EDITORIAL: College administrators set stage for campus unrest

On Tuesday, pro-Hamas protesters at Columbia University smashed windows and barricaded doors as they took over a campus building. This after university leaders feebly and belatedly promised to break up an encampment known as the “liberated zone” that had succeeded in shutting down the school. Students chanted openly antisemitic slogans and insisted that the school “divest” from companies that do business with Israel.

Similar nonsense has spread to other campuses in the past week, but the national focus remains on Columbia. It’s anyone’s guess how many of these kids are actual students and how many are outside agitators.

Protests are protected by the First Amendment, obviously. So is offensive speech. The demonstrators embarrass themselves by embracing the cause of barbaric terrorists who seek to kill Jews and wipe out Israel, but aggressive stupidity isn’t against the law either.

Yet imagine if the students destroying property and making threats were members of the Young Republicans raising hell about “diversity, equity and inclusion” mandates. They would have been rounded up, expelled and prosecuted faster than you can say Gaza.

Higher education officials across the country have spent years subverting their mission by spinning a cocoon for students, policing so-called “hate” speech, creating “safe spaces” and punishing “micro-aggressions” to protecting their young charges from ideas they find uncomfortable or distasteful. They have turned a blind eye to the toxic cloud of identity politics that now envelopes institutions of higher learning. Yet suddenly the president of Columbia gets weak-kneed and “negotiates” with hard-left radicals who don’t even bother to hide their virulent antisemitism.

Columbia is a private university. But the protesters there have no right to vandalize property, break windows, menace fellow students or create an atmosphere of disruption that prevents their colleagues from attending class. School officials finally grew a pair late Tuesday and called in the police to deal with activists who escalated the tensions. The occupied building was cleared. Good. Higher education leaders must abandon their allegiance to appeasement. Demonstrators should be awakened to the consequences of their illegal actions.

College administrators across the United States should stop negotiating with those who go beyond peaceful protests and break the law. This country has spent three years tracking down and prosecuting participants in the Jan. 6 demonstrations that turned into the Capitol melee. Campus radicals who cross similar lines deserve the same fate.