How Does the World See the U.S. Campus Protests? - The New York Times - "Many in France, including Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, see the pro-Palestinian protests as another example of the dangers of “woke” culture — “le wokisme” — which they worry is being imported from the United States and threatening core French Republican values. On Friday, police officers charged into an elite university in Paris, Sciences Po, to remove students who had occupied the building overnight. The protesters had demanded the university condemn what they called “the ongoing genocide in Gaza” and review its partnerships with Israeli universities. It was the second time the police have done so in the past nine days — something many say they have never seen before at the university, which was founded in 1872 to educate the country’s future leaders. Mr. Attal denounced an “active, dangerous minority” of student protesters who he said wanted to impose “an ideology come from across the Atlantic.” Whether in the United States or France, the protests are seen by many, especially on the right, through the same lens as past movements such as #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, which the French establishment has analyzed dismissively as reductive and divisive, a threat to social cohesion. “One of the characteristics of wokisme is to divide the world into dominants and dominated, oppressors and the oppressed. Today, what we see happening on American campuses is a view classifying Israel as the oppressor and Palestine as the oppressed,” said Chloé Morin, a political analyst who recently published a book denouncing wokisme. “As a result, they can’t accept antisemitism exists and that Jews can also be victims.” A well-known academic and expert on the Islam, Gilles Kepel, offered a similar analysis. “Wokisme multiplies the narcissism of small differences, which means no society is possible,” he wrote in the newsmagazine L’Express. “It is a mortal danger for democratic societies.”...
Germany’s news media has covered the U.S. protests much more extensively than those that occurred on its own campuses in recent months. In particular, they have narrowed in on episodes of antisemitism. A recent headline in Die Welt read, “With smiling faces they preach hatred against Jews.” Articles posted on its website about the protests are tagged as “antisemitic protests.”...
One place where American campus protests have received almost no coverage is China, where state-run media has made little mention of them in the past week. The most likely reason: Chinese authorities do not want student protests on their own campuses... Other Chinese news organizations with an intended audience outside China, as well as covert influence operations, have seized on the opportunity to amplify the protests and inflame tensions."
Egyptian, Chinese and Iranian logic: if you break up illegal protests by violent activists, you are violating human rights
Three Columbia University deans placed on leave over insulting texts sent during antisemitism debate - "the three administrators had been placed on leave were Vice Dean and Chief Administrative Officer Susan Chang-Kim, Associate Dean for Student and Family Support Matthew Patashnick, and Dean of Undergraduate Student Life Cristen Kromm... The controversy comes after Columbia’s student protests garnered national attention and the university’s president, Minouche Shafik, faced intense scrutiny over her handling of the demonstrations. Shafik was criticized after she called the NYPD to intervene, resulting in the arrests of hundreds of students. She also came under fire for her response to concerns of antisemitism on campus during a heated congressional hearing... all criminal charges were dropped against dozens of pro-Palestinian student protesters arrested in April after occupying and barricading a building at Columbia University in New York City."
Left wingers are often shielded from the consequences of their actions.
