The Daily Signal - What's Really Driving the Antisemitic Protests on College Campuses

Episode Date: April 25, 2024

Pro-Palestine protests on the campuses of some of America's most elite colleges have resulted in hundreds of arrests and led Columbia University in New York to move classes online for the remainder of the semester.  The pro-Hamas, anti-Israel protests at Columbia University, Yale, and New York University aren't just representative of an “antisemitic movement,” but a “fundamentally an anti-Western and anti-American movement,” Bill Jacobson says.  Jacobson, a Cornell University law professor and the founder of Legal Insurrection and the Equal Protection Project, joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to explain who or what is driving the antisemitism on America’s college campuses.  Jacobson points to the activist organization National Students for Justice in Palestine as the organizing force behind the current protests.  “They are an organization I have followed and written about for well over a decade,” Jacobson says of the pro-Palestine group. “They support terrorists. They honor people like Rasmea Odeh, who killed two Jewish students in Jerusalem.” Jacobson points to the ideology of critical race theory, which has spread across college campuses, for this rise in antisemitism. The related push for "diversity, equity, and inclusion," or DEI, is fundamentally anti-colonialism, Jacobson says, explaining that Israel is viewed by antisemites as “colonial occupiers.”  The anti-Israel and anti-American sentiment likely will continue on college campuses, he says, because “unless you are going to change the faculty at these schools, unless you are going to change the fundamental ideologies which drive them, removing students from the courtyard isn't going to change a thing.”  Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is not just an anti-Israel movement. It is not just an anti-Semitic movement. It is fundamentally an anti-Western and anti-American movement. Welcome to the Daily Single Podcast. It's Thursday, April 25th. I'm Virginia Allen. And that was Cornell Law Professor Bill Jacobson. He is the founder and publisher of Legal Insurrection and the founder of EqualProtect.org.

He's joining us on today's show to discuss the on-Gives. protests at some of America's top universities like Columbia, Yale, and New York University. These are anti-Semitic protests, pro-Palestine protests, and have gone so far that at Columbia University they've canceled on-campus classes for the rest of the semester giving students the opportunity to attend classes online out of safety concerns. Stay with us as we discuss this growing issue and what the root is of this anti-Semitism. on America's college campuses. Conservative women are problematic women.

Why? Because we don't adhere to the agenda of the radical left. Every Thursday morning on the Problematic Women podcast, Kristen I, Cammer, Lauren Evans, and me, Virginia Allen, are joined by other conservative women to break down the big issues and news you care about. Whether you're interested in hot takes and conversations on pop culture, or what Congress is up to, problematic women has you covered.

We sort through the news to keep you up to date on the issues that are of particular interest to conservative leaning that is problematic women. Find problematic women wherever you like to listen to podcasts and follow the show on Instagram. It is my pleasure to welcome back to the Daily Signal podcast, Professor Bill Jacobson. Professor Jacobson is a Cornell law professor. He is the founder and publisher of legal insurrection and the founder of EqualProtect.org. Professor Jacobson, thanks so much for being back with us today. Thank you for having me back. Well, this is a wild time in the world of education and universities specifically.

What we have seen in the past over, I guess about a week now, four or five days, we've seen that pro-Palestine and anti-Semitic protests have been breaking out at Columbia University, at Yale, New York University, MIT, Tufts, Michigan, universities in California. We've seen this all over. NYPD has arrested over 100 pro-Palestine protesters encamped at the University of New York. That was on Monday. In recent days, you've seen over 100 people arrested at multiple universities, Columbia University, New York University.

There were 45 students arrested at Yale. and the encampment and the protests are growing, and they're growing in intensity. And they actually, at Columbia University, they've now moved classes online for the rest of the semester as there are safety concerns specifically for Jewish students. These are very prestigious universities. What are the presidents of these universities doing in response to this situation? For the most part, they're really not doing anything. They're occasionally issuing statements.

They're occasionally issuing warnings that people have to leave, which are typically ignored. So I think the presidents really don't know what to do. They have participated in the creation of a monstrous movement on campuses that is anti-American, anti-Western, anti-capitalist, and that uses targeting of Jews. Jews and Israel as an organizing mechanism. And that's a point I really need to stress for people. This is not just an anti-Israel movement. It is not just an anti-Semitic movement.

