https://www.city-journal.org/article/exporting-the-columbia-prototype
Last week, the Trump administration won a high-stakes showdown with Columbia University. Following the October 7 terrorist attack against Israel, Columbia has been ground zero for pro-Hamas agitation on America’s campuses. It has seen marches, occupations, vandalism, and violence. In response, the White House threatened to withhold $400 million in public funding unless the university enacted meaningful reforms.
The administration’s hardball approach paid off: Columbia has now acceded to virtually all the administration’s demands. The university has banned masked protests, boosted campus security, and established administrative oversight over its radical “post-colonial” academic departments, which have been hotbeds of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel activism. The relationship between the White House and American universities now enters a new phase, and the Columbia episode could serve as a prototype for the administration’s approach going forward.
The administration should understand that anti-Semitism is just part of the Left’s ideological nesting doll. For campus activists, the Jews are the Middle East’s oppressors, while the Palestinians are the oppressed and are therefore justified in violent revolution. The narrative is attractive because it can be scaled symbolically: in the progressive imagination, Israel is to the Palestinians as white America is to black America and as Western society is to the Third World. Anti-Semitism is a stand-in for anti-whiteness and, ultimately, for anti-Western ideologies.