#Columbia Univ.

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Columbia (Barnard?) women's basketball team, 1939.

Photo: Underwood Archives/Fine Art America

[go-scottishgal14]

Columbia Univ. in nyc is losing $400m in grants and funding from gov't due to the harassment of Jewish students...GOOD FRIGGIN' NEWS!!!....totally supporting this move by Trump!!! and fyi, I'm not Jewish...

[nudityandnerdery]

Three members of the American Student Union, including Robert Burke, who was expelled in June for leading the anti-Nazi demonstration last May, addressed a gathering of 500 students of the college and the various schools of Columbia University in front of Hamilton Hall yesterday noon, appealing to them to support the youth in his fight for reinstatement.

1936?

They literally are just running the exact same script?

[world-beauty]

The Planet, the White Dwarf, and the Neutron Star

Credits: Univ. British Columbia, et al, NASA, NOAO

[mariacallous]

"And when Haman saw that Mordecai bowed not, nor did him reverence, then was Haman full of wrath." Esther 3:5

Fascism places emotion over reason. Words are to become just tools to achieve the vision of the Leader. In our post-truth world, this takes the very special form of the inversion of meaning: fascists call other people "fascists" and antisemites call other people "antisemites." This is taking place right now, in the United States, before our eyes, at the highest levels of our government.

An example from abroad might help us to see what is happening. The notion that all of Russia's enemies are the "fascists" has become more entrenched as the Russian state has become fascist. Putin has for fifteen years justified his actions by reference to the leading Russian fascist thinker. Russian authorities ludicrously justified their full-scale invasion of Ukraine as a struggle against antisemitism. They claimed, absurdly, that it would amount to "denazification" if they overthrew the democratically-elected president of Ukraine, who is of Jewish origin, and installed their own government. This is fascism in the name of "fighting fascism." And it is antisemitism in the name of "fighting antisemitism."

Russian officials have handled the contradiction in various ways. Vladimir Putin says that the Ukrainian president is not really Jewish, implying that Putin himself decides who is Jewish and what that means. This is a central trope of modern antisemitism, associated most famously with Karl Lueger, who was mayor of Vienna when young Adolf Hitler arrived there in 1908, and who set the ideological tone of the city. Hitler's Holocaust killed about two million Jews in what is now Ukraine, including members of Zelens'kyi's family.

The Russian foreign minister claimed that Hitler was Jewish. The idea was to suggest that the Ukrainian president, because he is of Jewish origin, is like Hitler. The Russian foreign minister has also questioned whether Zelens'kyi is fully human.

The point of repeating antisemitic tropes while claiming to fight antisemitism is to evacuate any meaning from the term "antisemitism" and to erase the lessons of the Holocaust. And there can hardly be a more antisemitic action than that.

Antisemitism is a terrible problem in our battered world, and it is worse from year to year, moment to moment. There are antisemites among Americans, among American young people, and among college students. This is no reason, however, to attack higher education or undermine the legal and moral basis of the American republic.

Antisemites claim that they themselves can make up what they like about history, they can decide who is a real Jew, that the Jews brought suffering upon themselves. Antisemites meanwhile apply the word "antisemitic" to other people who are simply doing things that the actual antisemites do not like. The absurdity is part of the point: the claim that Jewish democrats are the real antisemites or the real Nazis or the real Hitlers is meant to disorient well-meaning people who assume that there must be some logic somewhere, and to provide guidance for malicious people who actually wish to further antisemitism.

I remember a certain feeling of confusion from February 2022 and the initial Russian war propaganda. I am afraid that the same confused atmosphere prevails now in the United States. The American government's war on higher education and freedom of expression is proceeding according to the same antisemitic rules of engagement as Russia's war against Ukraine.

The Musk-Trump policy today is to defund, harass and persecute American universities on the grounds that they permit antisemitism. The word "antisemitism" is being used to justify actions that, aside from many other wrongs, will harm Jews, and we should consider whether they are designed to do so.