It is fundamentally an anti-Western and anti-American movement. If you listen to the rhetoric, they talk about decolonization. They refer to the United States as Turtle Island. They say that October 7th is what really. decolonization looks like. So this is a dangerous terrorist supporting violence supporting movement, which has not yet turned into October 7th on our campuses, but has serious potential to do so. Who is driving these protests? What's behind it? I think there's a couple of things. Part of it, the ostensible protests are organized by national students for justice in Palestine.

They are an organization I have followed and written about for well over a decade. They support terrorists. They honor people like Razmia O'Day, who killed two Jewish students in Jerusalem. She was one of their heroes. So they are coordinating it. That's clear on their Twitter account. accounts and on their social media accounts. They are organizing this. They have branches. They say in 300 colleges and universities in the United States. And there's obviously a high level of coordination for

these encampments because if you look at the photos of the encampments, almost all of them look like brand new identical tents. Like somebody put in an order. We need a thousand tents quickly from someplace and they distribute them. These are not tents where people just, students just grabbed the tent they went camping in last summer and bring it to the protest. These are highly organized. Someone is purchasing this material. Someone is coordinating it. But that is the short term. That's the mechanical mechanism by which they are happening. If you want to truly understand why it's happening, you have to understand how the campuses in the last 20 plus years have been completely captured by what is euphemistically

referred to as critical race theory or diversity, equity, and inclusion. And the ideology is one that they call anti-colonialism. And they consider the U.S. a colonial power also. So what you are getting is an ideology endorsed by administrations, endorsed by universities, taught by faculty, which calls for the decolonization of the world. Of course, they're very selective. They're not talking about the decolonization of China. They're talking about the decolonization of the Western world, and they put Israel in that category. So you have an ideology which has been taught relentlessly to students and which focuses on Israel as the object of their ire. So when they look at Israel, they don't just see Israel. They see Westernism inside in the Islamic world. They see the United

States as the villain. So I think it's a combination of an ideology which has been working its way to the surface and has completely captured many campuses, far more campuses than we're seeing protests at. But certainly the so-called elite campuses have been captured by that ideology. It's driven by the DEI programming, which focuses students on race and ethnicity. And it is highly organized and funded by people like Students for Justice in Palestine. So it's a number of factors which have just risen to the surface because October 7th emboldened them. October 7th exhilarated them, which is the term a Cornell professor infamously used at a rally soon after October 7th.

And they are energized by it. They are energized and exhilarated by seeing violence in the most brutal forms perpetrated against people they think are colonial occupying. occupiers. What has been the response on your campus at Cornell? Well, initially in the fall, it was one of the worst campuses by far. I mean, it was in the headlines frequently because of things like the professor who led a rally. And it was in downtown Ithaca, not on campus, but attended by a lot of people from campus. Downtown Ithaca is not that far from campus, in which he exhorted the crowd about how exhilarated he felt when he heard the news. The crowd cheered. The crowd broke into a

chant of from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, which is a call for the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Jews in the land of Israel. There was a student at Cornell who's now in federal custody who made online threats to slit the throats of Jews on campus and to shoot up the kosher dining hall. I think it's very interesting and nobody wants to talk about it is there's no history of that student engaging in this sort of conduct. There's no history of him having problems before he got to Cornell. He claims in his defense case that he was suffering from deep depression and mental illness. But the question is, what is it at Cornell that made this allegedly depressed student turn his depression and his mental illness against Jews. What is it at Cornell

that caused that student to want to kill Jews or at least threaten to kill Jews? And I think it's the campus culture. It's a campus culture in which the killing of Jews was found to be exhilarating. It's a campus culture in which there's a core group of faculty who relentlessly dehumanize Israeli Jews and who relentlessly push the decolonization ideology. So that was Cornell in the fall. There were other incidents. There were mobs of students who marched through the campus and sometimes inside buildings with bullhorns calling for Indifada and revolution. And so it was pretty bad. I think winter break, calm things down, a little bit, but it's back. It's back. Cornell, anti-Israel students are organizing again.

