A disturbing reality is emerging – around so-called “student protesters” against Israel. They are sowing chaos on campuses, targeting Jews, less about human rights than fights. In scope, speed, violence, and composition, they seem more “non-student” than organic.
Roughly half of those arrested – from Texas to New York City and Los Angeles – are not students. They have nothing to do with the schools they are defacing, at which they are breaking laws, windows, rules, and the cadence of education and graduation.
In Texas, half of the 80 arrested were not students. In New York City “nearly half” of those arrested for campus disruptions are not students. In Buffalo, over half were not students. At UCLA, where violence escalated to assaults, many were “not affiliated.”
Numbers are large, and chaos is consequential. None of this is constitutionally protected “free speech.” Supreme Court cases make clear that “substantial disruptions” on a campus can be prosecuted. More than 2100 have been arrested at 30 universities so far.
So, what is going on? The irony, for all the talk of human rights – and human rights matter for all peoples, Jewish, Palestinian, Chinese, Iranian, Saudi, Ukrainian, Venezuelan, Cuban, Lao – is that these non-student protests endanger human rights, including those of Jewish students. Even liberal media cannot ignore that rising “crisis.”
Truth: Like so much of the modern “fakeness,” this is an intentional overlay of disruptive activism and leftist chaos on a hallmark of democracy – thought-provoking college protests.
Now, funded by dark money, non-students storm campuses, take buildings, deface statutes of America’s Founding Fathers, and World War I and II monuments, and then pull students in with “protest consultants.”
Reality: Hurling, assaulting, occupying, and disrupting campuses is not legal. Nor is threatening Jewish Americans. None of that is American or constitutionally protected free speech. It is crime.
At my alma mater, Columbia Law School – which produced ten Supreme Court Justices and two Presidents – TR and FDR, a recognized student group warned “No Jew is safe” on campus.
So, former Columbia law professor and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, would not be safe at Columbia today. Nor would famous professors Harvey Goldschmidt (who taught me Antitrust law), Jack Greenberg (famous for Brown v. Bd. of Education), Lou Henkin (human rights law pioneer), Jack Weinstein (who taught me Evidence), and dozens of others.
Is that really America? American? What law schools should be teaching such intolerance? Is lawlessness the new lawful, are threats now permissible – in any context?
For good measure, last week I walked through “Harvard Yard,” picking my way among disheveled tents, a grungy collection of humanity with signs like “From the River to the Sea,” implying the return of Israel to Arab hands, listing “Demands,” a homeless encampment “lookalike,” with a 15-foot sign identifying the mess a “Liberated Zone.”
Most students ignored the “liberated zone,” but the cost of appeasing trashy occupation zones and violence – is high. Students are deprived of the education for which they pay dearly – and appeasing lawbreakers teaches …lawbreaking.
All this comes back to “why?” Where did these “spontaneous,” violent, intransigent encampments or “liberation zones” come from? How about mushrooms after rain? Yes, wars are ugly, rooting out terrorists hard, the Middle East a fraught land. Yes, human rights always matter.
But who is really behind all this disruption – at odds with law, democracy, and typical protests? We are starting to learn … and it is not cash-strapped students, many of whom could not find Haifa, Tel Aviv, or Jerusalem on a map, have never been there, and – are not students anyway.
Nationally, campus disruption seems tied to a network of leftist groups, many using the word “democratic” in their label – apparently the North Korean definition of “democratic,” as in Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), and rewarmed 2020 protest groups.
Beyond labels, which tell us nothing, we learn that money for these disruptions is increasingly traceable to top Democrat Party donors. A Politico report named “George Soros, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, David Rockefeller Jr…. and Susan and Nick Pritzker.” Other names, like the “Tides Foundation,” seem at odds with US strategic interests.
Go deeper. Why are Democrats with hidden or “dark” money, pushing disruption, and sowing chaos? Truth: Forces are at work that do not subscribe to traditional American values – and never will. Seeding chaos is a route to power, to “transforming” America, one-party rule. History teaches us. Think Marx, Lenin, Mao. These “non-student protesters” have a bigger agenda. This must stop.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.