The federal government is undertaking to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate, on the grounds that as a student he led protests against the Israeli assault on Gaza. There is no accusation that Khalil committed a crime. He is being singled out, in what amounts to a test case for American authoritarianism as a whole, for the expression of his views. The Constitution protects his right to freedom of expression no less than it protects that right for American citizens. If it does not apply to him, in other words, it applies to no one.

According to Trump, Khalil is the "first of many to come." Without evidence, Trump associates Khalil in a general way with "pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity." These are slurs designed to generate emotion, and neither Trump nor anyone else in government has provided any evidentiary basis for any of them. The stigmatization of a particular individual and his particular cause is a template for doing the same to other people and other causes. The stigmatization of specific protests at specific universities is being used to delegitimize higher education and freedom of expression.

"Anti-American activity" is a very broad category of behavior, and of course, when simply defined at a given by the president, perfectly arbitrary. Manufactured fear of Islam and of Palestinians and their allies is being used to justify an assault on the rule of law in the United States.

At the same time the word "antisemitism" is also being deployed in a familiar and concerning way. The notion is that antisemitism is such a problem that we should accept obviously authoritarian policies to combat it. But will authoritarianism help Jews? And is this particular policy of deportation in any way designed to support Jewish Americans? This seems unlikely to be the motivation of those who made the policy.

Deporting a Muslim who has committed no crime in the name of Jews is not exactly a favor to Jews. It looks more like a provocation by the federal government, designed to generate strife among communities. And making exceptions to constitutional protections of free speech and free assembly in one case undermines the rule of law as a whole.

The specific target of the campaign is also revealing. Khalil was a student at Columbia University, now the showpiece of a larger federal assault on higher education. There will be an investigation of sixty American universities for supposedly allowing antisemitic discrimination against their students. This investigation, like Khalil's arrest, is framed as opposing antisemitism and as supporting Jews.

(I should say that I have worked for more than two decades at Yale University, one of the targeted institutions, where I have taught the history of the Holocaust, sat on the advisory group of the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism, and served as faculty advisor for the Fortunoff Archive of Video Holocaust Testimonies, one of the early initiatives to collect survivor testimony. I say this for transparency about my own affiliations and commitments, not to speak for colleagues at any of these institutions or for these institutions themselves.)

But why was Columbia put first? It is in New York. More than twenty percent of its undergraduate students are Jewish. No matter the experiences or attitudes of these students, their university suddenly losing four hundred million dollars is unlikely to improve their education and life chances. Columbia students can speak for themselves. My guess is that Columbia was selected as the symbolic first target less because of the presence of antisemitism than because of the presence of Jews.

And I think that this is something that actual American antisemites will immediately have grasped. The city of New York is coded for antisemites as Jewish. The antisemites in America, seeing Columbia and New York punished, will see Jews being punished -- and they will be pleased by this. The same goes for universities as a whole. Universities are often understood by antisemites to be Jewish. The attempt to bring universities to heel will be met by antisemites with approval.

By American journalistic habit, Musk-Trump's public framing of the anti-university campaign as opposition to antisemitism is accepted. But these basic elements of context are enough to put that into doubt. History teaches clear lessons about breakdowns in the rule of law and about campaigns against cities and universities. These are very often associated with antisemitism. It is very hard, for me at least, to think of historical examples of campaigns against universities and freedom of expression that were intended to benefit Jews. The only reason journalists and the rest of us have to believe that these efforts are made on behalf of Jews is Trump's assurances.

But how likely is it that this administration, in fact, would act from a sincere concern for the well-being of Jews?