I assume there will be more protests inspired by what has happened on other campuses. They have significant faculty backing, and there is no real counterweight among the faculty, other than perhaps me and one or two others. The faculty who are active on the issue, And most faculty aren't active on the issue. But of the ones who are active on the Israel issue, almost 100% of them do not consider Israel legitimate, want Israel destroyed, and assist the students in that advocacy. So Cornell is not in a good situation. Just a couple of days ago, there was a fairly manipulative, deceptive resolution put to the student body, which called for an immediate ceasefire. I think that was a very strategic move brought by these groups because it doesn't, didn't on its face blame Israel for anything.

But of course, a ceasefire without the release of the hostages is not much of a ceasefire. They also passed a resolution calling on the university to divest from 10 military contractors who supply weapons to Israel. So that was more anti-Israel. And those both passed the student body referendum hasn't been widely reported yet. Just a couple of days ago, the results were released. So Cornell is not a great place. If you're pro-Israel, it's not a great place. If you're a Jewish student, they are very active, hostile groups on campus, maybe not as bad as Columbia.

Certainly not as bad as Columbia yet. But they're there. And it's a problem the Cornell administration does not want to grapple with. Yeah, that those calls, for one, for a ceasefire, we've seen those on these other campuses, Columbia and New York University as well as those same calls for divestment from any connections with Israel, from weapons manufacturers related to Israel. When it comes to the First Amendment rights of these students, what is the grounding to say, okay, well, yes, these students are maybe shouting terrible things.

but it's within their First Amendment rights to stand in the middle of campus and shout anti-Israel or anti-Semitic statements. It's very interesting situation on campuses. And of course, you do need to distinguish between public campuses and private campuses because the public are clearly governed by the First Amendment. But the places we're having the most problems are private campuses like Columbia, Harvard, Cornell, Penn, Yale. And they don't honor the First Amendment.

They only discovered the First Amendment the day after October 7th when crowds were chanting for an intifada. All of the sudden, these schools, which mercilessly punished microaggressions, which mercilessly will punish you if you use the wrong pronoun for somebody, or if you dead name somebody, all of these campuses which have bias reporting teams, which have anonymous bias reporting, which clamp down on all forms of speech, all of the sudden, on October 7th, when students are calling for an intifada, and people

should remember, the intifada was the bloody suicide bombing campaign against Israeli Jews that killed over a thousand Israeli Jews, including in universities, on buses, and at Passover satyrs, that when students all of the sudden are chanting that. All of a sudden, schools like Cornell discover the First Amendment. Well, I am of a view that if these schools want to adopt a First Amendment standard for speech on campus, I am all in favor of that. Anything that is permitted by the First Amendment should be permitted on Cornell's campus and Harvard's campus and Columbia's campus. But the reality is it's not.

Depends who you're targeting. If there were equivalent statements being made against any other ethnic group or racial group or identity group, you would hear howls from administrations. And so I think it's a completely false analogy to say, well, we support free speech, therefore these students can say that. Yes, if you always support free speech. But what the students don't have a right to do, even on a public campus, is to engage in conduct, which is meant to be and is physically intimidating to others. And that's why they march through classroom buildings with bullhorns. It's an act of intimidation.

That's why they form these lines blocking people from moving. It's an act of intimidation. So, yes, they have a right under the First Amendment to say vile and terrible things. And the schools should have discovered that long ago, not just when those chance were made against Jews. So that's the situation. They have a First Amendment right, but private campuses never honored the First Amendment. Why is it all of the sudden they're honoring the First Amendment when the targets are Jews? Yeah, good question.

Let's talk about some of the fallout that we're seeing. We have seen that on some campuses, for example, the University of Minnesota, when these protests have popped up, they've actually shut them down very, very quickly. Why are they being allowed to continue to the extent where Columbia University has now said we're canceling classes, in-person classes for the rest of the semester, moving everything online in order to essentially allow these protests to continue. Why not just shut it down? Because at campuses like Columbia, the administrators largely agree with the students. The faculty largely agrees with the students. We cannot view what's happening at Columbia and some of the other Ivy League schools as something that is foreign to those schools. It is part of the ideology of the schools.

