The problem with today’s protests at colleges and universities

March 11, 2025

Protests have been in the news over the last few months. They are not new things. Going back to the 60s and 70s, protests were reasonably common occurrences, and not unusual since then.

Some examples of what gave birth to protests were objections to the Vietnam War, and seeking an end to racial injustice and gender inequality.

The civil rights movement began in the 50s, but continued into the 60s and 70s. It was focused on racial equality, and ending segregation, and it involved nonviolent protests, sit-ins, boycotts, and marches.

Disagreement with the Vietnam War produced many protests and demonstrations, especially on college campuses. Other topics found sympathetic ears on college campuses, too. Major focuses were freedom of speech, and complaints about the status quo, which involved the women’s liberation movement, and the gay rights movement.

In the 60s there arose a rejection of traditional values, emphasis on peace and love, the hippie culture and alternative lifestyles.

For the most part, these protests and demonstrations were peaceful, but there were
some exceptions. And, they were protests of objectionable policies and ways of life that people didn’t like. 

Going back just a few years, we saw many protests based upon policies and events that were far less peaceful than those of the 60s and 70s. Property, both personal and public, was damaged and destroyed. And injuries to and the deaths of individuals occurred.

The recent campus protests have been mostly peaceful and involved students protesting, setting up tent encampments on campuses, and even taking over campus buildings. In some situations, both students and faculty members were actively protesting, as well as some college employees going on strike.

There are organizations representing and coaching the protesters. And these organizations and the protesters are making demands on the schools. Some of the demands are that schools sever financial and academic ties to Israel and companies involved in the current conflict, to disclose investments, and to cease accepting research funding. They also want the U.S. to end military support for Israel.

Protesters have damaged furniture and computers at one campus library, and shattered windows during their occupation of the buildings at another.

Several universities saw student protesters replace American flags with Palestinian flags on campus flagpoles. However, administrations and law enforcement personnel took down the Palestinian flags and put the American flags back up.

The major difference between these recent protests and those of the 60s and 70s, however, is that while actions and policies are part of the basis for the recent protests, the major factor is the high degree of hatred the protesters have for one group of people.

In the conflict between the Iranian terrorist proxy group Hamas and Israel, the college student protesters take the side of those living in Gaza and Hamas. Hamas is who the Palestinians selected as their government. The protesters express their objections to the nation of Israel, and hatred for Jews that live there. And because there are Jews living and attending colleges and universities in the United States, they are also the targets of the protester’s hatred.

Colleges and universities have begun to take steps to halt this unacceptable rule-breaking, and in some cases illegal activity. There have been many protesters arrested, some have been suspended or expelled, while others have been evicted from campus housing, and some have been financially charged for damages to campus property and facilities.

And while some, or hopefully all, of the protesters may get their just rewards for their breaking of rules and laws, will they ever understand or pay a price for their disgusting anti-Semitism?

“The Federal Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism announced that it will be visiting 10 university campuses that have experienced anti-Semitic incidents since October 2023,” reported the Department of Justice’s Office of Public Affairs website. “Created pursuant to President Trump’s Executive Order on Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism, the Task Force set as its first priority to eradicate anti-Semitic harassment in schools and on college campuses.”

The Task Force is aware of allegations that these schools have failed to protect Jewish students and faculty members from discrimination, potentially in violation of federal law, said Leo Terrell, Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, and leader of the Task Force.

The 10 universities are: Columbia University; George Washington University; Harvard University; Johns Hopkins University; New York University; Northwestern University; the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Minnesota; and the University of Southern California.

Terrell said that the Task Force will meet with various groups to gather information about what has been happening, including university leadership, impacted students and staff, local law enforcement, and community members. 

“The President, Attorney General Pamela Bondi, and the entire Administration are committed to ensuring that no one should feel unsafe or unwelcome on campus because of their religion,” Terrell said. “The Task Force’s mandate is to bring the full force of the federal government to bear in our effort to eradicate anti-Semitism, particularly in schools.”

Anti-Semitism, or any sort of racial hatred or discrimination, is the precise opposite of what America is about. And it must be eliminated.

