Excuse me for starting with myself. I became a critic of Islam 24 years ago when I got my first glimpse of what the “religion of peace” was doing to Europe. I published a couple of books on the topic and wrote about it in the New York Times. But already the American cultural establishment was beginning to view honesty about the hateful and violent core doctrines of Islam as infra dig. Within a few years, my candor on this topic torpedoed my relationship with the Times and made a book contract all but impossible. 

The urge to hide the truth about Islam wasn’t confined to the cultural gatekeepers in New York. In Norway, where I live, the police called me in to try to intimidate me into shutting up; after my book While Europe Slept came out in 2006, a Norwegian writers’ association that had awarded me a stipend tried to get it back because I’d criticized Islam; when I gave a talk at a conference in Washington, D.C., I was glibly mocked by the other participants — most of them veteran diplomats — for suggesting that Islam posed a threat to Europe’s future; in 2011, when an anti-Islamic Norwegian terrorist, Anders Breivik, killed 77 people in and around Oslo, I was ordered, along with other critics of Islam, to appear as an “expert witness” at his trial, in a manifest effort to paint us all as nutbags and veritable co-conspirators. 

Other critics of Islam have had it far worse. The cartoonist Kurt Westergaard was targeted at his home by a would-be assassin. Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and Lars Hedegaard in Denmark, among others, have been hauled into court. In Britain, ordinary citizens have been jailed for stating facts about Islam on social media. While the British government sheltered imams who preached terror, it banned from its shores the American Islam expert Robert Spencer and imprisoned Tommy Robinson, who’d blown the cover on Muslim rape gangs. 

Meanwhile, writers who made a specialty of whitewashing Islam — think Karen Armstrong, defender of the Ayatollah Khomeini and of suicide bombers — were celebrated as “bridge-builders” between the West and the great and noble Islamic civilization. When deadly jihadist attacks occurred, the media described the perpetrators as having “hijacked” Islam and quickly shifted focus from the actual atrocities to alleged concerns about anti-Islamic blowback. Even when the public was told — finally — about the Muslim rape gangs that, over decades, had victimized thousands of girls in cities all over England, the determination of authorities to protect Islam from criticism only intensified. 

Then came Oct. 7, 2023, and the most horrific assault on Jews since the Holocaust. A bloodbath at a desert dance party. Families butchered in kibbutzim. Babies decapitated. This time around, reporters who’d smoothly sugarcoated earlier jihadist horrors were palpably too horrified to do so. In the U.S., despite Democrat coziness with the Palestinians, the president — or whoever was pulling his strings — recognized that it was impossible to do anything but stand 100 percent with Israel. The same was true of almost all European leaders. Suddenly “the Squad” in the House of Representatives — who’d been viewed until recently as the voice of the Democratic future — were ideologically isolated. When Black Lives Matter declared solidarity with Hamas, corporations that had happily poured millions into BLM’s coffers distanced themselves pronto. 

To be sure, there was support for Hamas — a lot of it. Across the Western world, ordinary citizens were shocked by the massive turnouts at pro-Hamas rallies. But some of us weren’t so shocked. In addition to writing extensively about the disaster that is Islamic immigration into the West — which explains many of those Hamas fans — I’ve also reported on the ideological brainwashing at American colleges, which explains most of the others. Yes, these displays have been appalling. But they also present a magnificent opportunity to address this social and cultural rot, once and for all. 

Meaning what? Meaning that we know the names of the professors who’ve taught these college kids to applaud Hamas’ carnage. And that’s not all they’ve done. They’ve taught kids to hate American freedoms, to prefer socialism to capitalism, to see the world through the lens of racial oppression. These are the people who make up the divisive, fatuous identity studies departments — black studies, women’s studies, etc. — that I wrote about in my book The Victims’ Revolution. They need to go — and so do the departments. If Oct. 7 doesn’t make it clear that it’s time for America’s universities to clean house, nothing will. (READ MORE from Bruce Bawer: The Birthplace of Woke: Identity Studies in Academia)

Wall Street billionaire Marc Rowan, who chairs the Board of Advisers at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, is already on the case. In an Oct. 11 op-ed, Rowan condemned UP’s tolerance of Islamic hatred, citing a recent Palestinian “literary festival” at the university that focused less on literature than on promoting anti-Semitism, “blood libels,” and violence against Jews. Rowan called on all UP alumni to stop donating to the college until its president and chairman quit and its trustees made radical changes. Bravo. May a thousand Rowans bloom. 

It’s also tempting to publicly name and shame the students who, in their twisted minds, thought they could acclaim jihadist genocide and, after graduating, move on to lucrative corporate careers. Some people are already on this case, too. In the wake of a joint statement by several Harvard student organizations blaming Hamas’ actions on Israel, Bill Ackman, the billionaire hedge-fund manager, wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that several CEOs of his acquaintance want Harvard to release the names of those organizations’ members, “so as to insure that none of us inadvertently hire” them. 

Ackman’s disinclination to employ rabid cheerleaders for massacres and infanticide is admirable. Yet there’s been pushback on his approach from some surprising quarters. Vivek Ramaswamy, Candace Owens, and no less a figure than Thomas Sowell have pointed out that they themselves were once stupid brainwashed students. Those pro-Hamas kids, they argue, should be given a chance to grow up — and wise up — just as they did. 

Fair point. Still, should those appalling Ivy types — who’ve already spent their lives in cocoons of privilege and protection — be coddled forever, shielded from the consequences of their own narcissism and moral decadence? Should employers like Ackman be kept in the dark about the truly evil shenanigans of their potential hires? Should these Hamas devotees be able to secure jobs at newspapers or publishing houses where they won’t hesitate to silence critics of Islam? 

Yes, Vivek and Candace and Sowell, in their tender years, were lefties. But did they rejoice in baby-killing? I suspect not. The ignorance of youth is one thing; having the soul of a Nazi is another. No, these kids shouldn’t be denied their right to free speech, however vile their views; but in a country that cherishes free speech, champions of terrorism who are eager to censor lovers of freedom really shouldn’t be ushered fresh out of college into positions of significant cultural power. To deny a fabulous job to a freshly minted Harvard or Yale grad because he’s a pro-Hamas zealot won’t destroy him. In fact, it could be a character-building experience. Being spoiled brats is what started these kids on the road to ruin in the first place. A year or two of flipping burgers — while reflecting on their youthful folly — might teach them some desperately needed humility. And perhaps even give them a dose of wisdom that their four years of college failed to.

But what really matters is getting to the root of the rot — the universities. So one thing, at least, is clear: The institutions that turned these kids, temporary or not, into enthusiasts for evil must be changed — radically. Colleges need once again to be centers of education, not indoctrination. University administrators like UW-Madison chancellor Jennifer Mnookin and Harvard president Claudine Gay, who happily crushed non-woke thought at their campuses only to start caring about the First Amendment when their students began to extol the murder of Jewish babies, should be given the boot. 

The recent pro-Hamas rallies have demonstrated to the world the extent of the blight, originating largely on college campuses, that afflicts the soul of the West. At this historic moment, everything possible must be done to undo the capture of those campuses by radical faculty members who, when not inculcating Jew-hatred and teaching that Islam is just plain peachy, are busy professing that a man can become a woman, that Thomas Jefferson was a bum while Mao was a hero, and so on. This morally corrupt, historically baseless, and intellectually vapid nonsense has to go — now. It’s time to wrench our civilization back from those who seek to destroy it utterly.