A commentary
By J. F. Kelly, Jr.
Students, playing the role of useful idiots for outside agitators, cannot be allowed to take over universities. Aside from the obvious legal reasons, students, when formed into a shouting mob, lack the intelligence and judgement that effective leaders require and are not capable of running anything more complex than a keg party. For most, their brains are not yet fully developed. The signs of their stunning degree of ignorance were on full display during the campus disruptions that rocked the nation.
For example, take those female rioters who waved Palestinian flags and shouted, “We are Hamas!” Shouldn’t they, then, have been accompanied in public by an adult male relative? I’ll bet they were even driving cars without adult male supervision and associating with members of the LGTB+ community. Hamas is a recognized terrorist organization and sworn enemy of the United States that proclaims “Death to Americans and Jews”. Its members stone gay people and treat women like property, What are these people even doing in this country? Oh, right; the southern border is open. All are welcome here. And by the way, Palestine is not a nation.
Who is financing this epidemic of student temper tantrums? While much of it comes from outside sources, money is fungible. Much of it also comes from the parents of students who went to great lengths and expense to send their darlings to elite universities like Columbia, ground zero for the current mess, only to have their children learn to hate their country and pledge allegiance to its enemies. This is the flower of American youth and our hope for the future? God help us.
What to do about all this? Arresting them for breaking the law doesn’t help much, except for the satisfaction some people may get in watching their well-nourished, limp bodies being hefted onto police buses like baggage only to be released a few hours later to return to the protest party and their charges expunged. Suspending them amounts to a few days off from school. They must, instead, be expelled for violating university rules and the law after repeated warnings so that they will be required to explain to potential employers on job applications why they were kicked out of school. Falsifying any data on a job application is grounds for immediate termination at most large companies. It was the “go to” method for terminating a problem employee when I was director of human resources for a Fortune 500 company.
But that would be unfair to the parents who paid big bucks for that education, you may say. The Bible does tell us that we shouldn’t blame parents for the sins of their children (and vice-versa) but it is mute regarding protecting them from bad investments. Expelling them would give the students pause to reconsider the consequences of supporting the cause du jour they select as student activists.
By way of full disclosure, I may have been considered a student activist 75 years ago when, as editor and editorial writer of my small college newspaper, I advocated for higher teacher salaries. This earned the wrath of the local school board which subsequently denied me employment although I had an offer at higher pay elsewhere in the state. My parents wanted me to teach in my hometown and I would soon be departing for Navy Officer Candidate School in any event. I was finally hired (at a yearly salary of $2700) after a group of Jewish businessmen which included my employer at my part-time job, intervened and questioned why a graduate of the local teacher’s college who ranked 11th academically among the men in his class was denied employment when there were vacant positions. In the Navy I successfully advocated for women in ships before the idea became fashionable and for many of Adm. Bud Zumwalt’s liberal policies.
Students, of course, have a right to demonstrate peacefully but any fool knows that many of these demonstrations have gone far beyond peaceful protest and were laden with hate speech, most of it reflecting blatant anti-Semitism which put many Jewish student in fear of their safety and denied many students access to their campus facilities for which they or their parents or the taxpayers paid. Many were denied graduation ceremonies to celebrate their accomplishments. I’m not a lawyer but it seems to me that they deserve to be compensated financially for their loss. So should foreign students.
As for the university presidents who failed in their fundamental responsibility to provide a safe learning environment, free of outside agitators, violence, threats and hate speech, they should be terminated for incompetence and lack of faith in their leadership ability.
May 9, 2024