The Trump team recently engaged in an action of highly public Jew-baiting inside the Oval Office. Elon Musk performs the Hitler salute and claims that people whom he does not like are "Soros puppets"; in other words, Musk endorses the theory of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy. Musk has enabled antisemitism by the way he has chosen to run Twitter. He trivializes the Holocaust by making jokes about Himmler and Goebbels or by blaming public sector workers for the Holocaust. JD Vance visited Europe in February to endorse the German far right. The secretary of defense is a Christian reconstructionist who associates with a very well-known promoter of antisemitic ideas. Under the new leadership of the FBI, the American far right, the center of American violent terrorism, will receive much less attention. Antisemitic incidents increased during Trump's previous term, during which Trump characterized participants at a neo-Nazi gathering ("the Jews will not replace us," Charlottesville) as "very fine people." Trump says that Jews who do not vote for him are not loyal Americans. He refers to people and institutions with whom he disagrees as "globalist," which is a code for "Jewish" that every antisemite understands. His supporters antisemitically attack Jewish judges who rule in ways that Trump does not like, including in the case of Mahmoud Khalil.

Like Karl Lueger in Hitler's Vienna, and like Vladimir Putin during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Donald Trump assigns to himself the right to decide who is Jewish and who is not. On March 12th Trump said that Senator Chuck Schumer is not Jewish but Palestinian: "Schumer is a Palestinian as far as I'm concerned. He's become a Palestinian. He used to be Jewish. He's not Jewish anymore. He’s a Palestinian."

Trump is using Palestinian here as a slur, as if it were some lesser human state that can result from wrong action, as opposed to being a normal human identification with a people. He is also, like Putin and Lueger before him, claiming that Jewishness is something that does not belong to Jews, but to those who rule them. It is the rulers who decide who are the good Jews and the bad Jews, the real Jews and the fake Jews. The point of all this is that all Jews, and Jews especially, have to be obedient to the ruler, or else.

What, then, to conclude?

Americans are being trained to see antisemitism as something other than the oppression of Jews by non-Jews -- which is of course a very real, very dangerous, and growing problem in the world.

Rulers who deploy the word "antisemitism" can themselves be antisemites or promoters of antisemitism. The abuse of the word "antisemitism" is meant to generate a sense of plausibility, confuse opposition, and create more space for the actual phenomenon of antisemitism. And this misdirection is an integral part of the effort to replace a constitutional order with an authoritarian one.

Jews in the United States are being instrumentalized in an effort to build a more authoritarian American system. The real and continuing history of the oppression of Jews is transformed into a bureaucratic tool called "antisemitism" which is used to suppress education and human rights -- and so, in the end, to harm Jews themselves.

As the word "antisemitism" becomes the cover for aggression, we lose the concept. And then, when actual antisemitism manifests itself, there will be no way to describe it, since "antisemitism" will have come to mean something like "the power of arbitrary rulers to suppress freedom of assembly and freedom of speech under cover of disinformation and propaganda."

At the moment the word takes on that meaning, such power will have been achieved. Words will have become just tools to achieve the vision of the Leader.

[dbloom]

I talked with Wendy and Richard Pini, the couple behind the long-running ElfQuest comics, about their $500,000 endowment to Columbia University's archive of comics and graphic novels. Lovely people, and nice to see some support for a piece of pop culture that's too often under-appreciated.

[enchi-elm]

Caleb Brewster's signature, an evolution 1778-1780

We start off reasonable and professional, in a letter to Benjamin Tallmadge dated October 22, 1778:

Caleb Brewster Lieut

Source: Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/resource/mgw4.053_0566_0567/?sp=1

That's good, you know, pretty solid. Clean, neat, mindful of his military position. Then a bizarre and exciting change of pace in a letter to Benjamin Tallmadge dated February 26, 1779.

I am with respect yours [etc.?] Caleb Brewster

Source, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/resource/mgw4.056_0281_0284/?sp=4&st=image

Incredible. Diva. I'm amazed he found stable ground to write this on and enough time to compose two pages. The "B" should be framed and taught in calligraphy classes. In the same letter, he writes a "g" so effusive it bisects New York in the row below to land on "at".

Was it too much? Did he fly too close to the sun? Has he since grown more secure in his correspondence or is this him at his most confident? Either way, 18 months later we see a more subdued return to form in a letter to Benjamin Tallmadge dated August 18, 1780.

