Ever since the vicious Hamas assault last October 7, we have been reading about “student unrest” and “student protest” on American campuses. But is it really accurate to attribute it to students?

In today’s Martin Center article, Professor Stanley Ridgley argues that it is not, and that instead, we should point to the faculty and staffers. He writes, “Let’s take this occasion to assess how university employees use their power and access to students to engage in malfeasance—mobilizing students to risk their futures in the name of a cause the students dimly understand, on behalf of the pet projects of faculty and staff who risk little to nothing.”

Indeed so. Most of our colleges and universities are teeming with faculty and administrators who yearn to bring about a radical transformation of the country. They think it perfectly appropriate for them to dragoon impressionable students into their cause.

Ridgley suggests that those people ought to be given a cause to worry, writing, “A college or university risks legal and financial exposure in permitting such behavior, and it’s not difficult to understand why. Might faculty and staff who explicitly encourage and guide college students to abandon their studies for social causes be legally responsible for the damage that follows? Are those faculty and staff who ‘mobilize’ students for their own causes guilty of malfeasance at the very least? It would prima facie seem so.”

Maybe that day is coming.