William McGurn is a member of The Wall Street Journal editorial board and writes the weekly “Main Street” column for the Journal each Tuesday. e is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, holds a BA in philosophy from Notre Dame and an MS in Communications from Boston University. He writes: “The “Saturday Night Live” cold open sketch this past weekend was a mock interview with parents of protesting college students.

The African-American father [comedian Kenan Thompson] whose ‘daughter’ attends Columbia makes clear that these quad encampments are for rich white kids. “She ain’t talking about no free this, free that, ’cause I’ll tell you what ain’t free—Columbia. Shoot. Do you know that they got the nerve to want $68,000 a year?”

When you’ve lost “SNL” . . . Putting aside the trespassing and vandalism, the mini-Gazas that have sprouted up at colleges across America seem like summer camps. The difference is that instead of singing “If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands,” the college kiddies opt for someone leading them in chants of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

Add to this a dollop of cultural appropriation. This season’s protest fashion is the keffiyeh, a head covering originally worn by Bedouin tribesmen to protect against the desert sun and sand. In the 1930s it became a symbol of Palestinian identity and was famously worn by Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat. As an added plus, it can hide your face from police and administrators trying to identify you. And it can be had for $13.99 on Amazon.

Left-wing students have always loved movements that liberate them from the classroom— especially ones that come with a uniform and ready-made slogans that substitute for serious argument and boost their sense of moral superiority. “I’ve always thought of accessories as the exclamation point of a woman’s outfit,” fashion maestro Michael Kors said. Among today’s protesters that goes for men as well.

In good part it’s a hangover from the self-indulgence of the 1960s. The movement against the war in Vietnam still informs protest culture [with the timeless chant, “What do we want? When do we want it?”].

Back then radical chic offered any number of options, ranging from long hair that annoyed parents to Chairman Mao hats or Che Guevara berets that conveyed a more revolutionary vibe. More recently, thousands of women wearing bright pink [vagina] hats converged on Washington the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration to protest his vulgar reference, heard on the “Access Hollywood” tapes, to grabbing women by a part of the anatomy.

As the father of three girls who each went through a Disney princess phase, I understand the appeal of a good costume—especially when wearing it allows you to demand special treatment. Then again, my daughters were 6.

Adults at Colleges and Universities have Obligations as Educators

But the adults at colleges and universities have obligations as educators. Their indulgence of the drama created by the student protests has been an abrogation of these duties. Probably the most notorious example was Columbia’s President Minouche Shafik, who at first called in the police to clear encamped students when they ignored university directives to leave.

The day after the cops cleared the encampment, the protesters were back on another part of the lawn. Ms. Shafik then shifted to a “pretty please” approach, promising not to call the cops in again. When that too failed, she went with pretty please with sugar on top, which predictably failed as well. The protesters responded like an uncooperative boy at the supermarket screaming at his mom and threatening a very public tantrum if he doesn’t get his way. [Then they invaded the administration building and set up barricades.]

In fairness Columbia isn’t unique. Some universities have issued fine statements about the First Amendment and the right to protest. But the students don’t need to be told that what they are doing—

setting up encampments, vandalizing property, menacing Jewish students— isn’t speech. They know that.

What the students in their keffiyehs sense is that university administrators aren’t up to the follow-through that would make real their lofty words about speech and signal that those who won’t obey the rules making the life of a university possible will be out. For all the talk of “outside agitators” hijacking peaceful campus protests, the students made no effort to purge from their ranks the Hamas headbands, Hezbollah flags or those threatening to repeat the savageries of Oct. 7.

There was a day when Americans looked at universities as ideals for how to live peacefully in a free society guided by the accumulated wisdom of the past. Now Americans see them as home to the unreasonable and mindlessly destructive [who believe they have all the knowledge they will ever need].

When Ronald Reagan was governor of California, he was asked about the student protests at Berkeley. He could have been talking about today.