With respect your friend and Humble Servant Caleb Brewster

Source: Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/resource/mgw4.069_0709_0710/?sp=1

No flourishes, short lines-- in fact, a total lack of swoops throughout the entire letter. But he's become a friend! Aww. I wish I knew what Maj. Tallmadge had written in return.

Other things I have found out while doodling on the themes of Chapter 18 of Wind and Water and researching tangents,

Caleb and Ben owned land together (?!?!), purchased August 5, 1784: "The Middle of the Island Farm" in Brookhaven Twp. and four lots in Nocamack. (The source given, that I can't access, is this: Page 251 Loyalism in New York during the American Revolution by Alex C Flick PhD. Columbia Univ. Press, London 1901. Accessed Meehan-411 16 Jan 2020.)

Caleb's father's name was Benjamin, likely the reason his son was also called Benjamin (another son was named Daniel, for his grandfather). His first daughter was named after his mother, Sarah.

He had three half-sisters from his father's first or second wife? (https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Brewster-1687) Except the birth dates make it seem like Caleb was somehow born between the last two? Someone messed up the geneology there, or we're talking bigamy.

[my-deer-friend]

The post you reposted about not hating historians was really interesting, thank you for sharing it. Do you have recommendations for historians who are researching queer history in the 18th century?

Do I!

(Note that I'm using "queer" below in the modern sense of "behaviour outside the sanctioned/accepted gender or sexual norms of the time".)

Strands of scholarship

I've come to see two broad approaches in historical queer studies, at least those focused on the 18th century; these are my own observations, and not formal groupings (as far as I'm aware).

One one side, you have those scholars who have a very open and loose conception of queerness, and are usually interested in "queering the past" – aka using a queer scholarship lens to investigate historical social-cultural behaviours. They often focus on literary analysis and tend to be more liberal about applying modern queer terminology to the past, and usually lean social constructionist or postmodernist.

On the other side, you have strict queer scholars, who have much more stringent definitions of what is "definitely queer" and what isn't, and are interested in making sure that only those historical figures who are "truly" queer are labelled as such. They tend to focus on official documents like trial records and homosexual acts as the most valid kinds of evidence of queerness. These are most often critical realists.

The first group risks taking an over-broad approach to historical queerness, while the second risks being overly narrow, so the majority of scholars tend to fall somewhere in the middle. I do however think it's important to be aware of the differing entry points that a historian might be taking, so that you can read more critically.

All that said...

Here are some recommendations

Haggerty, G. E. (1999). Men in love: Masculinity and sexuality in the eighteenth century. Columbia Univ. Press. For me, this is the gold-standard starting point. Haggerty takes a very pragmatic and compassionate approach to investigating historical queerness. He has also published a more recent book about Horace Walpole which I've skimmed and it looks excellent (Haggerty, G. E. (2011). Horace Walpole’s Letters: Masculinity and Friendship in the Eighteenth Century. Bucknell University Press.)

Godbeer, R. (2009). The overflowing of friendship: Love between men and the creation of the American republic. Johns Hopkins University Press. Another excellent foundational work, this one focused more on America.

Tobin, R. (2000). Warm Brothers: Queer Theory and the Age of Goethe. University of Pennsylvania Press. This book focuses on queerness in late-18th/early-19th century German culture, but has lots of useful cross-cutting insights.

Sedgwick, E. K. (1985). Between men: English literature and male homosocial desire. Columbia university press. Sedgwick doesn't pull many punches, and that puts her ahead of her time; you'll find many theorists leaning on her study.

Malcolm, N. (2024). Forbidden Desire in Early Modern Europe: Male-Male Sexual Relations, 1400-1750 (1st ed.). Oxford University Press. I have heard great things about this book and it's somewhere on my long, long reading list – but by all accounts it's worth a look, and is the most recent source on this list, so it should contain the most up-to-date scholarship.

Cleves, R. H. (2014). Charity and Sylvia: A same-sex marriage in early America. Oxford University Press. This one takes place in the early 19th century, so not quite what you're looking for, but is an interesting investigation into (the scarcer field of) female same-sex relations.