Chris Selley: TMU's anti-Israel meltdown is a warning sign for Canada's legal community - "TMU’s Lincoln Alexander School of Law, named for Canada’s first Black MP and cabinet minister, markets itself unabashedly to fresh-faced youngsters with phrases like this: “The law is worthy of its name only when constant effort is made to redefine it.” That’s not true. It’s closer to false. It sounds like something AI would come up with to market a progressive law school. But it seems to have appealed to a certain breed of future lawyer who has no compunction about publicly torpedoing their career before it starts … until the question of consequences arises, anyway, at which point the tears start flowing... In October, with hundreds of civilian corpses not yet cold in southern Israel, 74 TMU students signed a circulated letter endorsing “all forms of Palestinian resistance and efforts towards liberation” — i.e., in so many words, endorsing terrorism. The students insisted the law school itself should join their cause, and seemed confused when it wouldn’t — and profoundly aggrieved when members of the legal community, including some top firms, suggested self-identified terrorism supporters would be personae non gratae in their office s. “Even though (signatories) had issues with some of the petition’s points — including wording that questioned Israel’s legitimacy — most students believed the petition would never be made public, so they weren’t concerned about agreeing with every word,” the Globe and Mail’s Robyn Doolittle recently reported. “Several … didn’t read the document closely before adding their name, because they thought it wasn’t supposed to be some ‘big, official thing,’” she writes. “For this group, the fallout has been especially devastating.” Where even to begin? The “wording that questioned Israel’s legitimacy” was expressed in the letter as follows: “‘Israel’ is not a country.” But … it is, though. That’s precisely what the signatories are angry about, isn’t it? This is the sort of non-argument you make through a megaphone out front of the student union when you’re, say, 19, not once you’ve invested tens of thousands of dollars in a legal education. Some in the legal community worry about the free-speech implications of this metropolitan meltdown. On the bright side, these students have helpfully taken that concern out of play by indicating they’re happy to sign very sensitive documents that they haven’t read. There might be a place for them in future on Donald Trump’s legal team, but probably not at one of Canada’s top firms. And hang on, what the hell is the point of a petition that isn’t public? It’s as if these people thought they had enrolled in some kind of activist-lawyer fantasy camp, rather than an actual law school. Tough error to make, one would have thought, as it’s a bloody expensive fantasy camp: Upwards of $22,000 per annum; upwards of $25,000 if you’re from outside Ontario. How do you make it to law school not knowing actions have consequences?... with TMU Law having established itself as a basket case, applicants in future will have to consider whether it’s worth hitching their wagon to that brand. And one could argue that’s all that needs to happen here: If TMU wants to run a basket-case law school it can run a basket-case law school; prospective lawyers can decide if they want a basket-case degree; and its graduates’ future employers can decide how much faith they put in that framed basket-case certificate. After all, no one argues that a degree from Nipissing or Lethbridge should count the same in a job interview as one from the University of Toronto or Alberta or Montreal. The question, then, would be why do only basket-case secular-progressive law schools enjoy this deference? Had the Ontario and British Columbia law societies been able to see past their anti-evangelical bigotry and agreed to accredit graduates of Trinity Western University’s (TWU) proposed law school , just as they do other Canadian law schools’, there would by now be a small law faculty in Langley, B.C. explicitly dedicated to graduating lawyers dedicated to pursuing social justice through a Christian lens. You can safely bet it would not be a basket case. Instead the law societies concocted a ludicrous fantasy, worthy of the TMU letter’s authors and signatories, that TWU’s student code of conduct, which prohibits sexual relations outside of heterosexual marriage, would introduce discrimination into the law-school system — as if students might actually be forced to attend, for lack of other options; as if there were a right to attend law school in the first place. The majority of Supreme Court justices shrugged and said, meh, that’s fine. Nobody is better off for that. The problem here isn’t that there’s too much diversity of thought in the Canadian legal community, law students included. It’s that there’s too little. The marketplace — of lawyers, of universities of ideas — can sort this out for us if we just let it."
Columbia graduation ceremonies hijacked by pro-Palestine protests - "The University’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) branch, which published videos of the event alongside Columbia University Apartheid Divest, wrote, "PhD students at Columbia walked out of their graduation in protest, leaving entire rows of seats completely empty. Meanwhile, GSAS [Graduate School of Arts and Sciences] MA students walked across the stage waving their Palestine flags. Two separate graduations, but the students remind us all of Palestine every time.” In one Instagram video posted by SJP, the students can be seen walking across the stage donning keffiyehs and waving Palestinian flags. One student has her hands in handcuffs. Another student tears up her diploma on stage... one social work graduate, whom they named Maliha Fairooz, appeared to have the name of a Hamas leader—Mazen Jamal Al-Natsheh—written on her cap as she accepted her degree."
Weird. We keep being told that these protests are not about supporting terrorism, and that no one supports terrorism
McGill withdraws amnesty offer, toughens tone with pro-Palestinian protesters : r/canada - "Typical case of protestors calling for dialogue, and by dialogue they meant cave into our demands or else. The university was patient and generous with the amnesty offer but as more incidents occur at the encampment its clear that dialogue and good faith acting were never on the table. I hope this gets resolved quickly and that an injunction is enough to disperse the crowd without further issue. This is getting bonkers."
