Campus Brownshirts On Their Uppers 

All it took, apparently, was a change in administrations. Now, with the Trump administration withholding billions of dollars in funding to colleges and universities that fail to suppress the antisemitic stormtroopers who last year harassed, roughed up, and silenced Israeli and Jewish students on their campuses, suddenly many — though not all — of these institutions have seen the light, and are now calling out the police to stop these antisemitic demonstrators before they can get started again, by setting up their encampments smack dab in the middle of their campuses. More on this welcome development can be found here: “Anti-Israel encampments fail to materialize at Columbia and CCNY,” by Michael Starr, Jerusalem Post, April 27, 2025:

Planned anti-Israel protest encampments failed to materialize at Columbia University and City College of New York (CCNY) on Thursday due to warnings or policing actions by the administrations.

They were warned: try to set up an encampment, and this year the NYPD will come down on you like a wolf on the fold, you’ll be taken away, arrested for trespassing if you are a non-student, and if a student, may be expelled. Some of those trespassers could be looking at sentences of one to three years and a fine. Go ahead, baby jihadists and salon Bolsheviks — make our day. The warning worked. At Columbus and CCNY, not a single encampment has yet appeared.

New Columbia tent encampments had been planned in secret, according to a Wednesday NBC News report, with a plotted Morningside Heights campus and a Friday Manhattanville campus encampment.

The same day as the leak of the alleged plans, the Columbia public affairs office warned that it was monitoring for any disruptions.

“Encampments are prohibited under university policies, and participating in an encampment may also trigger university rules violations,” said Columbia. “Any violations of university policies and rules will be addressed immediately according to our procedures.”

No encampments manifested on Thursday or Friday at the university that popularized the protest tactic, with Columbia University Apartheid Divest silent on social media besides a call for activists to participate in a CCNY protest.

No one wants to risk being kicked out of their university. And that risk is now real. And this time, the Columbia administration means it: if you build, or stay at, one of these encampments, or bully Jewish students and faculty, you will be in violation of university rules and regulations. You may be expelled. Non-students may be guilty of criminal trespass and subject to arrest. What do those pro-Hamas protesters do now? Nothing. They have too much at stake. The universities are now determined to end the mob misrule that prevailed on many campuses last year. The pro-Hamas groupies have apparently opted to lie low. Yes, they still love Hamas and hate Israel, but there are limits to their martyrdom. We’ll just go back to our studies, they say to themselves, and then, once we have our diplomas safely in hand, we will renew our “struggle for the Palestinians” and against the “genocidal and apartheid state” of Israel.

New York City Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) announced the creation of a “liberated zone” at the CCNY quad, noting that it was established at the same location as the campus’s encampment last year….

Only at CCNY was a small protest held in late April — the Columbia campus was quiet — much diminished in size from last year’s mob, and there were no tents, no encampments, despite the claim by SJP of establishing a “liberated zone” on the CCNY campus.

Instead of the SJP holding fast in their “liberated zone” on the CCNY quad, as they did in their encampments last year, this time they quietly complied when asked by public safety officers to show their identification — non-students could be quickly taken off campus, and if they resisted, could be charged with trespassing. Then the students who remained  were “evacuated” — that is, forcibly removed from the Quad. This did not happen last year at CCNY, when the SJP set up its encampment and was not made to leave. A new wind is blowing.

“We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains,” activists quoted terrorist Assata Shakur as they dispersed, according to a CUNY for Palestine X/Twitter post….

“Our chains”? “Lose our chains?” What preposterous melodrama. What “chains” are those that these people are being forced to endure? The only chains that such people as Assata Shakur endure are the mind-forged manacles of Islam, that holds Muslims and their leftist collaborators in thrall. These bullies in the SJP believe that they are being persecuted by Amerikkka, that they are the victims of a police state, that they are martyrs to free speech. Nonsense. It is they who are trying to shut down all pro-Israel speech on campus. Some of these protesters are non-students, overwhelmingly Muslim, but most are American college students, among the most privileged people on the planet, with nothing more pressing to worry about than studying for their finals and hoping they won’t get caught for plagiarizing their papers from helpful sites on Google.

The SJP has now given up trying to scare CUNY into yielding to its demands. It “issues demands,” but no longer dares to disrupt campus life. CUNY is no longer going to tolerate such nonsense. SJP can yell all it wants, but no one in the administration at CUNY is paying attention. They have something more important to do: run a university, and make sure federal funds are not withheld.

While SJP at CUNY has verbally threatened “to continue to disrupt these institutions,” it has not dared to put up another encampment, or disrupt a single class, or harass a single Jewish or Israeli student or faculty member. They don’t dare, because they now know that, thanks to the Trump administration’s threat to withhold federal funds, their university, like so many others, will no longer tolerate what these SJP thugs got away with last year.

In short, in the past month, university administrators have been quick to threaten disciplinary actions against those who hoped to set up protest encampments. That has led students either to not put up any encampments, in stark contrast to what they did last year, or if they do put them up, to swiftly take them down — as they refused to do last year — when the university demands it, and both campus and regular police, depending on the circumstances, are there to promptly enforce the rules. There have been no reports recently of any classes taught by Jewish or Israeli professors being disrupted. Nor have there been any reports recently — there were so many last year — of harassment and bullying of Jewish students. The Trump administration has shown that determination at the very top to stamp out anti-Israel and antisemitic activity on campuses does work. Threats to withhold federal funds have had a salutary effect. Keep up the good work in Washington, please. Remain implacable. On campuses from sea to shining sea, it’s having an effect.