The intrepid students who with their bodies themselves spoke truth to power by invading and taking over Columbia’s library building, are an impressive bunch. For they are perfect specimens of a type to be found on American campuses from sea to shining sea, products of our educational system which, as we all know, is second to none. Scorners, however — there are always scorners — will insist that the most fitting motto for American higher education should instead be Melius Quam Nihil — “Better Than Nothing.”
Among those library-invading students were several politically aware artists and artistes who are determined to stand up for Palestine, or for transgenderism, or for the non-existence of God, or ….fill in any cause here, no matter how idiotic it may seem to you. More on those students can be found here: “‘Corpse of the Phallus,’ Black Latex, and Circus Performers: Meet The Avant-Garde Artists Arrested For Violently Storming Columbia Library,” by Jon Levine, Jessica Costescu and Jessica Schwalb, Washington Free Beacon, May 15, 2025:
Before Isaiah Decastro Nash was arrested for storming a Columbia University library, the philosophy undergraduate dabbled in poetry.
“The primordial trauma of existence is the death and rot of God. The corpse of God; the corpse of Death; the corpse of Time; the corpse of the Phallus,” he wrote in “Sociotraumatics,” a 2024 poem published in Gadfly, Columbia’s undergraduate philosophy magazine. “The corpse of God is the corpse of the decaying phallus.”
Much of the screed focused on religion, something Nash evidenced a curious relationship with.
“The Sabbath is the destruction of civilization. It is the non-time—the non-place—in which we actively construct Godhead; in which automatic event wages war on the sacred. It is the subconscious repetition of the retrospective end-of-time that maximizes the sacrificial,” he wrote.
I’ll drink to that. Who woulda thought that out of the mouths of babes, could so much wisdom come?
Nash was just one of a bevy of avant-garde writers, artists, and eccentrics arrested for storming Butler Library last week, a Washington Free Beacon review of online records found. Roughly 80 radicals stormed the Columbia building, renamed it after a terrorist, injured two security officials, damaged bookshelves, and distributed pamphlets praising Hamas before they were arrested.
One arrested student, Ridwana Rahman, wants you on your knees.
Rahman, a Muslim Bangladeshi and first-generation American born in Portland, Oregon, is in the second year of her Master of Fine Arts at Columbia, according to her website. One of her pieces the Ivy League university showcased in 2024, “Points of Contact (or, Who are you on your hands for?),” left little to the imagination, featuring “a low-hanging self-portrait photograph of her body clad in black latex juxtaposed with a series of glazed black tiles made of porcelain,” according to a Columbia press release.
“I’m interested in being able to control the audience,” Rahman said. “To see people get on their hands and knees—to kneel down with their body just to see my image—it reminds me of the power that I hold. I want a level of ambiguity, but I also want a very direct correlation between sex and religion and the photo establishes that.”
Perhaps a bullwhip would complete Rahman’s ensemble?
What a galère! What a world, that hath such creatures in it!
How far away from us can we send them? To Estotiland, or the Strait of Anian, or beyond the Mexique Bay?
Devon Fremd says
I guess it’s the business of young people to be righteous, ignorant, and silly, but really and truly, this is cause for despair.
rick says
SDS from the 1960s were by comparison, statesmen and diplomats. Never have American students with a political agenda sank so low. And such stupidity. I still thing the most amazingly dumb protest sign I ever saw was “Gays for Hamas”.
OLD GUY says
I know several gay people who would 100% agree with you about that sign. What a crazy mixed up world we live in.
somehistory says
How about to Neptune?
Or to some far distant galaxy, far beyond our Milkyway?
Those two are truly disgusting. Their ‘poetry and art’ remind me of Bible Scripture where The God of the Bible speaks to His Prophet Ezekiel about this very thing….
“16So He brought me to the inner court of the house of the LORD, and there at the entrance to the temple of the LORD, between the portico and the altar, were about twenty-five men with their backs to the temple of the LORD and their faces toward the east; and they were bowing to the east in worship of the sun. 17“Son of man,” He said to me, “do you see this? Is it not enough for the house of Judah to commit the abominations they are practicing here, that they must also fill the land with violence and continually provoke Me to anger? Look, they are even putting the branch to their nose! 18Therefore I will respond with wrath. I will not look on them with pity, nor will I spare them. Although they shout loudly in My ears, I will not listen to them.”…
and the mozlum female….putting herself out there as ‘god’ and demanding worship of her sex.
These and the others should be sent someplace,, but unless they leave Planet Earth, every place is too good for them.
Wellington says
Nash is not a poet but a Bozo. What rubbish but this is the state of higher education in America today.
The Istanbulian says
Sabbath bad but workers deserve days off.
God is a phallus that needs to die but let’s back the most aggressive monotheism in the world at the moment.
Got to love it.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Has a decision come down on birthright citizenship from SCOTUS? If they vote the right way on this, Ridwana Rahman can be stripped of hers and be put on the next plane to Dhaka
Bugs says
Portland, Oregon will do, I suppose.
Joe1 says
Doesn’t Columbia screen its students. I would like to see the screening process that allowed these people into the school.
bill says
Unfortunately I fear the ones who do the screening are of like mind to the screened. They probably think they are interviewing potential genius
bill says
I have always thought that the sun was a more logical object of worship (see Pharoh Ahknaton of Egypt)
It is real and we can see it and without it we would not be here at all. One day the astronomers tell us, it will consume us.
Bret says
Maybe worship water. Without water we would not be here. Maybe worship trees. Because without trees we would not be here. How about air?? Or food.
jerry glenn says
O tempora, o mores
skeptiker says
Naja, wenigstens kann man sich über diese Clowns, die uns als “Elite” verkauft werden, lustig machen.
In ihrer kindlich, naiven Gedankenwelt, sind sie die nützlichen Idioten für die Strippenzieher im Hintergrund.
Welchen gesellschaftlichen Mehrwert können solche Bullshit Absolventen nach ihrer “Ausbildung” einbringen? Wer es gewohnt ist, ohne Konsequenzen für sein Handeln, mit Schreien und Kreischen und mit den Füßen laut aufstampfend seinen Willen durchzusetzen wird wohl kaum einen respektablen Job in einer verantwortungsvollen Position bekommen. Da hilft dann nur noch konsequent die “Demokraten” wählen, die ihnen dann mit Steuergeldern einen Bullshit-Job mit einem vorzüglichen Einkommen besorgen.. Immerhin sind die dann von der Straße weg.
James Lincoln says
Still want to send your son or daughter to Columbia?
jewdog says
I have two degrees from Columbia, but neither one helped me get a “prestige “job. I eventually learned computer programming ad hoc at a low-level job and am now senior programmer for the Navy’s air traffic control system, which I like very much. I think those fancy ivies are a big waste of money and time, for the most part.
The traditional four-year path is an anachronism and needs a major rethink. A lot of the humanities courses are just trendy nonsense taught by wacky ideologues (ex. gender studies, black studies, Jewish studies, islamophobia studies, space alien studies etc.). And, given recent trends, Jewish students should avoid them.