Hamas attacks Israel, and Republican infighting stops the House

October 24, 2023

At about 6.30 a.m. — about dawn in Israel — on Saturday, October 7, the Jewish high holiday of Simchat Torah, the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas fired a huge barrage of at least 2,500 rockets across southern Israel. This served as cover for an unprecedented multi-pronged infiltration of fighters, as Palestinian gunmen crossed into Israel.

Some 1,400 innocent civilians, and around 250 military personnel, lost their lives in this attack, an attack aimed at civilians, not the military. About 250 people died at an outdoor music show. Others died in the streets and in their homes. 

Some were shot, others stabbed, and still others burned to death. Men, women, children and the elderly were summarily slaughtered, with some children killed in front of their parents. Parents were killed in front of their children. Babies were beheaded as their parents watched in horror. Another roughly 200 people were taken hostage by Hamas.

Obviously, this brought on a well-deserved response by Israel.

During the Israeli response, Hamas announced that Israeli forces had targeted a Palestinian hospital, and up to 500 innocent people were killed. And the news media jumped on this horrific story:

Hospital Strike Kills Hundreds – The Washington Post
Blast at Gaza Hospital Kills Hundreds – The Wall Street Journal
Blast Kills Hundreds at Gaza Hospital – The New York Times

The message being communicated supported the accusation of Hamas, against Israel. It was readily received, and acted upon by thousands.

Following the allegation by Hamas, Israel answered, not by confirming the allegation, not by challenging it, but by saying it was investigating the allegation.

And the investigation by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the investigation by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency have determined that no, the hospital was not hit by an Israeli missile or bomb, but by the failure of a rocket aimed at Israel by the Islamic Jihad, a terrorist partner of Hamas. Rockets fired by these terrorist groups have 20 percent to 30 percent failure rates.

Furthermore, the rocket did not hit the hospital and did not kill 500 people. It landed in the parking lot and, yes, there were some casualties, but numbers are not available.

Despite this important revelation, there is an enormous anti-Israel mood in our country. Protests began when Israel responded to the attack, and continued after the investigations showed Israel did not attack the hospital. Israel is blamed for starting the war, even though no country on Earth would just sit back after being savagely attacked, as Israel was.

And, there are anti-Israel protests in other countries, as well. 

Why are so many in America gathering for anti-Israel demonstrations, given the realities of this fighting? A country is viciously attacked by inhuman savages intentionally targeting and murdering civilian men, women and children, and thousands blame Israel for fighting back.

A lie posited by the terrorist group that carried out the attack that Israel intentionally bombed a hospital, killing 500 civilians is proven false, and yet thousands still blame Israel for this war.

At least two elected House of Representatives members — Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich. — have and are spreading anti-Israel propaganda, further riling people up. 

Omar, born in Somalia, calling for a ceasefire, tweeted that “the IDF reportedly blowing up” the hospital is “horrific.”

Palestinian-American Tlaib, tweeted that “Israel just bombed the Baptist Hospital killing 500 Palestinians,” blaming the Biden Administration for failing to “facilitate a ceasefire and help de-escalate.”

Both women jumped the gun and automatically accepted the Hamas allegation, lacking any proof, and neither had deleted their statements, as of last week.

Radical Muslims in Middle East nations have long vowed to eliminate Israel and every Jewish person on the planet. They also believe in the “death to America” idea.

On the other side of the political aisle, House Republicans are racking up thousands of negative points by keeping the House from getting anything done over the House Speaker debacle.

When Kevin McCarthy, R-CA, was elected Speaker, he agreed to a totally absurd measure: the idea that the Speaker could be removed from the position if only one of the 435 members of the House made the motion to vacate the chair, and a majority voted for the motion. In agreeing to this, McCarthy was trying to resolve the choice of a Speaker, which had gone through 16 unsuccessful votes.

Florida Republican Matt Gaetz stepped into that mudhole, making the motion to vacate the chair and McCarthy was removed with a vote that included eight Republicans. Eight Republicans constitute only about 3.6 percent of the Republican majority. But along with 100 percent of the Democrats McCarthy was removed, and chaos has ensued. 

Gaetz’ partners in crime are: Andy Biggs of Arizona, Ken Buck of Colorado, Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Eli Crane of Arizona, Bob Good of Virginia, Nancy Mace of South Carolina, and Matt Rosendale of Montana.

