As far as this particular girl is concerned, I wonder if Columbia can still award her a degree online, as in COVID times? Or does student enrolment status depend on the holding of a valid visa?

But the bigger question is what this means for Indian law students in the US. Quite a few Indian humanities and also law students have participated in such protests and posted online in favour of Palestine. What happens to them?

Also, what about NLU, Jindal etc students who posted in favour of Palestine on social media and are now applying for US visas?

https://www.news18.com/world/who-is-ranjani-srinivasan-indian-doctoral-student-self-deports-after-visa-revoked-by-us-over-advocating-terrorism-9261989.html

https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/indian-student-from-columbia-university-ranjani-srinivasan-self-deports-after-us-revokes-visa-over-palestine-protests-7926709#pfrom=home-ndtv_topscroll

Ranjani Srinivasan is a former Fullbright-Nehru/Inlaks alumnus and currently a doctoral candidate in urban planning at the Graduate School of Art, Architecture, and Planning in Columbia University. The profile is available at << https://www.arch.columbia.edu/phd-students/3387-ranjani-srinivasan >>. Her master’s thesis was titled “Gold & Cyanide: Family, Caste, and the Post-extractive Landscape at Kolar Gold Fields” and which, according to another profile at << https://columbia.academia.edu/RSrinivasan >>, had an autobiographical element.

Bio below. TLDR:

- Graduate of CEPT, Harvard and Columbia

- Received Fulbright and Inlaks scholarship

- Tutor at NYU

- Identifies as trans binary and uses they/them pronouns

- Researching on caste and capitalism, in the context of labour.

- Has criticised brahmanical hegemony in the context of labour exploitation
- Right now, internet sleuths are trying to see if her Fulbright and Inlaks scholarship were awarded on pure academic performance or if she has influential parents

https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/ranjani-srinivasan-the-indian-student-from-columbia-university-who-self-deported-from-us-after-visa-revoked-over-pro-palestine-protest-7927112

https://wagner.nyu.edu/community/faculty/ranjani-srinivasan

The worst thing is not her positions in themselves but the utter lack of rigor in them. So-called scholars like these hardly do any original fact-finding or fieldwork. Theirs is a game of interpretation.

She is such a committed ideologue (with appropriate levels of moral righteousness) that in her master's thesis, she manages to accuse and condemn her own Brahmin ancestors in the process. Individuals like her are clever enough to present their work in a language that the orthodoxies of academia will happily approve. But, just think, can they survive a proper, civil debate over their claims without name-calling others?

Good point. There should be an inquiry into how she got at least one of these scholarships while still being a student or alum of another university. One hopes that the award was transparent and that her parents are not influential IAS officers or anything like that.

On another note, who do these scholarships always go to left-wing people studying/researching on caste, Hindutva etc? Why not people who wish to study/research corporate finance or technology?

There is a difference between supporting Palestine and supporting Hamas. If you support Hamas nearly every civilised country in the world will look at you twice and think whether they should give you a visa. Rightly so.

If you don’t know the difference between supporting Hamas and supporting Palestine you have no business going to graduate school.

What a sad excuse for morality you have. What unexamined priors. You cant just say murder is murder and rape is rape and killed babies are killed babies. You need to say that murder is okay if its "a colonial force" what the heck did naama levy have to do with colonialism ? what did the bibas children have to do with colonialism? Do you even understand what colonialism is? the jews are as indigenous to that land as palestinians are. theyre all semites. this is so shameful.

You dont even get it do you? the worst victims of Hamas are not even israeli jews you idiot. the worst victims of hamas are the palestinians who have been robbed and starved by this terrorist group. Sinwar and the leadership of hamas lived in freaking luxury in other countries and bled gaza dry of all the aid that unrwa raised. They put their bombs beneath hospitals because thats how little they care about the babies of their co-religionists. They threw gay people and political dissidents off rooftops.

There is no moral ambiguity between that and an organised army that largely fights only defensive wars. Go repeat some nonsense about colonialism now. How are people so ignorant?

This is what happens when you realise that India is still much better in terms of freedom of speech. Lol. Go to a ivy to study and end up participating in a protest against the same country that allowed you to be there in the first place. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Now whether they were right or not, they're banned from all ivy league universities, and even future US visits. Good job. Hope she's happy now.

So much for conviction. Used to be that you believed in your positions so fervently that you wouldn’t back down from them. Today’s college students aren’t that - they shouldn’t be surprised that they’ve utterly failed in effecting change and they’re seen as useful idiots and laughed off by the mainstream.

At least Umar Khalid had the courage of his convictions to go to jail. There’s a person to admire at least for his honesty. Whatever these rich kids in fancy unis are - they aren’t that.

Note to OP and moderator: Ranjani uses “they” pronouns on her NYU page (link below) so the sentence “award her a degree” should be amended to “award them a degree.”

https://wagner.nyu.edu/community/faculty/ranjani-srinivasan

Please be respectful and civil in your comments. They has stated their preferred pronouns, so we should respect that. Misgendering people, apart from being a source of trauma and violence, is also illegal in some countries. This thread is meant to discuss the legality of the US government's action against peaceful political protestors, it is not a forum to make queerphobic attacks against anyone.

It’s disrespectful to ask others to play along with your quasi religious beliefs.

Queerphobic means as little to me as saying I’m Christian phobic because I won’t declare Christ is king.

Your preferred pronouns are your preferences. Not mine or anyone else’s. Other people get to speak what they want especially when it’s the truth.

What violence does misgendering lead to ? Words have to mean something! If “she/her” is too traumatising to you go to therapy and figure out why you think a woman is a horrible thing to be.

These were not peaceful protestors. They harassed Jewish students and faculty and refused to let them enter classrooms and parts of the university. They broke open and took over a university building and held a couple of janitors hostage until their demands were met. You don’t know what you’re talking about.

And even if it is illegal somewhere. So freaking what ? It’s illegal for women to speak loudly or sing in Afghanistan - should women in India shut up then ? It’s illegal in Iran to be gay - so they’ll transition you to the opposite gender if you want to marry the love of your life. Shall we start following that practice in India ? It’s illegal in north Korea to say mean things about dear leader - why should the rest of us play along?