“All of it began,” an angry Reagan said, “the first time some of you who know better and are old enough to know better let young people think that they had the right to choose the laws they would obey as long as they were doing it in the name of social protest.” Amen.

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Philip Carl Salzman is professor emeritus of anthropology at McGill University, senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, fellow at the Middle East Forum, and Past President of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East. He writes:

“In his recent press conference on the university student demonstrations, occupations, and riots, New York City Mayor Eric Adams blamed outside professional organizers for radicalizing our young people in universities in New York, on campuses throughout the country, and around the world. Exactly who these sinister outside forces are, the mayor did not specify.

Of course, the mayor is correct that there are outside professional organizers and agitators who have infiltrated campuses and encouraged even more extreme measures by demonstrators. Everyone sees the uniformity across the country of materials provided, such as tents and signs.

Yes, these are malevolent forces bent on transforming or destroying the United States. But funders and organizers are facilitators and enablers, not primary motivators. Mr. Adams is right in saying that professionals are behind these upheavals. But outside agitators and funders are not shaping the hearts and minds of university students.

Professionals Responsible for Students’ Education are Not External to Universities

Rather, the professionals responsible for students’ mindsets are not external to universities; they are the employees of universities—the faculty and staff—who have been working on the students, miseducating them, throughout their entire university careers.

The satirical website The Babylon Bee gets it right. With reference to the occupation of the Columbia University administration building, the Bee article headline is “Oh No! Indoctrinated Woke Extremists Destroy Woke Extremist Indoctrination Center.”

Quoting an imaginary university official, the Bee stated: “‘We didn’t see this coming,’ said one official. ‘After spending decades brainwashing young, impressionable people into volatile, savage revolutionaries, we were shocked to see them unleash such volatility and savagery while trying to launch a revolution. We wish there had been warning signs along the way.’”

Would that this was only humorous parody. Alas, it is an accurate representation of our universities in the 21^st Century. The many professors who have joined the demonstrators-occupiers-rioters— and who knows how many administrators and staff—are proof of the nature of today’s education.

The Bee continued: “Students who engaged in the violent attack were thankful for the years of intense training they received from the institution they were now actively working to destroy. …

“At publishing time, the school’s leadership was confident that the government would do nothing to impede their ongoing efforts to make the country worse and more dangerous.”

The many pleas from well-meaning observers for the occupiers to desist so that students can return to their classes are beside the point. Their classes are where they were radicalized. The faculty itself is almost entirely radicalized.

Left-wing university monoculture today is nothing like the Enlightenment based university that I attended in the mid-20^th Century, where the emphasis was on searching for the objective truth of reality using reason, evidence, and well-founded conclusions. Universities have now rejected the search for truth in favor of activism based on far-left Marxist “truths,” which may not be questioned.

Among these “truths” is the certainty that all people in the world are divided between evil, ruthless oppressors and exploiters and innocent, noble victims. In this class conflict, which is the only important feature of human life. Black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC), LGBT people, females, the disabled, and Muslims are all innocent victims of whites, Asians, and Jews, heterosexuals, males, conservatives, the abled, the wealthy, and Judeo-Christians.

“Victims” are represented in universities by grievance subjects, which at first leaked into but then flooded the humanities and social sciences. Feminist, Black, Queer, Islamic, and Disabled Studies do not exist to investigate truth and reality but to advocate for the victims they represent and to spur change to the advantage of their designated category [and to the disadvantage of the oppressors].

As part of this project, one common belief among grievance subjects—and now the humanities and social sciences—is that Western civilization must be abandoned as oppressive and that Western countries, such as the United States and Canada, must be transformed entirely or destroyed. Anti-colonial studies “prove” that these countries are in any case invalid and that the American and Canadian citizens are “colonial settlers” without legitimate standing.