The Gaetz Eight has shown the world that petty politics is more important to them than doing the job they were elected to do.

Israel’s right to defense and the rise of a woke culture

It is hard to understand why so many people dislike Israel, and believe that Israel is responsible for the recent fighting. Many of those Americans who dislike Israel are Democrats, which is especially odd, since Jewish voters in America lean heavily Democrat.

Are they cowering in the face of strong opposition from the Left’s anti-Semitic faction, which includes Black Lives Matter, Antifa, the notorious Squad of Congresswomen, and others?  

Israel gets the blame for the deaths of innocent Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip. However, that narrative ignores important facts. 

First, Israel did not start the fighting. Israel was attacked by Hamas terrorists, firing rockets from Gaza, and is merely defending itself. Hamas, along with other Arab terrorist groups, believes Israel has no right to exist, and is working to bring about that reality. The terrorist organization has fired what now totals more than 4,000 rockets into Israel.

When you are attacked, you must respond. And Hamas, that wonderful organization that boldly and purposefully puts the safety of the Palestinians living in Gaza at risk, set up its offensive weaponry in populated areas, knowing that Israel would, out of necessity, respond with retaliatory attacks. And it knew that when the Israeli response happened to kill civilians, used as shields by the terrorists, Israel would be blamed by the gigantic anti-Semitic faction around the world.

Prior to the recent cease-fire, more than 200 Palestinians reportedly had died in the war, and roughly two dozen Israelis have been killed. Why the large difference?

Because Israel has a defense mechanism called the Iron Dome that intercepts and destroys many or most of the terrorists’ rockets before they can do any damage, although some do get through. Some 16 percent of Hamas’ rockets reportedly fell short of their target, and landed in Gaza, and may have killed Palestinians. 

And the Palestinian death toll is a fraction of what it could be because of Israel’s efforts to keep civilians as safe as possible, even warning occupants of certain targeted buildings that an attack is imminent so that they could escape, and by carefully picking its targets.

All the while Israelis get the blame for Palestinian civilian casualties who were put at risk by Hamas terrorists firing rockets at Israel from Palestinian neighborhoods.

* * *

In today’s upside-down America, math is now both racist and something which no longer requires accuracy and correct answers.

An opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal describes the situation: “If California education officials have their way, generations of students may not know how to calculate an apartment’s square footage or the area of a farm field, but the ‘mathematics’ of political agitation and organizing will be second nature to them. Encouraging those gifted in math to shine will be a distant memory.”

A proposed new curriculum framework for math is now being considered by the state’s Instructional Quality Commission. The new framework recommends that teachers use a manual titled “A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction: Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction,” which The Journal commentary called “a troubling document.”

“This manual claims that teachers addressing students’ mistakes forthrightly is a form of white supremacy,” the article states. “It sets forth indicators of ‘white supremacy culture in the mathematics classroom,’ including a focus on ‘getting the right answer,’ teaching math in a ‘linear fashion,’ requiring students to ‘show their work’ and grading them on demonstrated knowledge of the subject matter. ‘The concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false,’ the manual explains. ‘Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuates objectivity.’ Apparently, that’s also racist,” the article continues.

While 2+2 still equals 4, and the multiplication tables are still accurate, that is not as important as being sure that those who aren’t good math students don’t feel bad about it. 

This is just one more component of the new woke attack on a merit-based selection process. The anti-merit faction would prefer to have a fair distribution of genders and ethnicities providing medical care, piloting airliners, manning classrooms at all levels, leading and serving in the military, holding management positions, etc. Yet a student who was behind his/her classmates in math or science, or any subject, will likely not do as good a job as a teacher as someone who had a high ability and a love for the subject.

As woke-ism progresses, no doubt this foolish concept will creep into other subject areas, as well.

Does this really make any sense in a country where having a thriving society, and the country’s very survival, depend upon having very capable people in all important positions?

Woke-ism is a truly bizarre development. The number of people who favor it is shocking. But the scariest thing is how foolish and non-sensical these concepts are. If America does not get its feet back on the ground very soon, our future is very uncertain. We need to pay much more attention to what China and Russia are doing, and be less concerned with trying to guarantee equitable outcomes among unequal people.

