ve heard it before, it’s insulting.
Do I need to read Mein Kampf to know that that’s also biased?
Probably not, but it might be a useful read if only the arm yourself better to defend against such ideologies.
Now suppose you’re being forced to read Mein Kampf by people who want you to believe it
Forcing is the bad part, yes. But requiring for academic purposes can be acceptable. Know thy enemy; knowledge is power.
There is a difference between studying propanda and forcing students to watch propaganda without critique or study.
Are the students not allowed to critique or study it?
“Requiring for academic purposes” supposes that it will be studied and critiqued in a classroom setting. This is not the case here.
I’m going to guess someone watched it and reported back
I would think people might want to think for themselves.
I would think people wouldn’t want to waste their time watching media that’s known to be propaganda. Do you go watch every single movie released in theaters, or do you pick based on what you know ahead of time? You watch Fox News all day just to make sure you’re making up your own mind?
People can stay ignorant if they want, I guess.
It’s so funny that just because I voice an opinion that people being exposed to opposing view points might not be such a bad idea that you think I’m a fox viewer maga moron? Do we on the left really need to blindly all have the same monolithic opinion on everything?I didn’t accuse you of watching Fox News, but you clearly watch it if you don’t like it and don’t think it’s possible to form an opinion on known propaganda without watching it
I mean you did. But whatever. Yes I’ve seen Fox News because I like to see what others are seeing. I like to see other perspectives. It’s obvious within seconds when watching Fox that it’s a right wing propaganda mill, and it’s so cringy it’s hard to believe people actually watch it and take it seriously. I usually avoid video media like that altogether as I find it so cringey - it’s much more efficient to scan the web pages of the different spin sources to see what they’re doing. I don’t understand your point about not thinking it’s possible to form an opinion without it - what watching Fox?. I would think it’s quite easy to form opinions about Fox whether you watch it or not, but it’s a more informed opinion if you do. Whether that’s worth the pain in this case, is arguable.
They probably heard about it from other students or the news. The first sentence in the article literally links to another months old article describing the nature of the video.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/30/northwestern-antisemitism-training-pro-israel-groups
It is not hard to find out why. This link is included very early in the article. Maybe read it?
Weird how that guy responded to all the other comments but not this one even though they were made after this one was…
Lol. I didn’t expect them to, if they actually cared they would have read the article. Just some 🤡 trying to sow uncertainty to try to keep running cover for genocide and the erosion of US civil liberties.
A question very much worth asking. I’d assume they got snippets of it or viewed it beforehand to see what it was like before having to watch it “officially”. Or, given that it was produced by a pro-Israel group, it’s probably safe to assume that it’s going to be a propaganda piece. Not to mention it’s in place because of threats from the Trump regime.
