An Edited version of this post now appears as the lead Letter to the Editor in the New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/18/us/politics/colleges-protests-israel-war.html
("Colleges Warn of Punishment for Disruptions")
I would not want to be a college President these days. In past months, the hot breath of Republican politicians forcing resignations at Harvard and Penn. Now, the President of Columbia has come under Congressional fire for being too lenient in answering campus provocations and responds in the next instant with a wave of arrests of student protestors. Damned for doing too little and surely cursed for doing too much.
College campuses are boiling, roiling, with faint echoes of the 1960's being heard in some of the same corridors these many decades later. It is an uncomfortable, uneasy, messy moment as students and administrators grapple with First Amendment claims slamming into sounds of anarchy and total dysfunction.
Democracy at its best is a difficult mixture of controls and freedoms. For those tasked with the fragile balancing act between these two competing tensions, it can sometimes feel an impossible calculation. Now is one of those times.
All the random hate in America has turned toward a hate for Israel and by extension all of America’s seven million Jews. They hide behind free speech and campus openness. They’re liars and thieves.
In the 1960's, we protested against our government's gross misinformation about Vietnam. Our protests dealt with finding the truth. We have a very different situation with these universities today. College presidents have failed to do enough to offset an organized misinformation and propaganda campaign instigated against Israel by BDS (Boycott, Divest, and Sanction) infiltrated teacher's union and faculty. Despite these BDS lies, college presidents are still advocating that BDS protest has the right to be heard. --RE