"you wont get far when half your protestors are trust fund kids or non-students with nothing to lose by being belligerent"
McGill withdraws amnesty offer, toughens tone with pro-Palestinian protesters : r/canada - "McGill just announced they’re expanding and continuing their program to train Saudi doctors. Saudi Arabia 1) guns down African migrants trying to reach their country by the hundreds, 2) is involved in the civil war in Yemen that killed 400,000 civilians and starved 100,000 children to death, 3) enforces a gender apartheid on their women, 4) puts homosexuals in prison (after lashing them). Seems like that would be a perfect target for a divestment campaign by students. I wonder what’s different…"
"Global Affairs Canada doesn't specify what is being sold (never mind how it is used, which is unknowable). Last year Canada sold ~$31M of military goods to Israel... notably that's only about 1% of our non-US arms sales, whereas Saudi Arabia makes up a whopping 42% of our non-US arms sales... more than double what we sold to Ukraine."
"Those Muslim deaths over there can be safely ignored though, because they were killed by other Muslims. That's, like, whatever, no cause for a camp-out."
"It's baffling, cause even if you believe everything the Palestinian propaganda says there are still far greater evils than Israel, and if you actually invest the time to research you would see that Israel isn't evil at all 100% of the Israeli Arab wars were instigated by the Arab countries, and Israel offered 100% of the 2 state solutions (excluding external offers) and Palestine rejected or broke 100% of them If Israel wasn't Jewish there would be no such a thing as Pro Palestine simply because Palestine doesn't have anything going for it morally"
"The Arab countries didn't expel 800,000 Jews after 1948 because they thought Jews were nice. Don't put this all down to Palestine. It's a generalized Islamic religion thing to hate Jews. The Maldives just banned Israelis from entering their country, and now realize they screwed up because they didn't even know that 20% of Israeli citizens are Arab Muslims."
"When the Arab countries launched their aggressive war against Israel in 1948, they called on all Arabs to leave, to make way for their invading armies, so they could destroy Israel quickly and then let them return afterwards. They believed they would very quickly be able to destroy the poor, fledgling, new country. Many people refused, however, and those are the ancestors of the over 2 million Arab Muslims that are full citizens of Israel today (the vast majority of whom are quite proudly Israeli, people who sit in the Israeli parliament and on the Israeli Supreme Court). The rest are the ancestors of those who continue to whine today that they weren’t able to murder all the Jews in 1948. The Palestinians could teach a masterclass in gaslighting and revisionist history."
McGill withdraws amnesty offer, toughens tone with pro-Palestinian protesters : r/canada - "Because these movements are and always have been an overt anti-Semitism campaign, backed primarily by Russia/Iran as a way to destabilize the west"
McGill withdraws amnesty offer, toughens tone with pro-Palestinian protesters : r/canada - "Wait, you’re asking for these protestors to hold morally consistent positions? I cannot help but notice a lack of encampments protesting the ongoing genocide against the Christian animists of Darfur perpetrated by the Muslim majority, either. They’ve probably killed far more people than have died during the current conflict in Palestine. They were stacking child corpses — gunned down — like cordwood at one point. Yet, crickets. The difference, as we all know, is one conflict involves Jews, and at its core is about people who want to kill Jews or are happy to see Jews killed or brought to harm, and Jews declining to let that happen. Honestly, it’s time to bring out the water cannons and just disperse all these terrorist supporters and antisemites, arrest the ones who won’t leave, and keep doing this until they decide to give up. I can’t help but notice that the UofA kids who were forcefully dispersed never came back… Also, expel every student who took part, and deport every one of them who is not a citizen. It’s long past time we put an end to this nonsense and helped all the Jew haters understand they will not be tolerated and will suffer severe consequence for their illegal behaviour."
Left wingers were really upset when the UofA encampment got destroyed, because it showed that there're more effective alternatives to capitulating to left wing extremists
Meme - "SEPT. 1957 IN LRCH
ELIZABETH ECKFORD *black girl going to school with white students, mostly girls, shouting at her*
APR. 2024 IN UCLA
Eli Tsives *being blocked by terrorism supporters in keffiyehs with masked faces*"
Stanford University graduation chaos as HUNDREDS of students waving Palestinian flags and keffiyehs walk out during President Richard Saller's speech - "Stanford's protests attracted negative headlines when a photo of someone at its encampment was pictured wearing the same green headband sported by Hamas terror fighters in Gaza. The incident, which occurred last month, was reported to the FBI, the college said at the time."