University Administrators are Not Innocent Victims of Campus Violence

University administrators are not innocent victims of these trends. On the contrary, they are primary instigators. They impose the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” manifestations of the “social justice” ideology, leading to the official implementation of reverse racism, reverse sexism, and segregation. Discrimination against “oppressors” is not only tolerated; it is also systematically imposed and celebrated.

While student bodies have remained consistent in size and the professoriate has, if anything, shrunk, not to mention the increased reliance on untenured, temporary “sessional” lecturers (a great financial saving), administrations have exploded in size, increasing to double or triple in most universities. One source of this is “DEI officers,” hired at every level and in every unit, at huge cost, to serve as political commissars policing thought and speech, so that no one can deviate from politically “correct” belief and expression.

Any professor, lecturer, or instructor professing opinions not in line with “social justice” and radical change is quickly identified and surrounded by DEI commissars and forced to confess error, go to reeducation programs, lose privileges of various kinds—forget promotion and funding—and, if stubborn in deviation, termination outright and banishment from the university. This puts great power in the hands of students, who only have to say that they are offended by what a professor says, and she (more rarely than he today) is on the chopping block.

So while there are malevolent outside actors doing what they can with universities, the influential corruption is internal. If you block the outsiders, nothing will change. The universities themselves are the source of the radicalism.”

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Keri D. Ingraham is a senior fellow at Discovery Institute, director of the American Center for Transforming Education, and a senior fellow at Independent Women’s Forum. She writes: “Tent encampments, violent protests, and defiant students are taking over the campuses of many of America’s most prestigious higher education institutions.

In some cases, Jewish students have been forced to leave mid-semester, classes have been canceled or moved to remote only, commencements have been cancelled, and buildings have been barricaded by pro-Palestinian [read anti-Semitic] protesters.

Upward of 300 people were arrested at Columbia University and The City College of New York, schools less than a mile apart, after police were finally allowed on campus. Harvard University, Yale University, Princeton University, Brown University, the University of Pennsylvania, Cornell University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have also been dominated by student protests, encampments, demands, and disorder.

The protests that have led to chaos and violence on college campuses are centered on pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel, and pro-hatred and genocide of Jews messages. In addition to the college students, police are finding seasoned agitators participating in the destruction. According to New York Police Department Commissioner Edward Caban, “professional outside agitators” were among students inside the barricaded Hamilton Hall at Columbia University.

The unrest is far from limited to the northeastern universities. Violence has occurred at the University of California–Los Angeles, which followed unruly demonstrations across town at the University of Southern California, where protesters, according to NBC Los Angeles, “threw objects at officers, including a rock, water bottles and water,” leading to nearly 100 arrests.

The defiant, even anarchical behavior of students shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon, despite university officials at many of these schools misguidedly attempting to appease students by negotiating with them over their anti-Israel demands in hopes of ending the protests.

The students carrying out these protests might have gained entrance into Ivy League schools by their [race or ethnicity, social conscienceness], top-in-the-nation high school academic achievements in terms of grade point averages, standardized test scores, and Advanced Placement course completion. However, graduates of these institutions aren’t the students that employers want to hire.

Campus Unrest Makes Graduates Unemployable

Rather, employers want hardworking students who are thriving in their studies rather than threatening fellow students, protesting, forming tent encampments on campus, inciting violence, and disregarding institutional authority and law enforcement.

This makes one wonder how American higher education got here.

Look no further than K–12 public education and even many elite private schools, [especially in the Northeast]. In these places, children are often no longer taught respect for authority, including their parents. Nor do they learn an accurate account of historical and world news facts or the inherent dignity and worth of every person regardless of skin color, ethnic background, or religion.

With the infiltration of critical race theory into K–12 classrooms, children and teens are shepherded toward a worldview that “teaches people that their individuality is not based on their intrinsic worth as human persons, but as members of a group based on their perceived outward appearance,” according to the Washington Policy Center. Critical race theory intentionally seeks to divide people and label them, not based on their character or conduct, but rather on their skin color.