Norton, R. (Ed.). Homosexuality in Eighteenth-Century England: A Sourcebook. Updated 17 December 2023. http://rictornorton.co.uk/eighteen/. An invaluable resource of source documents and analyses (with the small caution that Norton very blatantly uses modern queer terminology in historical context).

These are all books, so they serve as a good starting point for a broad exploration; all of these authors have also published academic articles, which go into much more depth on narrower topics. I also have some more focused resources, if there is a specific topic within this massive field that you have a particular interest in!

[1americanconservative]

@megynkelly

For those wondering what Mahmoud Khalil did, he was lead negotiator of the group unleashing this lawless terror on Columbia’s campus. He wld’ve been the one demanding that univ divest from Israel or they wld con’t the lawlessness. Not a free speech case.

[eretzyisrael]

by Todd Bensman

Columbia University finally sent in the New York Police Department on Tuesday night to clear anti-Israel protesters mouthing pro-Hamas messages.

But DailyMail.com can now reveal that administrators may need to look in-house next if they truly want to clean house.

For a new investigation has uncovered an endorsement of Hamas media outlets in – of all places – Columbia's storied journalism school.

Mounted on either side of the entryway to Pulitzer Hall – named after Joseph Pulitzer, the founder of the university's journalism school and the namesake of the coveted Pulitzer Prize – there is a memorial purporting to honor 'journalists' killed in the Israel-Gaza war.

The honorees were selected from a list compiled by the non-profit Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

However, 21 of the 98 names displayed were employed by Hamas' propaganda TV and radio stations, 11 worked for outlets affiliated with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group, and at least three were active alleged terrorists before their deaths.

The school has not publicized the memorial, but in February Columbia's journalism professor Nina Berman shared a picture of it to her personal Instagram account, accompanied by the following warning: 'Anyone commenting with doubts about the legitimacy of these journalists or suggestions that they are terrorists will be promptly blocked.'

Though while Columbia Journalism School may regard its display as a tribute to 'journalists,' facts suggest otherwise.

Mohamed Khalifeh, a director at 'Al Aqsa Television,' is just one of 15 memorialized names who worked for the Hamas-operated media network operating in Gaza.

In 2010, the Obama administration sanctioned Al Aqsa TV as a terrorist entity.

'Al-Aqsa is a primary Hamas media outlet and airs programs and music videos designed to recruit children to become Hamas armed fighters and suicide bombers upon reaching adulthood,' the US Treasury Department noted.

'[We] will not distinguish between a business financed and controlled by a terrorist group, such as Al-Aqsa Television, and the terrorist group itself,' the department concluded.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Hannah Ray Lambert

Published: Sep 10, 2024

For the second year in a row, Harvard University's "abysmal" free speech climate earned it the lowest ranking among 251 colleges and universities scored by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).

“This year, however, Harvard has company. Columbia University ranks 250, also with an overall score of 0.00,” reads the report released Thursday.

New York University, University of Pennsylvania and Barnard College rounded out the bottom-five colleges, according to the report.

FIRE, a pro-First Amendment nonprofit, worked with College Pulse to survey tens of thousands of students about the free speech environments on their college campuses for its annual College Free Speech Rankings.

“We’re trying to provide an indication of where students can get the best experience in college in terms of being exposed to a diverse set of views,” FIRE’s chief research adviser Sean Stevens told Fox News Digital.

A Barnard spokesperson told Fox News Digital the college is “committed to protecting academic freedom and freedom of expression, and to fostering environments where students, faculty, and staff can engage in open and respectful dialogue.”

Barnard has adopted the Chicago Principles, a free speech policy previously endorsed by FIRE, and this school year a faculty committee will develop “a Barnard-specific framework,” the spokesperson continued.

Harvard, Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

The universities that ranked poorly all experienced incidents in which speech was censored, suppressed or shouted down, Stevens said.

Since FIRE started ranking schools in 2020, the bottom-five colleges and universities have been “consistently bad performers,” he added.