University of Toronto professor infiltrates anti-Israel encampment - "“I completely support … the student’s right to protest, whether I agree or disagree, but … that right does not include preventing students from entering common spaces unless they agree with you, and it doesn’t include refusing to make way so that our students can celebrate their convocation on that same common space,” Kevin A. Bryan, an economist and associate professor at the university’s business school, told National Post in an email. “This goes double for the portion of protesters who are not even affiliated with the university.”... strict majority of people I talked to are neither students nor affiliated with our university. We have something like 100,000 students and tons of staff, so it’s not hard to find them! But yeah, “student encampment” is just objectively wrong as a description... The “security” and “spokesperson” both explicitly said that if you don’t support the collective’s view on Palestine, you aren’t welcome and they will remove you. Actually, I was specifically told to leave now or “it would become more uncomfortable.” When I said, what do you mean, he tried to play it off as that it would be “embarrassing.” I did see a large group (50 people or so) surround a different woman who’d gotten in and start chanting “all Zionists are evil.” In terms of posters, honestly, it was just a general melange of far-left policy. There was a speaker who was at the Wet’suwet’en protest (long story, but “traditional leaders” vs. elected leaders of a First Nation in B.C. on resource development), a Congo flag, a climate sign, etc. One (white) person explained to me it was a black & brown led group. I responded that visibly the protesters are fairly obviously overwhelmingly white people. I was told this was only because non-white people don’t feel safe joining but that they all support it. I talked to another protester about how, safety-wise, surely they must understand that a giant “Honour to the Martyrs” poster is interpreted as pro-violence given how that term is used in the Gaza conflict. She insisted martyr and intifada aren’t violent terms. I asked “why protest here,” especially to folks who had no personal link to U of T. They said because U of T won’t divest. I said U of T has no such investments other than index funds and the like, same as that owned by the Canada Pension Plan or Teacher’s Pension or their parents. Response was always “we agree, everyone’s complicit in genocide.” At one point, a group I was talking to argued that Kenya sending peacekeeping troops to Haiti was colonial violence. Given language, I suspect IMT (the International Marxist Tendency) played a role in organizing. I discussed alternatives with some of the groups. Free speech, right to protest, Chicago principles: all great! But banning people who don’t agree with you, by force, from a common space on campus, especially when graduation for poor HS class of 2020 is next week, isn’t speech... I don’t really get why we’d allow this. All have the right to protest! Free country. But letting a group of masked (non)students control entry to quad, letting them turn it into a campground with tents: you can just take down the tents and entry gate without touching anyone. That said, implicit threat that “it would be uncomfortable” for me if I didn’t leave is also not great. They knew I was a professor, to be clear. Obviously no real danger — physically, protesters were more Trotsky than Stalin. But allowing entry gate permits this behaviour. I was also asked “how can you care more about convocation than death.” I responded, I care a lot — what do you think about the madness in El Fasher (Sudan)? No one had any idea what that was. Honestly, it’s mostly a young, not-very-informed group, who flit from protest to protest... don’t forget: purpose of the university is education, for all, equally. (Oh, last thing: to make as clear as possible that this isn’t a “student protest” and shouldn’t be called as such, I am 40 and no one batted an eye about my age when I was there. Important to get this right. (And, last last thing: Just want to be really clear that I didn’t take a census. All I know directly is, majority I talked to weren’t U of T affiliated. We also know that the protest was partly organized by USW (United Steelworkers union). Beyond that, you’ll have to do some journalism yourself!)"
