I’ll preface my commentary with the obvious: All of the “mostly peaceful” protests by our “college educated” on campuses nationwide that are clearly pro-Hamas and aimed at Jewish students are wrong, illegal, and all involved should either go back to the classes their parents and taxpayers are funding or be arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
But why the sudden sanctimonious outrage from the media and pundit class, billionaire donors, business leaders, and politicians? Why are the harassment and threats against Jewish students a red line that’s been crossed and now found to be totally unacceptable? It’s only because the current violence hits too close to home.
Several major donors have called a hard stop to their past donations:
New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, a Columbia graduate, said he was stopping donations immediately and charged the college with failing to keep its Jewish students safe.
Billionaire investor Leon Cooperman, a business school graduate, said he would stick with a stop on donations which began shortly after the October 7 Hamas massacres.
[snip]
Cooperman, Blavatnik and Kraft have donated nearly $100 million in total to Columbia, according to some estimates — money that has created multiple buildings on campus, scholarships for engineers, and a center for Jewish students.
After Eric Garner’s death in 2014 death and Freddie Gray’s in 2015, college students eagerly joined the burgeoning #BlackLivesMatter #DefundThePolice movements. Permitless street protests started becoming a new norm where traffic was strategically snarled, and thousands of commuters were held hostage to those who believed they could demand to be heard at the inconvenience of others.
Many of those protests resulted in millions of dollars of public and private property damage, looting of businesses, and burning of buildings and homes in predominantly black neighborhoods. Still, we were all told to deal with it because protesters were exercising their right to free speech.