The biggest myth regarding the campus anti-Semitism crisis is that it’s about speech. It is a self-serving myth: Institutions and activists that want to disregard their abuse of Jewish students will fall back on the claim that any attempt to hold them accountable for their actions is actually an attack on free speech.
Columbia University is learning what happens when that disingenuous trick starts to backfire: Students and professors take it as a license to do whatever they want, people end up in the hospital, and the government steps in to say this cannot continue to be done on their dime.
The Biden administration was fearful of standing up to the Hamas youth groups on campus. The Trump administration is happy to do so. Thus we have the announcement that three government agencies—Health and Human Services, the Department of Education, and the General Services Administration—will be reviewing federal contracts and grants with Columbia totaling around $5 billion.
Crucially, the announcement clearly avoids the penalizing of mere speech:
“Americans have watched in horror for more than a year now, as Jewish students have been assaulted and harassed on elite university campuses,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement. “Unlawful encampments and demonstrations have completely paralyzed day-to-day campus operations, depriving Jewish students of learning opportunities to which they are entitled. Institutions that receive federal funds have a responsibility to protect all students from discrimination. Columbia’s apparent failure to uphold their end of this basic agreement raises very serious questions about the institution’s fitness to continue doing business with the United States government.”
Assault isn’t speech. Harassment, the definitions of which are laid out in these schools’ policy handbooks, doesn’t include “criticism of Israeli government policy,” as activists and well-meaning but foolish free-speech groups routinely claim. At Harvard, for example, “such aggression must be sufficiently severe or pervasive, and objectively offensive, that it creates a work, educational, or living environment that a reasonable person would consider intimidating, hostile, or abusive and denies the individual an equal opportunity to participate in the benefits of the workplace or the institution’s programs and activities. Unless sufficiently severe or pervasive, a single act typically would not constitute bullying.”
Last, discrimination is also not speech. I wrote about one such prominent example last week: George Washington University’s professional psychology program penalized Jewish students for their religious background and Israeli students on the basis of their national origin, a textbook Title VI civil-rights violation.
One can easily understand why pro-Hamas activists would try to conceal the reality of anti-Semitism under a façade of free expression: The truth is much darker. In many cases, what they are doing is plainly illegal, as is the universities’ allowance of it. In the very best of cases, their actions are simply vile. In both situations—that is, in every case almost without exception—they are the party that is curtailing the freedoms of others. That is obvious even if the brownshirts aren’t wearing brown shirts and the white-hoods aren’t wearing pointy pillowcases on their heads.
Although the “elite” colleges are all pretty terrible when it comes to anti-Semitism (as are many of the non-elite institutions), Columbia manages to stay at the head of the class. The school has completely lost control of its campus; recently a group of masked students and faculty sent an employee to the hospital while violently occupying a Barnard campus building in defense of students who had waved death threats at Jews while in class. One key detail in that story is that, according to the administration, the occupiers had let in off-campus agitators to help them destroy school property—an obvious safety risk for everyone on campus, even non-Hamasniks.
All of that made Columbia the target of the federal anti-Semitism task force’s first “major action.”
In response, Columbia put out a brief statement. “Columbia,” the university’s communications office lied, “is fully committed to combatting antisemitism and all forms of discrimination, and we are resolute that calling for, promoting, or glorifying violence or terror has no place at our University. We look forward to ongoing work with the new federal administration to fight antisemitism, and we will continue to make all efforts to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our students, faculty, and staff.”
Yet the school has given no indication that it possesses the knowledge or the will necessary to provide basic educational services with a modicum of security. The university excels at separating students from their money but fails spectacularly at separating students from threats to their safety. In putting Columbia’s federal contracts under review, the Trump administration is telling the school that, at long last, it is going to follow the law or reap the consequences of refusing to do so.