Is woke-ism a new pandemic? Is it a greater threat to our future than COVID-19? It could very well be.

Israel continues to survive irrational hatred and violent attacks

Christians and Jews know from studying religious texts that the Hebrews lived in what is now Israel roughly 3,000 years ago, and many independent sources confirm their occupation of that land three millennia ago.

Even the Quran, the Islamic equivalent of the Bible, notes: “Sura 17, The Children of Israel (Banî Israel)” in the Khalifa translation, and perhaps others, as well.

Charles Krauthammer provided context in The Weekly Standard in 1998, commenting that “Israel is the very embodiment of Jewish continuity: It is the only nation on earth that inhabits the same land, bears the same name, speaks the same language, and worships the same God that it did 3,000 years ago. You dig the soil and you find pottery from Davidic times, coins from Bar Kokhba, and 2,000-year-old scrolls written in a script remarkably like the one that today advertises ice cream at the corner candy store.”

The land occupied by modern Israel is small, about the size of Wales or half the size of Costa Rica, and is located roughly on the site of the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah, except that these ancient kingdoms also included what is now the West Bank.

Israel is 263 miles long and varies from 9 miles wide at the narrowest point to 70 miles wide at the widest point. It is a little larger than Connecticut and a little smaller than New Jersey, and is home to approximately 8 million Israelis, 5.5 million of whom are Jews.

Israel is bordered on the west by the Mediterranean Sea, and its contiguous neighbors are Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, with Iraq, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran not far away.

Israel is smaller than any of its neighbors, both in geographic size and population. The nations that surround it don’t like Israel or Jewish people. “Death to Israel” is in fact a common sentiment among those nations and their people. This sentiment is reflected in a BBC poll last year showing Israel as the fourth least popular nation on the planet, behind Iran, Pakistan, and North Korea.

This perception is based largely on the fact that there are more voices in the region where Israel and its enemies reside demeaning Israel – those would be the voices of the “Death to Israel” crowd – than there are Israeli voices telling the other side of the story. It is not so different than going to Boston and asking which American League team residents think is the most unpopular, and finding most named the New York Yankees, not the Red Sox.

As the saying goes, the more you tell a lie, the more it is believed, and with the help of dishonest reporting, the lie spreads far and wide.

In fact, while the enemies scream “Death to Israel,” Israel only asks for peace, and has made numerous concessions towards that goal, only to be slapped in the face with violent attacks.

The current fighting follows an unprovoked attack on Israel by Hamas. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, Hamas “is the largest and most influential Palestinian militant movement … [and] is a Sunni Islamist group and a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization violently opposed to the state of Israel.”

The murders of three Israeli boys and the murder of one Palestinian boy initially stirred tensions, and Hamas unleashed a barrage of rockets on Israel to kick-start the conflict.

The differences in how the two sides operate could not be starker: Hamas fires rockets aimed at civilian-occupied areas; Israel targets Hamas compounds, militant command centers, weapons storage facilities and tunnels into Israel and Egypt.

Thus far, more casualties have occurred on the Palestinian side of the conflict, due in part to the Israeli Iron Dome defense system used to protect their citizens by intercepting rockets aimed at population centers. Hamas, however, is said to store rockets in homes and schools, and reportedly uses civilians as shields against attacks on the storage areas.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the two philosophies: “We are using missile defense to protect our civilians, and they're using their civilians to protect their missiles."

Such tactics help explain the greater number of casualties among Palestinians, and Hamas turns this into anti-Israel propaganda, helping to propagate Israel negative image worldwide.

Steven P. Bucci, who served America for three decades as an Army Special Forces officer and top Pentagon official, writes that “before the Israelis strike a building, every home in it gets a call on its landline phone, as do all the cell phones associated with the inhabitants of the building — the cells additionally get text messages — telling them that in a few minutes the building will be targeted. Finally, to make sure everyone gets the message, Israel drops a dud bomb—one containing no explosives—onto the roof of the structure. … There is no instance in modern military history where a force has taken greater measures to give the innocents as much chance to get out of the way.”

The broad hatred of Israel and love for its enemies is irrational. Despite this, Israel behaves honorably in defending itself against repeated attacks, holds its own against the haters, and survives.