Commentary
“I’m scared,” says a female Columbia student to her friends in a video posted on social media. They were trying to get past a man carrying a large Palestine flag and yelling at Jewish students to “go back to Poland” in an apparent reference to that country’s Nazi occupation, during which almost 5 million Jewish and non-Jewish Polish citizens were killed during World War II. The incident occurred on April 21 on a street near Columbia University.
On April 24, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu compared the situation on elite U.S. campuses to “German universities in the 1930s.” He said on X (formerly Twitter): “They call for the annihilation of Israel. They attack Jewish students. They attack Jewish faculty.” He described the situation as “horrific” and “unconscionable,” saying “it has to be stopped.”
He’s right. Massive “pro-Palestine” student protests are making veiled calls for violence, attracting off-campus racists, barring conservative Jewish students from parts of university property, and paralyzing normal university operations. At Columbia, Yale, and New York University (NYU), the protests have devolved into violence or intimidation to the point that their federal funding should be in question.
Universities are attempting to rectify the situation by moving classes online, arresting and suspending student and faculty protesters, and closing open spaces and yards to prevent activists from establishing tent cities. However, this just energizes the protests, drives them underground, and spreads them to other universities and even high schools. Crude attempts at repression do not address the underlying problem of misleading radical professors who teach biased versions of politics and history that send young students onto a path toward violence and criminality.
Congresswomen have rightly demanded the resignation of university presidents who fail to control their students and threaten the federal funding of universities that do not comply with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VI requires that “No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
The universities are already arguably in noncompliance. A Columbia rabbi advised Jewish students to stay away from campus until order is restored. There is a video of a Jewish student being denied access to parts of Yale University by self-appointed student security guards associated with protesters. One conservative claims to have been stabbed in the eye by a Yale protester. NYU faculty arguably led student protesters in battling police at a protest that included bottles and chairs used as missiles or clubs against officers.
By Anders Corr