“They rarely stand up for speech,” Stevens said.

“When a controversy arises, the speech typically gets punished. A speaker gets disinvited. A faculty member gets sanctioned in some way, or a student or student organization does.”

The poor performers share another notable trait, according to FIRE’s analysis.

“Most of the students are very upset with how the administration has responded to protests over the past year,” Stevens said.

Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the war that followed “sent shockwaves through American college and university campuses,” according to the FIRE report. Protesters occupied the South Lawn at Columbia for about two weeks in April before police broke up the encampment.

After the start of the encampments, researchers noticed a large increase in the percentage of Columbia students who said they self-censor in classroom discussions or in conversations with professors or other students.

At the other end of the free speech spectrum, the University of Virginia earned the top ranking. Michigan Technological University, Florida State University, Eastern Kentucky University and Georgia Institute of Technology rounded out the top five.

The full rankings can be viewed here.

Stevens noted that the schools that performed well tended to have fewer controversies overall and, when controversies did arise, administrators typically defended speech rights.

He said he hopes parents and prospective students use FIRE’s ranking tool to make better-informed choices. The tool also provides a look at the liberal-conservative ratio on campuses, and a deeper look at student attitudes toward free expression.

“Experiencing open inquiry and that process, having to grapple and have their views challenged” sets students up to be better “adult citizens in our country, once they graduate,” Stevens said.

FIRE and College Pulse surveyed students at 257 schools in total, but excluded six from the main rankings and gave them “warning” ratings.

The private colleges, which include Pepperdine University, Hillsdale College, and Brigham Young University, all “have policies that clearly and consistently state” that they prioritize “other values over a commitment to freedom of speech,” according to the FIRE report.

--

Executive Summary

For the fifth year in a row, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a nonprofit organization committed to defending and sustaining the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought, and College Pulse surveyed college undergraduates about their perceptions and experiences regarding free speech on their campuses.

This year’s survey includes 58,807 student respondents from 257 colleges and universities. Students who were enrolled in four-year degree programs were surveyed via the College Pulse mobile app and web portal from January 25 through June 17, 2024. 

The College Free Speech Rankings are available online and are presented in an interactive dashboard (rankings.thefire.org) that allows for easy comparison between institutions. 

Key findings:

The University of Virginia is this year’s top ranked school for free speech. Michigan Technological University, Florida State University, Eastern Kentucky University, and Georgia Tech round out the top five.

Harvard University is this year’s bottom ranked school for free speech for the second year in a row. Joining it in the bottom three are Columbia University and New York University. All three of these schools have an “Abysmal” speech climate. The University of Pennsylvania and Barnard College round out the bottom five and each has a “Very Poor” speech climate.

All of the bottom five schools experienced a number of controversies involving the suppression of free expression. They also received significantly lower scores than the top five schools on “Administrative Support,” “Comfort Expressing Ideas,” and “Tolerance Difference,” which measures the strength of students’ favoritism when it comes to allowing liberal or conservative speakers on campus.

Since 2020, UVA, Michigan Tech, FSU, North Carolina State University, Oregon State University, Mississippi State University, Auburn University, George Mason University, Kansas State University, the University of Mississippi, the University of Chicago, and Claremont McKenna College have all consistently performed well in FIRE’s College Free Speech Rankings.

A majority of students (55%) said that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is difficult to “have an open and honest conversation about on campus,” a record high for a topic on this question in the five years we have asked it. At least 75% of students on 17 of the campuses surveyed responded this way to this question.

The percentages of students who said shouting down a speaker, blocking other students from entering an event, and using violence to stop a campus speech is at least “rarely” acceptable all increased since last year. 

A majority of students said that six of eight hypothetical controversial campus speakers should “probably” or “definitely” not be allowed on campus.

Student concerns about self-censorship have declined. This year, 17% of students said they feel like they cannot express their opinion on a subject at least a couple of times a week because of how students, a professor, or the administration would respond. Last year, this percentage was 20%, and in 2022 it was 22%.

