After weeks of angry protests and chronic trespassing, some anti-Zionist college activists have found limited success convincing their schools to take their demands seriously.
Unfortunately, the chaos that erupted at Denver’s Auraria campus and elsewhere, shows that it’s difficult to put the genie back into the bottle when schools enable mob rule.
Throughout the spring term, colleges all over the country chose to drag their feet, rationalizing the mob violence and rampant antisemitism on their campuses with inappropriate applications of free speech protections that denied anti-Zionism’s violent bigotry.
My school was no different.
As far as I could tell, University of Colorado Denver (CU Denver) Chancellor Michelle Marks’ administration was earnest in their attempt to diffuse the pro-Palestinian agitation on campus — if only they were competent enough to realize that the anti-Israel message was just as awful as the feces and drug paraphernalia that those individuals left on my campus.
Why is my school incompetent? First, for some reason, they refused to accept that criminal activity on university grounds should automatically warrant severe disciplinary action.
Second, the official “description” of events in Chancellor Marks’ latest open letter is bafflingly uninformed and outright insulting. And third, the weak acknowledgment of harm caused by terrorist supporters gaslights wary students.
Marks’ description of the protesters as “anti-war” ignores the fact that no protestors ever condemned the Palestinian terrorists responsible for the October 7 Hamas massacre, and the ongoing war.
Instead, these students called upon CU Denver to pressure Israel to leave Hamas in power in Gaza, shrink the size of Israel, and then absorb so many descendants of refugees that Israel would cease to exist.
This also insinuates that people who disagree (like me) are pro-war, and therefore support killing the innocent. This is an inversion of the truth.
Harming Arab civilians is not required to maintain Jewish freedom and safety. But if you ask any campus anti-Zionists how to “free Palestine,” they’ll likely shout about “ending Israel’s occupation” from “the River to the Sea.”
That means destroying the State of Israel.
Whether it means forcibly transferring millions of Jewish families from their homes, expelling seven million Jews, or committing a genocide that would surpass the atrocities of October 7, there is no just or peaceful way to liberate Palestine “from the River to the Sea.”
Later in Chancellor Marks’ message, a paragraph begins with “[Though] we have not witnessed and do not believe there is any concern of violence … Some members of our community have reported feeling fearful and intimated.”
Are they implying that my fear of being harassed because of my beliefs is irrational? In a school system that defines “emotional,” and “cultural” attacks as violence — and where using the wrong pronoun could be a fire-able offense — it is incredible that such a policy is not universally applied to Jewish students as well.
Chancellor Marks’ message closed by directing students to campus resources for those in need of “health and wellness” support and emergency safety, as if to say that the school was refusing to confront the mob violence and incitement to genocide against Israeli and Zionist Jews.
There was no strong condemnation of the protestors’ intimidation tactics, no tangible plan for restoring peace and “fulfilling their mission,” as the chancellor claims, and no assurances to the clearly anxious Jewish community that we would be treated fairly and safely.
For a belligerent mob of students that caused $290,000 of damage while acting like Nazi Brown Shirts, it’s frustrating to see them get off virtually scot-free.
Even though the encampment disbanded a few weeks ago, the harm continues. Since it seems like no one can actually stop these homegrown bigots from coming back in the fall semester with their posters and tents, I will think twice before trusting the administration ever again.
I thought college was supposed to be different.
This article was originally published in the Algemeiner.