White, [and near-white] Asian and Jewish people are oppressors. Others are oppressed. In turn, discrimination and retaliation toward these groups labeled oppressors is justifiable.

The American Federation of Teachers, the second-largest teachers union in the country, enlisted Ibram X. Kendi for its TEACH Conference and has relentlessly promoted his work and books about “anti-racism.” In 2020, public school districts nationwide began utilizing his in their teacher training materials.

As just one example, Fairfax County Public Schools, the 10th largest school district in the United States, paid Mr. Kendi $20,000 for a one-hour training session and spent another $24,000 to purchase copies of his book, which became required student reading. Mr. Kendi’s teachings center on the radical assertions that “racial discrimination is not inherently racist” and that “the only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination.” [To paraphrase: “the only way to stop racism is with more racism”]

These teachings were not a one-time occurrence but have become the new norm that spans subjects and are the foundation for school policies and practices across the nation.

Another example regards student discipline, which in K–12 public schools is governed by notions of “restorative justice.” Heather Mac Donald explained in the book How to Educate an American, that dating back to the Obama administration, the Education and Justice departments “threatened schools with litigation and the loss of federal funding if they did not bring down black and Hispanic disciplinary rates to the same level as whites and Asians.”

No longer were all students treated consistently. Instead, discipline was withheld or employed to reach redescribed metrics. The negative results are widespread.

Even at a time when many schools were closed for a significant period during the COVID-19 pandemic, a study by the American Psychological Association found that a staggering 14 percent of teachers and 22 percent of school staff cited physical violence from students.

Further, “one-third of surveyed teachers reported they experienced at least one incident of verbal and/or threatening violence from students during COVID (e.g., verbal threats, cyber bullying, intimidation, sexual harassment [and actual physical violence]).”

And let’s not forget that it was—and continues to be—the teachers unions who championed the defunding of police and removal of officers from K–12 schools. With that agenda, students are not taught respect for law enforcement, and teachers and students are unprotected from on-campus incidences.

Following the previous night’s mass arrests at Columbia University and The City College of New York, New York City Mayor Eric Adams asserted at a press conference, “We can’t create environments while children could be in danger, and we must push back on all attempts to radicalize our young people in this city like we’re seeing across the entire globe.”

Yet under Mr. Adams’s watch, New York City Public Schools continues to have a policy to support the gender transition of minor-age children in secret from parents, a school library list promoting books with sexually explicit content, and a teacher reportedly providing anti-Israel lessons to other educators and activists, as well as her pre-kindergarten students.

Unlike the vast majority of school districts nationwide governed by school boards, the largest public school district in the country is the responsibility of the New York City mayor. Yet Mr. Adams himself isn’t pushing back on the radicalization of K–12 schoolchildren when he has the authority to do so.

Restoring sound academic instruction, a culture of respect for all students, and an environment that consistently enforces behavioral rules in our K–12 schools is essential if we are to reestablish our college campuses as places where the campus and classroom environment are conducive to high-quality academic learning and ideas are robustly debated with civility and decorum.

All students—K–12 and higher education alike—must be held accountable for abiding by the established rules and code of conduct. And if institutional leaders aren’t willing to do that, they should be replaced.”

Don’t hold your breath.

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Leaders of Marxist-Leninist Terrorist Groups Allowed to Coach Students in Recent Campus Riots

Austin Alonzo covers U.S. political and national news for The Epoch Times. He has covered local, business and agricultural news in Kansas City, Missouri, since 2012. He is a graduate of the University of Missouri. He writes that a new report says leaders of Marxist-Leninist terrorist group coached Columbia and Barnard students in the recent campus riots.

“The terror group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is well represented in the ongoing campus protests, according to a new report by the Israeli watchdog group NGO Monitor.

Recently, the Jerusalem-based research institute published a report detailing the involvement of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and a subsidiary organization, Samidoun, in the protests active at more than 80 campuses across the United States. The Popular Front was designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. Department of State in 1997.

