Some universities have handled their antisemitic encampments better than others. Brown University has thus far been a shining example of what not to do.

Brown University decided to negotiate with its terrorist-sympathizing students, reaching an agreement where the students would dismantle their illegal encampment and the university would discuss and vote on divesting from Israel in October.

In the short term, this may seem like a great decision. After all, the university managed to get rid of its encampment without having to send in police, as UCLA did. But there are a series of problems here. For one, the university will either vote to divest from Israel, an activist push that is already antisemitic in nature before you even get to questions such as Brown’s relationship with Qatar, or vote against it, which will inevitably invite more rabid behavior from antisemitic student protesters.

More notable, though, is that this doesn’t just kick the can down the road to October for Brown. The university has now made it clear that students can essentially blackmail the university into accepting whatever demands they put forward by creating encampments. The same concept behind not negotiating with terrorists applies to these terrorist sympathizers as well: You are only giving them the incentive to continue, or escalate, the very behavior it is you want to discourage. Brown isn’t nipping this encampment impulse in the bud, it’s watering and fertilizing the seeds for more of it in the future.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

There is not a clean, polite way out of this. Universities like Brown have fostered a new generation of entitled antisemites who think the world must revolve around them and their sympathy for genocidal terrorists that is lightly (or barely) masked by their anti-genocide rhetoric. These universities allowed these encampments to be built and in some cases fortified both because they didn’t act quickly enough to disperse them in the first place and because they created the very conditions that led to what we see now.

The only way out is to root out the encampments, level appropriate discipline on students involved (ranging from suspensions for those violating rules to expulsions for those who are committing violence), and stop promoting the DEI oppression narratives that encourage students (and faculty) to do exactly what it is they are doing. Brown’s attempt to take the easy way out is only going to make things worse down the line.