Cowardly university leadership is emboldening pro-terrorist protesters and punishing normal students for their university’s lack of a spine.

On the heels of Columbia University moving classes online rather than cracking down on disruptive, antisemitic protests, the University of Southern California is canceling its main-stage graduation ceremony, which the university says “traditionally brings 65,000 students, families, and friends to our campus all at the same time.”

USC is doing this because it is afraid of pro-terrorist protesters, admitting both in policy and in its statement that it cannot protect Jewish students and their families (or anyone else). “With the new safety measures in place this year, the time needed to process the large number of guests coming to campus will increase substantially,” the university said. The Los Angeles Police Department arrested 93 people on campus on Wednesday for trespassing.

Much like with Columbia, this antisemitism has been festering at USC for years. The university came under federal investigation after students led an antisemitic witch hunt against a Jewish student running for student government vice president whose crime was supporting Israel’s right to exist. In 2021, a student government senator tweeted that she wanted to “kill” every “Zionist,” defending that by saying she was simply trying “to normalize the language of resistance regardless of what that looks like.” The university shrugged that off.

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USC has allowed this to grow, both in its lack of action as antisemitic students flexed their power and through the university’s own policies, courses, and bureaucrats, as the university has embraced the hateful “diversity, equity, and inclusion” that teaches students to hate “oppressors” of certain identities, which includes Jewish people. Rather than bring the hammer down on pro-terrorist protesters (with the added protection of USC being a private university), the university is punishing normal students and their families by canceling its grand graduation celebration.

This is the path universities like USC have chosen. They have embraced DEI and staffed their ranks with hateful professors and bureaucrats who push their ideology to impressionable students. USC would rather admit that it is powerless to protect students and carry out its normal functions than reevaluate its DEI commitment that has brought it here and begin the process of tearing it down.