[newyorkthegoldenage]

This young man from Austin, Texas is making good use of his summer vacation by learning, by the sweat of his brow, how tons of steel become giant skyscrapers, August 21, 1925. He is an iron worker on the new 15-story physics building being constructed at Columbia University. Besides not being afraid to balance himself atop the highest girders, the student iron worker is quite a boxer, fighting under the name of "Wary" Wade, the proceeds of the fight going towards paying his way through college.

Photo: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images/Fine Art America

[journeytothewestresearch]

Hi! You seem to be the JTTW expert and I was wondering if you could clarify something for me; If I understand correctly, Wujing ate 9 of Tripitaka’s previous incarnations, right? If so, shouldn’t he be super-powered by all of them? After all, the reason the demons want to eat him is because Tripitaka cultivated power in his previous lives, which will give them immortality and power. Didn’t that apply to the previous monks?

The 13th-century oral JTTW openly states that Sha Wujing's antecedent has continually eaten Tripitaka:

Deep Sand said: "I am the one who devoured you twice before, monk. Slung from my neck are all your dry bones!" (Wivell, 1994, p. 1190). 深沙云：「項下是和尚兩度被我吃你，袋得枯骨在此。」

And since Tripitaka is the tenth reincarnation of Master Golden Cicada and Sha claims to have eaten nine previous scripture pilgrims (Wu & Yu, 2012, vol. 1, p. 210), it's reasonable to assume that Sha has eaten the monk's past nine lives. However, to my knowledge, JTTW never openly states that the Buddhist master had made previous attempts in his past lives to travel to India, or that he had been eaten by Sha in the process (someone please correct me if I'm wrong).

It's important to remember that Tripitaka, better known as Xuanzang (玄奘, 602-664), is not the only Chinese monk who has traveled to India for scriptures. Another famous scripture pilgrim is Faxian (法顯, 337- c. 422). So, the novel could be referring to other such monks.

But if we were to view the aforementioned nine monks as Tripitaka's past lives, I think the reason why Sha Wujing isn't empowered by their flesh is because their compounding life-long austerities only results in the tenth and final reincarnation being holy.

Fun Fact: The "Deep Sands" demon mentioned above is actually a vilified version of a spirit said to have originally helped Xuanzang in his 7th-century biography. This figure came to be worshiped as Jinja Taishō (深沙大將, “General of the Deep Sands”), a minor protector deity in Japanese Buddhism. One 11th-century Japanese source claims that the General manifested before Faxian in a wrathful form. Most importantly, the skulls around his neck are said to be those of demons, not monks (Dudbridge, 1970, p. 20)!

A 13th to 14th-century Japanese Kamakura carving of the General of the Deep Sands.

Sources:

Dudbridge, G. (1970). The Hsi-yu chi: A Study of Antecedents to the Sixteenth-Century Chinese Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.

Wivell, C.S. (1994). The Story of How the Monk Tripitaka of the Great Country of T’ang Brought Back the Sūtras. In V. Mair (Ed.), The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature (pp. 1181-1207). New York: Columbia University Press.

Wu, C., & Yu, A. C. (2012). The Journey to the West (Vols. 1-4) (Rev. ed.). Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press.

[world-beauty]

Fornax Cluster in Motion

Credits: Columbia Univ., CXC, NASA

[foolishmortal]

“We must be extremely clear: this is an attempt to criminalize political protest and is a direct assault on the freedom of speech of everyone in this country ..."

"Khalil, who holds a green card as a legal permanent U.S. resident, isn't charged with a crime. But the Trump administration says he should be deported because of his protest activity, which it equates with antisemitism and support for terrorism."

they want to frame this as a free speech and right to peaceful protest case so they can apply a broad interpretation of terrorism. That's not my specialty so I can't speak to that.

but the ICE agents that entered his home without his consent and took him without a warrant violated the Fourth Amendment.

Their refusal to grant him a fair trial until a judge blocked their attempts, violated the Fifth Amendment.

More information on the rights of green card holders and other permanent residents here