How to Deal With Campus Mayhem Caused by Pro-Hamas Mobs Enforcement, appeasement, or equivocation? by Joseph Klein 1
https://www.frontpagemag.com/how-to-deal-with-campus-mayhem-caused-by-pro-hamas-mobs/
“This is the secret of propaganda:” the Nazis’ chief propagandist Joseph Goebbels explained. “Those who are to be persuaded by it should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it.” He also emphasized that “Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred.”
Goebbels would have been so proud of the pro-Hamas agitators immersed in anti-Semitic propaganda who have turned many campuses across the country into sites of pogroms against Jewish students who support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.
Left-wing faculty members’ indoctrination of their students have specified the targets of hate, which include the Jewish state of Israel and the Jews around the world who support Israel’s right to exist in its present form. For years, left-wing professors have been indoctrinating their students to believe that Western political and economic systems are oppressive, corrupt, colonialist, and hopelessly racist, which are deserving of destruction by whatever means necessary. The seeds of neo-Marxism that have been planted over time have sprouted into the demonstrations of anti-Semitic hate tinged with violence that we are witnessing today on the nation’s campuses.
The anti-Semitic mobs have inflicted collective punishment on entire college and university communities. The mobs have infringed on the rights and endangered the safety of students, faculty, and staff who do not share the mobs’ fanatical ideas and methods. All students, faculty, and staff should be able to go about their normal business, free of obstruction, harassment, and physical intimidation. But the pro-Hamas mobs have not let that happen. Moreover, the mobs’ disruptions have caused classes to be called off or moved online and graduations to be cancelled.
School administrators have taken different approaches to dealing with the resulting chaos on their campuses, which fall roughly into three categories. At one end of the spectrum are the more enlightened college and university administrations that have taken effective action to put a quick end to the mayhem. Take, for example, the University of Florida where the administration refused to coddle the mob of protesters.
University of Florida President Ben Sasse’s message to the agitators was very direct. Drawing a bright line between permissible freedom of expression and assembly versus unacceptable disruptive activity, he said that “we have time, place and manner restrictions, and you don’t get to take over the whole university. People don’t get to spit at cops. You don’t get to barricade yourselves in buildings. You don’t get to disrupt somebody else’s commencement. We believe in the right to free speech. We believe in the right to free assembly, and you can try to persuade people. But what you see happening on so many campuses across the country is instead of drawing the line in speech and action, a lot of universities bizarrely give the most attention and most voice to the smallest, angriest group, and it’s just not what we’re going to do here.”
Northeastern University also took prompt action to deal with a disruptive encampment on campus that violated its rules, after first issuing a warning. “The quads on Northeastern’s Boston campus are reserved by the division of Student Life for scheduled university events,” the university administration stated. “Students currently demonstrating on Centennial Quad do not have authorization and are in violation of the Code of Student Conduct. Those who are not affiliated with Northeastern are trespassing. The university will take action accordingly.”
When its warning was not heeded, the university asked for police assistance in clearing the unauthorized encampment.
At the other end of the spectrum are the appeasers who have negotiated with the pro-Hamas agitators and have given in to some of their demands as the price to get the agitators to voluntarily remove their encampments.
Brown University, for example, caved in to the mob leaders’ demands and agreed to hold a vote by its Board on divesting the university’s ties with any companies doing business with Israel.
University of California Riverside also appeased the anti-Semitic mob encamping on its grounds after elevating leaders of the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter at UC Riverside, which organized the unauthorized encampment, to the status of equal negotiating partners. The administration agreed to remove the option for students to apply for a study abroad trip to Israel from its study-abroad program. The university even agreed to review the continued purchase specifically of hummus made by Sabra, which is partially owned by an Israeli company, “because it was mentioned in the protestors’ list of demands.”
In between the colleges and universities that displayed firmness by taking disciplinary actions and those that totally surrendered to the mob are the colleges and universities that let the crisis on their campuses fester for too long. Administrators at these schools hoped the problem would go away but the chaos escalated instead to such a dangerous extent that they decided they had no choice but to call in the police. Take UCLA, for example.
A week went by during which UCLA’s cowardly administrators allowed pro-Hamas agitators to take over space on campus that should be open to the entire university community. The agitators, some of whom had no connection to UCLA at all, trampled on Jewish students’ right to freely access and enjoy a safe campus environment while university leaders looked away. Masked Jew-haters erected barriers to control who could enter university grounds and used physical force to block the access to class by Jewish students who dared to be on Israel’s side.
