How Not to Win Friends and Influence People: America’s Debt to the Pro-Palestinian Protesters

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators gather at the DePaul University Lincoln Park Campus in Chicago on May 5, 2024. Alex Wroblewski/AFP

Commentary

At a recent family get-together, I spoke with a 40-year-old nephew I hadn’t seen in several years. He works as a research scientist at a major university. We’d hardly said hello before he launched an attack on the doings of the pro-Palestinian mob at his school and in the city where he lives. Several times, I tried to get a word in, but then decided just to hush and let him charge full speed ahead.

Listening to him was the most fun I had in a weekend of great fun.

Meanwhile, at the University of North Carolina, a group of fraternity brothers won instant fame for their defense of the U.S. flag against these protesters. Not only did they boldly protect the Stars and Stripes against this gang, they were smiling and cracking jokes as they did so.

On campuses across the nation, from New York’s Columbia University to UCLA, other mobs of pro-Gaza demonstrators, students and outside agitators alike, have disrupted or forced the cancellation of graduation ceremonies, trashed dormitories and school grounds, and threatened Jewish students, while in some cases burning the U.S. flag, spouting anti-Semitic slurs, and shouting “Death to America” as well as “Death to Israel.”

For which the rest of us owe them a debt. Let me explain.

For decades now, some academics and other commentators have warned of a cancer growing in our universities. A case in point can be found in Martin L. Gross’s 1997 “The End of Sanity: Social and Cultural Madness in America.” Here, Gross shines a light on the destruction already underway in our universities almost 30 years ago: the lower academic standards, the junking of courses in Western civilization, the clamping down on free speech, the Marxism that had infiltrated so many of the humanities courses, all “the ravages of the New Establishment and its Orwellian creation, political correctness.”

Other books and articles—dozens of them—have since examined these same perversions of academia. The vast majority of these jeremiads were either ignored or scorned by the administrators and board members of these increasingly radicalized colleges. Consequently, the political correctness of the late 20th century mushroomed into the ugly situation we face today.

But here’s the good news.

Columbia University, the hotbed of these protests, is home to more than 8,000 undergraduates, with an extended student enrollment of 31,000. UCLA has more than 32,000 undergraduates and another 14,000 graduate students. In both places, and on other campuses, the number of students protesting Israel—and by extension, the United States—is only a fraction of the student body. As a result, we may hope that many of these nonparticipants are as disgusted by these protesters as were my nephew and the Carolina fraternity boys, that more and more students will, as Gross wrote, “openly battle the conspiracy of ignorance and conformity that has gripped America’s campuses.”

In addition, the failure of so many college presidents and their staffs to swiftly push back against the illegal encampments and grotesque calls for Jewish genocide offers a classic example of a revolution eating its own. In the wake of these demonstrations, some parents and prospective students are now turning their backs on institutions such as Harvard and Columbia, and going in search of less expensive institutions that provide a solid education without the political indoctrination and “woke” insanity. Some wealthy alumni are shutting off the spigot of money they’d previously made available to their radicalized alma maters. Firms that once recruited first from the Ivy League and other prestigious schools will likely begin seeking job candidates elsewhere.

Finally, the American people have been given front row seats to this circus. They’re seeing firsthand what they’ve long suspected, that the graduates of our elite universities, many of whom work in our federal government and in our courts, harbor an ugly disdain for the laws and liberties of the United States.

Will the spectacle of these protests bring an immediate end to academia’s long march to radicalism? Probably not. But the powerful law of unintended consequences has come into play, and the hatred and fanaticism of these protesters have driven millions of Americans, such as my nephew, into a renewed appreciation for their country.

To all those student protesters who have helped expose the rot in some of our elite universities while rousing the spirit of American patriotism, surely a heartfelt “thank you” is in order.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.