Shortly after Hamas began its bloodthirsty campaign against Israel, student groups started issuing statements praising the terrorists and blaming Israel. If you were appalled, you’re not alone. But you’re also helping to pay for it.
At Harvard, 31 student groups made news when they announced that they “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” That prompted hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman to call for getting those students’ names so that “none of us inadvertently hire(s) any of their members.” At least a dozen businessmen endorsed Ackman’s call, according to the New York Post.
This was hardly an isolated incident. A few examples of what’s transpired on campuses over the past week.
- Yalies for Palestine issued a statement saying “we hold the Israeli Zionist regime responsible for the unfolding violence and denounce the Israeli occupation, apartheid system, and military rule.”
- A student group at the University of Virginia said “we stand in solidarity with Palestinian resistance fighters.”
- The president of the New York University Student Bar Association expressed her “unwavering and absolute solidarity with Palestinians in their resistance against oppression,” and said that “Israel bears full responsibility for this tremendous loss of life.”
- Rice University students honored the Hamas “martyrs.”
- At the University of Wisconsin, pro-Palestinian students chanted “glory to the murders.” (School officials have been silent about the protest.)
- Columbia University students issued a statement attacking “Israel’s apartheid and colonial system.” (An Israeli student was later attacked outside Columbia’s main library.)
- At SUNY Binghamton, cars reportedly drove around campus with passengers chanting “death to Zionists.”
- Other examples of attacks against Jews on college campuses can be found here.
Sen. Marco Rubio had it right when he said: “Across America, college students on federal taxpayer-subsidized student (loans) celebrated the murder of Jews.”
Many of these students have been radicalized by faculty and staff that your tax dollars are also supporting.
A report from the AMCHA Initiative, which tracks antisemitism on U.S. college campuses, tell us that “160 academic departments at 120 U.S. colleges and universities issued or endorsed wholly one-sided, anti-Israel statements containing rhetoric that meets the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.”
It says that these faculty members are “instigating, inspiring, encouraging and modeling the playbook for students to follow.” Recent examples:
- Last week, a Stanford lecturer made Jews in his class stand in the corner, saying that is like what Jews were doing to Palestinians. Stanford suspended the teacher.
- University of California Santa Cruz’s Critical Race and Ethnic Studies department issued a statement saying: “What we are witnessing needs to be understood in the context of 75 years of settler colonial displacement, military occupation, and enclosure.”
Then there’s the army of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” staff members at colleges, who despite their titles are also fueling the hatred of Jews.
Jay Greene, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, looked at tweets sent out by more than 740 DEI staffers employed by elite colleges and universities. He found that when they discussed Israel, 96% of their tweets were negative.
“Negative” is putting it politely.
Among the tweets from campus DEI staff that Greene turned up in his 2021 study were such gems as “israel [sic] has a particular loathing for children. they target them with violence specifically and intentionally every single day.” Or “Wtf is a liberal Zionist? What’s next? Liberal Nazi? Liberal colonizer? Liberal murderer? Liberal imperialist? Liberal fascist?” Or “Condemn the Apartheid State of Israel for their Human Rights Violations against the Palestinian.”
Last week, after Hamas invaded Israel and began burning people alive, cutting off the heads of babies, raping women, and parading their dead bodies around, Derron Borders, director of DEI at Cornell, wrote on Instagram “F–k your fake outrage at Palestine when you’ve literally been silent about the violence perpetuated by Israel against Palestine every day.”
Cornell says Borders is on “administrative leave.”
Then there’s Cinthya Martinez. Last year, UC Santa Cruz awarded her a fellowship given to “exceptional scholars who advance the goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion at the University of California.”
Campus Reform reports that after Hamas’ orgy of violence, Martinez took to X (formerly Twitter) to lament that more people aren’t honoring “one of the most significant moments of decolonization … in Palestine.” She also liked a post that described the attack as “Mission Accomplished.” And she said: “When I say ‘no walls, no prisons, no cages’ this is what I mean. #FreePalestine #FromTheRiverToTheSeaPalestineWillBeFree,” she tweeted.
That phrase – “from the river to the sea” – is used by Islamist groups that openly call for eliminating Israel.
Just how much money taxpayers are spending to subsidize the radicalization of American youth is jaw-dropping.
In 2021-22, undergraduate and graduate students received a total of $130 billion in federal student aid – roughly four times as much as in 1991, according to the College Board. State and local governments spend more than $320 billion on operational costs and capital outlays for colleges and universities, according to the Urban Institute.
In addition, the federal government awards universities more than $40 billion in research grants each year, a huge portion of which goes to “indirect costs” – meaning overhead costs, such as paying faculty and staff to radicalize students.
And, of course, none of this counts the billions for student loan forgiveness that President Joe Biden has engineered.
Earlier this year, Rep. Mike Lawler. R-N.Y., introduced the Stop Anti-Semitism on College Campuses Act, which aims to prohibit universities that authorize antisemitic events on campus from participating in student loan and grant programs.
That sounds like a good start.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
