How to fight antisemitism on campus
Seeing videos of anti-Israel mobs harassing, intimidating, and even assaulting Jewish students on campuses nationwide, it is tempting simply to write off those institutions of “higher education” as irredeemable. To an extent, the United States would be a better place if Columbia, Harvard, and Yale were ignored.
But as unappealing as many universities have become, we need them to teach students the skills and knowledge required for success. We can’t just allow the anti-Israel Left to claim and wreck all higher education.
We must be smart in how we cure the antisemitic rot that has spread through campuses. Giving the Department of Education more power to enforce badly worded speech codes, as the House of Representatives did when it passed the Antisemitism Awareness Act, is not the answer.
The first step to reclaiming college campuses is getting the right leadership installed. This is what Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) helped accomplish by bringing former Sen. Ben Sasse to run the University of Florida. Where other college presidents dithered, or actually negotiated with interlopers disrupting their campuses, Sasse sent a strong and clear statement that lawbreaking would be punished.
“The University of Florida is not a daycare, and we do not treat protesters like children,” Sasse wrote. Protesters who engage in prohibited activities like trespassing or defacement of property would be arrested and face immediate interim suspension from the university. “They knew the rules, they broke the rules, and they’ll face the consequences.”
By acting forcefully, swiftly, and clearly, the University of Florida has managed to avoid the violence and drama that afflicted so many other institutions.
States should defund all diversity, equity, and inclusion offices and shed their personnel, who are responsible for spreading the “oppressor vs. oppressed” mind virus that has warped young minds. No more mandatory diversity statements for job applicants. No more mandatory sensitivity indoctrination sessions. Like all organizations, colleges need human resources staff to make sure employees know their obligations under civil rights law. But that is all HR employees should be doing. They should not be disseminating and enforcing anti-American and antisemitic ideology.
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There is also far too much foreign influence on college campuses. Colleges must be made to choose between federal money and foreign money. They must not be allowed to have both. Foreign students on visas should also be made aware that if they break the law by disrupting classes, occupying buildings, or hindering the movement of other students across campuses, they will be expelled and deported.
No student should live in fear of harassment or physical violence on campus. State governments have turned a blind eye to the moral rot at their flagship educational institutions for far too long. The time to reclaim them is now.
