NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE {T} hree years ago, countless students and faculty members at America’s colleges and universities rallied in opposition to “systemic racism.” Within days of George Floyd’s death, they held marches in solidarity, penned open letters about the evil police and social injustice, and quickly rallied behind the Black Lives Matter movement.
Three years later, many of those same students and faculty have rallied behind terrorism.
On virtually every college campus today, you’ll see people defending and justifying Hamas’s brutal attack on Israel — as clear an assault on human rights as you’ll ever see. Pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel marches are widespread; at Harvard University, more than 30 student groups said Israel is “entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” And while some university presidents (such as Harvard’s) have condemned Hamas, few have condemned their students for siding with terrorists. (A notable and praiseworthy example is Ben Sasse at the University of Florida.) Even fewer have said they support Israel — a democracy that protects the human rights of Arabs and Jews alike.
The head of the Anti-Defamation League has pointed out this blatant asymmetry. The famous Jewish group proudly stood with colleges and universities in the wake of George Floyd’s death. Yet now, days after Hamas attacked, he still hadn’t heard from a single university president. He asked: “Why is my inbox empty?”
The answer is simple: It’s empty because higher education’s commitment to justice is empty. From their administrations to their student bodies, colleges and universities care primarily about radical causes. When justice and radicalism conflict, higher education will ditch what’s right in favor of leftism.
While it talks a big game about justice and human rights, higher education has long tolerated and even encouraged such hatred. Well before these terrorist attacks, it was commonplace on college campuses to find professors and students actively spreading antisemitism. Israel is almost always described as an “apartheid state,” while Israel’s attempts to defend itself against terrorism are criticized. Faculty and students are now justifying the terrorist killing spree as “resistance” against Israel.
That’s right: In the halls of higher education, a terrorist killing an Israeli is acceptable, yet Israel protecting itself from terrorists is evil. The real evil is being so morally backward that you defend terrorists ahead of the women they raped and babies they beheaded.
Anyone who’s been paying attention could have seen this coming. Even when higher education was standing for “justice” in 2020 and 2021, at the height of BLM, there were obvious signs that its commitment was disingenuous.
Three years ago, colleges and universities were quick to criticize the police and society yet slow to condemn the riots and destruction of supposedly “peaceful” protests. In fact, most of higher education ignored the chaos or justified it as payback for systemic racism. If academics and indoctrinated students cared about justice and human rights, they would have defended the rights of small-business owners, families, and innocent bystanders. Instead, they encouraged and applauded the destruction of property and attacks on police. Now they’re applauding the destruction of life and the death of Jews.
Higher education should be ashamed. But of course it isn’t. You can’t be ashamed when you think you’re on the right side of history, as the Left defines it. College students and faculty members don’t think they did anything wrong by unquestioningly supporting BLM, and they certainly don’t think their silence on Israel and de facto support for terrorism are wrong, either. When you’re radicalized, you don’t have to be consistent. You just have to toe the party line, no matter how inhumane and unjust it is.
But what’s happening in higher education isn’t just shameful. It should spark wholesale reform of these morally and intellectually broken institutions. Principled lawmakers — in Washington, D.C., as well as state capitals — need to prioritize efforts to bring higher education out of the depths to which it has sunk. They can tie federal and state funding, including student loans, to university policies and extremism. They should also reform curriculum and accreditation, so students have more options.
The point of reform should be to get leftist indoctrination out of the classroom, so that students aren’t taught to hate others and applaud violence. That includes DEI, which often leads to antisemitism. Reforms should also bring back the kind of humane education that gives students a deeper respect for human dignity, individual freedom, and the rule of law. Western Civilization, which most colleges and universities abandoned long ago, is a great place to start. We can’t let colleges and universities continue to churn out left-wing activists and bigots.
Higher education’s double standards can no longer be tolerated. And it shouldn’t have taken a barbarian terrorist attack on Israel to make that clear.