On many American campuses, antisemitic nitwits have ever since the beginning of the war in Gaza storm-trooped around, calling for the disappearance of Israel and its replacement by a 23rd Arab state (“From the river to the sea/Palestine will be free”), expressing a wish for homicidal violence against Jews (“Intifada Forever”), and accusing the Jewish state of “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” (“Stop the Genocide”). The worst of these offenders have been the pro-Hamas demonstrators at Columbia University, who have created that awful mess — physical and moral — on Morningside Heights, whom Columbia’s administrators have until now been treated with kid gloves, creating an environment where anti-Israel and antisemitic behavior goes largely unpunished.
Now the Trump administration wants Columbia’s tolerance for antisemitism to be investigated. Columbia, after all, receives $5 billion from federal contracts and grants, and that money which be at risk if Columbia is weighed and found wanting in its failure to protect Jewish students and faculty from the antisemitic bullyboys and brownshirts who threaten them, harass them, surround and hold some of them prisoner, while attacking others, and interrupt, in order to shut down, the classes taught by Israeli and Jewish professors. More on the Trump administration’s investigation — by three different federal agencies — of Columbia, and the possible action by the government to be taken against the university, can be found here: “Columbia’s Choice: Hamasnik Anarchy or Taxpayer Cash,” by Seth Mandel, Commentary, March 4, 2025:
The biggest myth regarding the campus anti-Semitism crisis is that it’s about speech. It is a self-serving myth: Institutions and activists that want to disregard their abuse of Jewish students will fall back on the claim that any attempt to hold them accountable for their actions is actually an attack on free speech.
Columbia University is learning what happens when that disingenuous trick starts to backfire: Students and professors take it as a license to do whatever they want, people end up in the hospital, and the government steps in to say this cannot continue to be done on their dime.
The Biden administration was fearful of standing up to the Hamas youth groups on campus. The Trump administration is happy to do so. Thus we have the announcement that three government agencies—Health and Human Services, the Department of Education, and the General Services Administration—will be reviewing federal contracts and grants with Columbia totaling around $5 billion.
Crucially, the announcement clearly avoids the penalizing of mere speech:
“Americans have watched in horror for more than a year now, as Jewish students have been assaulted and harassed on elite university campuses,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement. “Unlawful encampments and demonstrations have completely paralyzed day-to-day campus operations, depriving Jewish students of learning opportunities to which they are entitled. Institutions that receive federal funds have a responsibility to protect all students from discrimination. Columbia’s apparent failure to uphold their end of this basic agreement raises very serious questions about the institution’s fitness to continue doing business with the United States government.”…
One can easily understand why pro-Hamas activists would try to conceal the reality of anti-Semitism under a façade of free expression: The truth is much darker. In many cases, what they are doing is plainly illegal, as is the universities’ allowance of it. In the very best of cases, their actions are simply vile. In both situations—that is, in every case almost without exception—they are the party that is curtailing the freedoms of others. That is obvious even if the brownshirts aren’t wearing brown shirts and the white-hoods aren’t wearing pointy pillowcases on their heads….
Now Columbia faces investigations about its failure to adequately assure the safety and wellbeing of Jewish students and faculty, and its failure, too, to properly punish the pro-Hamas students who engaged in vandalism of university properties and held four janitors hostage. Three separate federal agencies are involved in these investigations — Health and Human Services, the Department of Education, and the General Services Administration. The five billion dollars that Columbia receives each year from federal contracts and grants are now uncertain. Appeals to morality have not worked to change the invertebrate behavior of Columbia’s administrators. Now the prospect of a huge financial loss may stiffen their spines.
Big Dude says
It’s pure anti Jewish activities encouraged by so called academic freedom..
Lauded by professors indoctrinated in Marxist thinking.
In other words bash dem Kikes.
And hide under da mask
Westman says
Antisemitism is like a disease which can be controlled by two methods, one, eliminate the carriers and two, control the exposure, a kind of quarantine where carriers of the disease are kept away from the healthy population.
Today, eggs are at a premium because the Biden USDA did little about solving bird flu for almost two years short of killing entire flocks. That would be the equivalent of shutting Columbia University forever.
A smarter approach, in addition to finding a vaccine, is to quarantine the diseased flocks and breed the survivors, creating a variant of the species that is resistant to the disease. In terms for Columbia University, fire the antisemitic professors, permanently expel antisemitic acting-out students, and require entrance essays and interviews designed to find antisemitic attitudes before acceptance.
Will that happen? No. The universities will settle lawsuits and make minimal compliance using OPM – Other People’s Money. What other business can yearly have 15,000 to 30,000 prepaid orders that take a year to deliver, cost half a year’s salary, and more than half of the products are of no benefit? Could this be the ultimate legal scam operating on the government model?
Nick says
I agree with your suggestion, Westman. Sack the anti-semites and expel the pro-hamas students. And if the universities resist compliance, then suspend their funding. Send them broke, the Bastards!
Patrick says
Will the Muslim Student Organization on campus be put through the wringer? Will you look into the funding of the Muslim Student Organization on campus, by the Muslim Brotherhood? Look into funding of Columbia University by Qatar and other Muslim countries? Look into the leftist love affair, with Islam, within the Columbia administrative and faculty staff?
OLD GUY says
These Universities have sold out to the Muslim/Islamic cash flow from Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
carpediadem says
Same i Australia but no threats of cutting federal funding.
John Pepple says
This is about two-tiered justice. If right-wingers were demonstrating and caused millions of dollars in damage, they’d be in jail for a decade. These people get a slap on the wrist, if that. If they insist it is about free speech, ask them how much “free speech” they are willing to allow for their political enemies. Of course, they won’t want to allow them any, which is why it’s not really about free speech. It’s about leftist privilege.
Walter Sieruk says
The terribly ignorant nonsensical anti- Jewish and ant- Israel spirit in many American Universities ,as Columbia, and Colleges across the United States that have heads of those institutions ‘sold out” to the influence of the stealth jihadists, who are, no doubt, backed by oil rich nation as Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Therefore, those institutions of “higher education” which have become more of indoctrination centers for Islam and Islamic causes rather than genuine places of advanced education.
This is betrayal of all those young people who entered into those universities and colleges who sincerely wanted an actual, real, education. This is also betrayal the true spirit of America.
For example the former United States President, William Howard Taft, who in a speech, wisely, declared, “Anti-Semitism is a noxious weed that should be cut out. It has no place in America.”
Furthermore there should really no place in America for such un-American indoctrination centers, therefore such universities and colleges need to reform or closed down, For those places are now doing more harm than good.
As the other former US President Theodore Roosevelt, had, rightly, announced in a speech that “There can be no fifty –fifty Americanism in this country. There is room here for only one hundred percent Americanism, only for those who are Americans and nothing else.”