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Oh, look at the ivory towers crumbling under the weight of their own sanctimonious balderdash. Over 100 anti-Israel, pro-Hamasshole wannabe revolutionaries got the cuffs slapped on at Columbia, Swarthmore, and the University of Washington. Campus and local cops swooped in like the fun police at a vegan barbecue, breaking up the chaos faster than you can say “divestment tantrum.”
At Columbia, these brainiacs thought storming Butler Library was peak activism, disrupting students cramming for finals so badly they had to flee. Eighty of these keyboard warriors were hauled off in zip ties. ICE was there, too, playing “Guess the Visa Status” with the pro-Hamas crowd, checking if any of these disruptors were non-citizens about to get a one-way ticket home.
The State Department, not messing around, dropped a gem: “Foreign university students in America have been put on notice: if you break the law or support terrorism in our country, we will revoke your visa. This administration will not tolerate noncitizens causing mayhem on our college campuses.” Ouch. Bet that stung harder than a rejected Pell Grant.
This is a 180 from Columbia’s spineless performance last year, when they let protesters set up a tent city, storm classrooms, take over admin buildings, and harass Jewish students and faculty like it was a sanctioned extracurricular.
This time, acting President Claire Shipman, probably sweating buckets, called in the NYPD after the protesters’ “substantial chaos” and “serious risk to our students and campus safety.” Her words, not mine. She even saw two security guards getting patched up after being roughed up and described Butler’s reading room—Columbia’s pride and joy—looking like it got a makeover by a toddler with a spray can: “defaced and damaged in disturbing ways and with disturbing slogans.”
What changed? Two words: Donald Trump.
The man’s shadow looms large, and suddenly, schools are feeling the heat. The threat of yanking grants and federal goodies has universities clutching their pearls, debating whether they can keep coddling bad behavior. Spoiler: they can’t. They’ve had years to stop punishing free speech, protect Jewish students, and follow civil rights laws that don’t play favorites with race. But nah, they’d rather navel-gaze and call it “dialogue.”
Over at the University of Washington, protesters thought occupying an engineering building and demanding Boeing divestment was their moment. They set dumpster fires, blocked exits, and caused $1 million in damage to an equipment room, per the Washington State Standard. Thirty of them got arrested, and three federal agencies piled on the next day, announcing a review of the school’s federal grants. Their message? “The university must do more to deter future violence and guarantee that Jewish students have a safe and productive learning environment.” Translation: get your act together, or kiss your funding goodbye.
Swarthmore’s no better.
Nine students got nabbed trying to set up a tent city for their suspended Students for Justice in Palestine chapter. President Val Smith, sounding like she was over it, said, “I felt we had no choice but to seek outside assistance from local law enforcement,” especially since non-student randos tried crashing the party.
Trump’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, born from a February executive order, gave Shipman a gold star, calling her statement “strong and resolute.” They added, “We concur with Acting President Shipman that what happened was utterly unacceptable, which is precisely why the American people are demanding that the administration act to implement meaningful and enforceable commitments to enforce civil rights laws with institutions that receive taxpayer dollars.”
In other words, Columbia, you’re not getting your $400 million in grants back, so maybe stop acting like a petulant child.
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Katherine S. Cho, some professor from Loyola Chicago, whines that universities like Columbia are “under high surveillance” and can’t treat protests as “a mechanism of learning, conversation, and civic engagement” anymore. What were they going to learn? How to support terrorists?
Last year, they were “teaching moments”; now, they’re problems to squash. Maybe that’s because setting fires and trashing libraries isn’t exactly Socratic dialogue.
These schools are living in a parallel universe where consequences don’t exist. Maybe these crackdowns will drag them back to reality, where the rest of us deal with things like laws and accountability.