Finally, the UCLA administration asked the police to dismantle the pro-Hamas agitators’ illegal barriers and encampment, but only after Jews in the broader Los Angeles community came to the besieged Jewish students’ aid and pushed back against the pro-Hamas mob.
But according to Gene Block, UCLA’s chancellor, and some faculty members, having to call in the police was all the fault of the Jews who dared to stand up for the safety and rights of UCLA’s Jewish students. Chancellor Block called these Jews “instigators.” He declared that “However one feels about the encampment, this attack on our students, faculty and community members was utterly unacceptable.”
This sick narrative turns the terrorist supporters who unlawfully seized control of campus property into the victims and the Jews who tried to repel them into the villains. This parallels the propaganda that lauds the Hamas terrorists themselves as “resisters” and condemns as “unacceptable” Israel’s legitimate military operation to destroy the terrorists’ capability to repeat the genocidal horrors of October 7th.
Members of UCLA’s Department of History put in their two cents with a letter decrying the university administration’s “authorizing law enforcement to brutalize” the anti-Semitic agitators whom the letter falsely described as “terrorized students participating in a peaceful protest.” The letter made no mention of outside participants with no connection to UCLA who trespassed and defaced university property. The letter also skipped over the fact that the agitators refused multiple warnings and chances to vacate their encampment before the police removed them in an orderly fashion.
These history faculty members asked the administration to grant leniency to students who violated university rules, to provide student law breakers with legal representation, and to engage with the mob’s leaders on their demands for disclosure and divestment.
Had the so-called “historians” not been so obsessed with their hatred for Israel, they might have rejected the anti-Semitic propaganda and learned the truth about Hamas’ self-proclaimed mission of genocide against the Jews to pass on to their students. For example, Israel itself unilaterally withdrew all its citizens and soldiers from Gaza in 2005 and left behind an infrastructure upon which the Palestinians could have built the foundation of an economically viable state. But after Hamas took over complete control of Gaza in 2007 by force, it chose to divert vital resources away from serving the welfare of the people of Gaza to building a terrorist arsenal. Hamas repeatedly exploited its control of Gaza to launch thousands of rocket and mortar attacks against Israeli civilian population centers. Following several conflicts during which Israel sought to curb Hamas’ terrorist attacks without taking back control of Gaza, Hamas broke the ceasefire that was then in place between Hamas and Israel up to the infamous day of October 7th. Hamas carried out its brutal massacres, rapes, assaults, torture, and kidnapping of Israeli and other civilians that day. There would have been no war in Gaza in the first place but for Hamas’ unprovoked genocidal attack inside Israel.
At Columbia University, the administration allowed the rebuilding of the encampment of tents by pro-Hamas agitators after NYPD officers had been called in to remove the original set of tents and arrest the agitators who refused to budge. After receiving fierce backlash from faculty members for authorizing the police action, Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, decided to negotiate with the mob leaders.
Meanwhile, some faculty members visited the revived encampment to encourage their disciples in radicalism. An English professor, who is a member of Columbia’s chapter of Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, brought his class studying atrocities to the tents. One can safely bet that Hamas’ genocidal atrocities were not part of his lesson plan.
When thugs broke into Hamilton Hall, destroyed property, threatened staffers, and blockaded entrances to the building, Shafik finally realized that she had no choice but to call in the NYPD again. The police were ready. They removed the agitators from the building, arrested them, and put an end to the encampment once and for all. Outsiders with no affiliation to Columbia were allegedly involved in the break-in.
Faculty members were not furious with the intruders who violently took over a university building and created havoc before the police removed them. But they sure were furious at the administration for calling upon the police to restore some semblance of safety, law and order.
For example, Bassam Khawaja, a lecturer at Columbia law school, said that he was “horrified” at the police presence and blamed Columbia for choosing “escalation at every turn here.” This lecturer needs some class lectures himself on the basics of criminal and constitutional law.
Colleges and universities have the duty as part of their core mission to provide a safe educational environment where students are exposed to different points of view and learn how to think critically for themselves. Students should be free to passionately express their opinions in public on campus even if others find those opinions to be offensive. But the schools’ administrations have a responsibility to establish clear rules as to the time, place, and manner of protests that distinguish between peaceful demonstrations and disruptive behavior that infringes on the rights of others. And these rules must be consistently enforced in a neutral and non-discriminatory manner.
Sadly, many colleges and universities have failed in discharging these most basic duties.
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