America’s college students seem confused.

Look, I’m willing to say that perhaps college was never really about higher education so much as it was about being on your own for the first time, confronted with the realities of personal responsibility coupled with the temptation to binge drink. But these last two weeks have been enlightening in terms of just what college students understand — and what they’ve learned.

From Harvard to Columbia to the University of Pennsylvania, students have taken to the streets to protest the “occupation” of the Gaza Strip in light of Israel’s decision to seek swift military justice for Hamas's brutal rapes, killings, and kidnappings of women, children, men, and the elderly on Oct. 7. More than a thousand were left dead, and hundreds are now missing as Israel works to identify bodies charred beyond recognition and remains that show varying degrees of torture.

It's not as though, prior to Oct. 7, these protests were uncommon. Protesting Israel, speaking out against Israel, passing condemnations of Israel, and just generally hating Israel are practically collegiate sports, especially in the Ivy League and at top universities such as the University of Michigan, whose students are so deeply entrenched in antisemitism that they protested an appearance by Vice President Kamala Harris with calls for an “intifada.”

Photos of that event show a student carrying a sign that reads, “There is only one solution” — a phrase that appears to reference the “Final Solution,” the systematic slaying of Europe’s Jews by Nazi Germany, and which appeared several times in similar photos these last weeks.

Professors who champion “decolonization” have led the marches, with one even claiming he felt “elation” watching GoPro videos, taken by Hamas killers, as they hang-glided into a music festival that became a massacre, like watching Jews being slain in real time was no different than guessing the winner of The Great British Bake Off.

Prior to Oct. 7, these outbursts of bloodlust weren’t referencing anything concrete, the way college protests often don’t. The “intifada” was just a word. “Decolonization studies” seemed about as specific a term as “communications skills,” something everyone at a university needed on their resume, but no one could define.

After Oct. 7, when those protests began to reference hang gliders and excuse or even support Hamas's violent actions, it became clear what “decolonization” meant: ultimately, the extermination of the Jewish state and all those who use it for shelter. The facade of plausible deniability, which suggested that some of the “oppressed” Ivy League students were calling for diplomatic resolutions, is now gone.

Their post-collegiate jobs disappeared, too.

Leftists responded by accusing white shoe law firms and corporate C-suites of “cancel culture” for rescinding summer internships and six-figure job offers when the names of pro-Palestinian protesters, including several Harvard law students, surfaced. But that misunderstands cancel culture, even from a leftist perspective. After all, they’ve been insisting since the dawn of “cancel culture” that it's really just “consequence culture.”

“Cancel culture” happens when a joke, a tweet, or a frame of an actor’s or writer’s previous work (often from decades ago) resurfaces and is judged, and that person is ultimately “canceled” by modern standards. It’s a response to a bad fat joke or a non-politically correct storyline, and it usually happens to the Left as a result of a campaign started by the further Left.

It's usually a way to extort an apology. It isn’t always destructive to a career, but it can be. Urban Outfitters continues to sell millions in merchandise each year despite being “canceled” for selling Native American headdresses to the Kardashians attending Coachella, but it took Louis C.K. a few years before being awarded a Grammy for his comedy again.

In this case, the students being “canceled” were calling for violence, not misgendering an Instagram influencer (though they’d probably cancel someone for that themselves). They were affirmatively reacting to the mass killing of Jews in Israel, supporting it, and calling for more. Their vision isn’t words anymore or signs or flags. They have an idea of what they want, and bloody and horrifying photos and videos don’t quelch that idea — they supercharge it. And at the same time these students are braying for the blood of innocents, they’re counting on a six-figure salary defending corporate interests from class-action lawsuits.

To be fair, the corporations and white-shoe law firms may be a bit cynical. It's clear they hire from Harvard every year, and there’s no way their HR departments missed social media profiles featuring the latest from the Workers World Party and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. They knew who they were getting, and before Oct. 7, it didn’t matter to them. But once their client base knew who they were pulling from the Ivy League ranks, they finally asked the right questions — namely, whether their first-year associates were calling for the Final Solution in their off-hours.

Notably, the students who’ve now been “canceled” called the campaign to relieve them of their job offers “violence,” even as they proudly display hang glider emojis on their Twitter handles. Perhaps in addition to improving their curriculum around world affairs, colleges could focus a little on irony.

Emily Zanotti is a writer and editor based in Nashville, Tennessee. Her work focuses on the effects of policy on the home front and can be found here and on her Substack, " Because, Obviously ."