I tried to enter the U of T encampment but I was blocked and cursed at - "I’ve been a professor at the University of Toronto for 37 years and I’ve never seen antisemitism as vicious and widespread on campus as it has become within the past few months. Yet, I’m not surprised. This is because I have seen this cancer slowly metastasizing for the past 25 years among the faculty, not only at my university but across North America and Western Europe. For the past month, there has been an encampment of “pro-Palestinian” protesters occupying King’s College Circle, the main quad of the U of T campus. Some foolishly romanticize such encampments as the rebirth of 1960s antiwar and civil rights protests in favour of peace and love. Don’t be deceived. The encampments are led by pro-Hamas advocates who are seeking to justify Islamist terrorism by normalizing antisemitism. They do so by cleverly using a propaganda technique known as “inversion,” trying to hide their own genocidal ambitions by ascribing them to their victims. So, after the murder, rape and torture of Israelis on October 7, the advocates for Hamas immediately turned an act of incipient genocide on its head by claiming that it is the Israelis who are “genocidal.” And, for the most part, the faculty has gone along with it. In fact, many departments on my campus have issued wholehearted statements of support for the encampment. Our own professional faculty association has come out as an enthusiastic cheerleader for this mob of agitators, most of whom are not even students. How do I know this? I went to see the encampment for myself. Yet, even on my way to King’s College Circle, I was given a taste of what to expect. I witnessed a group of toddlers from a local daycare centre being marched toward the encampment, presumably on a “field trip.” I later discovered a video of these same children being coached to raise their fists, while shouting “Free Palestine!” in a show of support in front of the encampment. Perhaps I should have been shocked to see three-year-old children being used as pawns to advance a political ideology. But if Hamas can cynically use children as human shields, why should I be surprised if its followers spread this practice to North America by manipulating children for crass political purposes. Nevertheless, with my kippah perched proudly on my head, I tried to enter the encampment to speak with those inside. For my efforts, I was not only barred from entering but I was also cursed, sworn at, abused, and told I should go back to where I came from. This all happened in plain sight of the campus police, who merely stood back and refused to get involved when I asked for their assistance. And I was one of the lucky ones. I later heard there were other Jews who had been punched and kicked for trying to walk freely through that campus quad. It’s even worse for students. This year several of my Jewish students refused to attend classes in person, because they didn’t want to face threatening mobs on campus every day. To accommodate them, I added an online component to my courses so that they could attend “virtually.” But I could not let this become normalized. I sent several letters to the university administration, protesting the blatant anti-Jewish vitriol on display. But in response, all I received was an insipid form letter, saying that these are “challenging times.” All this has its source in an ideology that has gripped the minds of the vast majority of university professors, a neo-Marxist ideology that despises the values of liberal democratic society on which our freedoms are based. Of course, there are some faculty members who do not subscribe to this ideology, but they’re generally cowed into silence by the radicalized majority. I know from experience how risky it is to express any “contrary views.” A few years ago, I objected to the appointment of a virulently anti-Israel professor with ties to a terrorist organization, to an esteemed position at my university. That was sufficient for one of my senior colleagues to write me a threatening email, saying, “You might want to look at Ryerson’s head on a pike [a decapitated statue] and have a short moment of reflection.” The more the university fails to act, the more brazen the mobs become. In recent days, Hamas flags and symbols are being proudly displayed on campus. Vile banners are erected saying, “Zionists F— Off!” Meanwhile, intimidating statements are escalating, with threats to take down the entire university. “Abolish the university,” a poster screams, followed by, “We will disrupt you, we will reclaim control of you, and we will dismantle you.” They’ve even gone so far as trying to “rename” university buildings, by plastering new nameplates on the front of these structures, calling them, “Palestine Hall,” “al-Aqsa Building,” and “Gaza Centre.” Two weeks ago, a pro-Israel student tried to set up his own encampment at an adjacent spot on campus, cleverly calling it a “two-camp solution.” However, unlike the pro-Hamas encampment, which has been allowed to remain for weeks, his tent was forcibly cleared away by university police in a matter of minutes. We should not blind ourselves: a target has been painted on the faces of all Western people, first on the Jews but then ultimately on all defenders of western liberal democracies. Israel is merely the low-hanging fruit, attacked through the soft target of the universities. We now have a choice. Do we allow the pro-Hamas mobs to take over our campuses? It is painful to observe the students in the encampments serving as “useful idiots”; to see the faculty largely become deluded supporters, deceived by an ideology; and to discover that the administrators are weak appeasers. This is clear in their pathetic attempts to “negotiate” with the campus occupiers by bribing them with faculty positions and student scholarships. Since we can’t hope for anything morally courageous from most of the faculty, the best hope we have is to seek to defund the universities, to call for the resignation of their weak-kneed presidents, and to fix the broken hiring system in which a single ideology (and not merit) determines who is in and who is out. We must find a better way forward, and not just on campus. As the pro-Hamas forces make blatant use of Jew-hatred, they are testing how far they can go in upending our liberal values. If we don’t stop them now, this will only be the start of a forced march on the road to much, much worse."