It is not part of the ideology of schools elsewhere. And I think one thing that's very notable is that it has not happened everywhere. We are not seeing this at schools in red states. We are not seeing this at, you know, most places in the country. We're seeing it at schools, private elite colleges and universities. which have embedded this ideology deeply into the culture of the campus. And that ideology is an anti-Western ideology. It is a tear-down-the-status ideology.

It is removed names from buildings ideology. It is a deconstruction of our society. It is very reminiscent to me of a Camerooges in Cambodia sort of ideology where you go back to year zero. These are very dangerous ideologies which have gripped some of our most elite private institutions. And the fact that it has not yet turned into gross violence does not mean it's not going to, but it certainly endorses that gross violence. There are many videos, we've posted them on our website, of people talking about becoming martyrs.

Notice how they idealized and idolized the tragic soul who burned himself alive in protest of what was happening in Gaza. And they held him up as somebody to be emulated. I do not think it is unreasonable to think that at least some small percentage of these people chanting to honor the martyrs, which is what was projected on a building last fall, I believe it was a George Washington University, to honor the martyrs. It would not be surprising if one or two or three or more decided they needed to become martyrs. Robert Kraft is the owner of the New England Patriots. Forbes estimates he's worth about $11 billion. Columbia University is his alma mater.

He actually announced this week that he is no longer comfortable supporting the university until corrective action is taken. what do you think that the result will be from donors like Kraft pulling support from these university campuses? Is that something that could turn the tide and lead to action? I think it might lead to superficial action. It might lead to window dressing. But unless you are going to change the faculty at these schools, unless you are going to change the fundamental ideologies which drive them, removing students from the courtyard isn't going to change a thing. So I say to Robert Kraft and to others, where have you been? We've been warning about this for a decade. We've been telling you what has been happening. And you've ignored it. And you've ignored it

because you have some sort of misplaced allegiance to the school you went to for four years out of your life 50 years ago. Why are you doing that? You have been funding. These donors have funded the devastating situation we're in now on these campuses. And they funded it to the tune of billions of dollars over decades. And now all of the sudden, they're realizing the mistake of their ways. Well, I'm glad they're realizing it now, but they owe the rest of our society an apology for having helped create this. They should not simply withhold their donations pending corrective action, whatever that means.

they should stop their donations completely, and they should redirect it to something which helps build up our society instead of tearing it down. Professor Jacobson, I want to give you a second to share a little bit about equalprotect.org, the work you're doing there as well as at legal insurrection. Sure. Equiprotect.org, which is called the Equal Protection Project, is a project we started a little over a year ago to challenge discrimination, racial and ethnic discrimination done in the name of diversity, equity, and inclusion. What we began to see is many university and college programs and governmental programs and corporate programs.

It's almost every year, which openly discriminate on the basis of race, typically against whites and Asians, but not exclusively against them. And so we challenge them. We filed legal challenges. We filed almost 25 so far. About half the schools have backed down and changed their programming. We have a major lawsuit going against the state of New York for a program they fund, which operates at 56 colleges and universities in New York State, which discriminates on the basis of race. We're representing the parents of Asian students who are not eligible for this program. because only black, Latino, and Native American students have an absolute right to enter it. So this is everywhere, and that's what we do. And so we've been very active. We've received a fair amount of media attention for our legal challenges, and we are ramping up to expand our challenges because the motto of equal protect.org is that there is no good form of racism and that the answer to racism never. is more racism. And unfortunately, particularly in education, but not exclusively, particularly in education, there seems to be an Ibram-Kendee sort of formulation that we can discriminate on the basis

of race because of things that took place 10, 20, 50, 100 years ago. And we think that's a dead end for society. So that's what EqualProtect.org does. All of our challenges, everything we've done is on our website and would encourage your listeners to go visit and take a look. Yeah. Again, that website is equalprotect.org. And then, of course, they can find all of your writing, Professor Jacobson at Legal Instruction.com. Professor Jacobson, thank you so much for your time.

We really appreciate it. Great. Thank you so much. And with that, that's going to do it for today's episode. Thank you for being with us here on the Daily Signal podcast. Make sure to come back and join us around 5 p.m. for our Top News edition, where we bring you the top news of the day. And be sure to hit that subscribe button so you never miss out on any of our shows.

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