According to the report, Khaled Barakat, a member of the PFLP and a founder of Samidoun, appeared at an event at Barnard College in New York on March 24 to teach “Resistance 101.”.

Barnard is officially part of Columbia University. Columbia canceled its main commencement ceremony following weeks of pro-Palestinian protests.

At his appearance, Mr. Barakat praised Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front. At the same event, Nerdeen Kiswani, founder of the protest group Within Our Lifetime– United for Palestine, spoke about Palestinians’ rights to every inch of Palestine, from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea.

Moreover, NGO Monitor cited examples of protesters carrying Popular Front posters, wearing Popular Front headbands, flying the group’s flag, and publicly reading Popular Front publications.

In a statement, Gerald Steinberg, founder and president of NGO Monitor, said the “wide involvement” of a terror organization in the campus protests “highlights the fiction that this is a spontaneous protest movement.”

“The links between Samidoun, SJP [Students for Justice in Palestine], and the other NGO organizers require an independent and detailed Congressional investigation, including disclosing all of the funding sources from both inside the U.S. and from foreign entities,” Mr. Steinberg said in a statement. “In addition, a review of the legality of Samidoun’s operations in the U.S. is overdue.”

According to the National Counterterrorism Center, the Popular Front is a terrorist group known for its Marxist–Leninist ideology. It was founded in 1967 and has carried out deadly attacks as recently as 2019.

The Popular Front views “the destruction of Israel as integral to the struggle to remove Western capitalism from the Middle East and ultimately establish a Communist Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital,” according to the center. The group is led by Ahmad Sa’adat, who was imprisoned in 2001 by the Palestinian Authority.

In April 2024, the Popular Front published a statement on its website affirming its “steadfast support for the struggle of the students youth movements.” It specifically called out Students for Justice in Palestine and the Palestinian Youth Movement. “We highly appreciate the positions, movements, and struggles of our students in American universities and call for the escalation of their struggle,” the Popular Front statement reads.

NGO Monitor calls Samidoun a subsidiary organization of the Popular Front. It also said Samidoun was designated as a terrorist group by Israel in 2021. Samidoun, which calls itself the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, praised the massacre of Jews by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023. Its website currently features an image with the words “Long Live October 7th.”

On May 1, Charlotte Kates, Samidoun’s international coordinator, was arrested and charged by the Vancouver Police Department for an April speech that she gave calling for jihad.

“The attack on Kates is an attack on the Palestinian people, part of a longstanding effort by Israel and its imperialist allies to criminalize and de-legitimize Palestinian people, their political organizations, and their allies,” the May 6 statement reads.

Recently, the @IsraelWarRoom account on X, formerly Twitter, gained access to a Google Drive account apparently owned by National Students for Justice in Palestine spokeswoman Carrie Zaremba. According to the social media account, that drive contained multiple documents published by the Popular Front.

Protesters occupying George Washington University’s campus read out loud sections of the Popular Front’s book Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine, according to NGO Monitor.

Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department cleared a pro-Palestinian encampment from the university’s campus. The crackdown occurred hours before Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser and the department’s chief were due to testify before the House Oversight Committee.

City University of New York law professor Jeffrey Lax told The Epoch Times that while it may seem incongruous, it’s “unfortunately not surprising” to see coordination between Marxists and Islamists in orchestrating protests.

“So even though the Marxist and Islamist have nothing in common—they share no values at all—the only thing they share is a common enemy, which is America and Western culture and democracy and capitalism,” he said. “It’s not a coincidence, these things they’re doing. They want to disrupt the American way of life. That is the whole goal.”

“Behind every student rally you see are Marxist professors leading it, guiding it; it’s not students. Don’t be fooled by the face of the rallies,” he said. “I see this up close and personal every day on our campuses. It’s Marxist faculty leading it. And it’s a convenient relationship right now with the Islamist radicals who are supporting terror.”

Next time: So, What’s Wrong With America’s ‘Elites’?