Weird. I thought the "protesters" were "anti-Zionist", not anti-Semitic
Double standards are totally fair, because power relations means never having to say you're sorry
Ora Bar: At Concordia, I watched as administrators sat back and allowed hate to fester - "For over 20 years, students at Concordia University have been groomed to become amplifiers of hate and division — on campus and in the streets... In the spring of 2022, I sat in class and watched as my film studies professor romanticized and supported terrorism against Israelis. As a child, I spent multiple nights hiding in a bomb shelter to protect myself from rocket fire. I also experienced the constant fear of the second intefadeh (2000-2005), which saw everyday life being disrupted by random stabbings, car-rammings and suicide bombings conducted by Palestinian terrorists. Despite this trauma, I never wished the innocent on the “other side” any suffering. Yet, my university professor was explaining to an auditorium of students that Israelis “deserve” everything they get because they are “colonizers.” There is archeological proof of 3,000 years of continuous Jewish presence in the land now called Israel — ancient Jewish stones that my own Jewish hands have touched. Undeniably, I cannot be a colonizer in Israel, the land Jews originate from. But my professor, a supposed academic and educator, used her podium to try to erase and rewrite history to validate her malice towards Jews. She claimed that our history dates back only 100 years, which would validate her colonialism accusation. When I challenged this false and abhorrent claim, she responded with a smirk and said, “Ora, you, in particular, should look up the word mythology.” This professor knew she was not conducting herself with integrity, as she stated, “I do not care if I get fired for this.” And she was clearly not concerned about being fired when she gave me a final grade of zero, making me pay for standing up to her disinformation and denial of Jewish history and experience. I had to fight this injustice. Her deliberate discrimination and refusal to acknowledge Jewish history underlie all her work. She also has a history of propagating anti-Israel, anti-Jewish rhetoric in her work outside the university. This includes books, articles and her contribution to an online propaganda journal promoting the intefadeh... before October 7, I attempted to address my concerns with another antisemitic professor through a moderated conversation. However, Concordia’s office of rights and responsibilities preferred I act alone, citing concerns about causing the professor stress, as she was new. The choices made by university administrators cast doubt on their commitment to Concordia’s stated mission and values. Their actions, or lack thereof, desecrate the university’s professed commitment to “well-being through harmony” on a “healthy, safe and sustainable campus.” Before being discriminated against by my professors, I initiated a series of meetings in which I tried to collaborate with Concordia in the implementation of proactive measures against anti-Jewish hate. Yet when I was being targeted, my numerous email exchanges, calls and meetings with Concordia administrators made clear that they valued the comfort of the perpetrators over accountability and upholding the institution’s stated values. Concordia’s inability, or unwillingness, to address hate has been proven countless times. This pattern of neglect was further exemplified by the incident that took place on Nov. 8, 2023, when Jewish students peacefully honouring the hostages being held in Gaza were surrounded and assaulted by a mob ... when an individual began leading genocidal chants and tried to steal our Israeli flag, the atmosphere turned hostile. I held a sign reading, “We cry for Palestinian babies too, why can’t you cry for ours?” In response, I faced mockery and personal threats from him and his supporters... an influential Instagram page with close to 80,000 followers justified the attacks on the Jewish and Israeli groups, claiming we “provoked” them by “mocking people in Gaza with empty plates.” In reality, our Shabbat table was part of a global initiative to call for the release of our family members who were stolen from their homes on October 7... The day’s message was clear to all: university leaders will say they care, but will remain passive or fold to the bullies’ demands. Unsurprisingly, even the student newspaper participated in reinforcing this moral confusion. Everyone knows that Jewish students will not turn to destroying school property or harassment, so they take the easy route and allow the hate to continue unchecked... I witnessed firsthand how my lived experience was used as an academic exercise and exploited as a platform for disinformation and incitement of violence. Maybe my expectations for critical thinking and compassion were too high. But the culture of hate and intolerance I discovered is perpetuated by the university’s failure to address these alarming issues. Our leaders’ approach over the last decades paved the way for today’s hostile landscape. It’s evident why Canada’s streets are marred by division and animosity. Rather than building bridges and encouraging compassionate dialogue, we inadvertently empowered the destructive perpetrators by prioritizing their comfort over justice and accountability. It’s high time we demand more from our institutions and leaders to safeguard the values that define us as a society, before the very fabric of our country is irreversibly damaged."