A “student revolution” happened last week, at the very campus whose moniker was recently changed to “The Revolutionaries.”
Revolutionary, if equated with terroristic, indeed it was: For over three riveting hours filled with chats wishing death to people like me, my family, my friends, and my two home countries, a mob of students and outside agitators “broke the barricades” around George Washington University Yard and stacked them in the center of the plaza.
Protesters took turns stacking up metal fences, waving a large Palestinian flag, while shouting “Whose campus? Our campus!” – a campus in our nation’s capital nonetheless, which they have vandalized with slogans reading “no justice, no peace,” “down with Zionism,” and posters with swastikas contained within Jewish stars among a plethora of other vile messages.
I’ll refrain from re-asserting that this behavior is unacceptable, because even President Minouche Shafik of Columbia University, who witnessed the original pro-Hamas encampments come to fruition under her watch, repeated the word ad nauseam in her congressional hearing.
“Unacceptable” has been rendered a useless term because no matter how unacceptable, Jewish students across our nation’s campuses are afraid to leave their apartments and walk to class.
No matter how unacceptable, a Jewish student simply standing, holding an Israeli flag across from one of these many encampments, can be ordered to leave by law enforcement while the mob and their makeshift village are permitted to stay. As of this writing, the Palestinian flag remains planted atop stacked fences and tents occupying the entire street, to the chagrin of the victorious mob.
No doubt this is infuriating, and the questions we are left with are, “Why did this happen,” and “How?” History in its presentism answers both. Kristallnacht of 1938 cannot be addressed without understanding the Volkisch pseudosciences that infiltrated the most prestigious German universities with Nazi ideologies in the early 1930s. Dubious and distorted diversity, equity, and inclusion philosophies have permeated our academic institutions.
At an Institute of Middle East Studies conference titled “Middle East Knowledge Production in the Aftermath of October 7,” one of the panels promoted “decolonizing knowledge,” faculty preached “producing knowledge” for “resistance practices,” and doing so “quietly in the classroom” to “reclaim their power” over “narratives” that serve the oppressors: white people, the US, and the State of Israel. Of course, the Jews, embodied in their nation-state, are once again the go-to scapegoats. University faculty is grooming my peers, young naive minds, into antisemites and revolutionary terrorists.
Sadly, the Nazis of today, their uniforms replaced with keffiyehs, have been enabled and emboldened to win. And, so far, They’ve won because moral, proactive, and effective leadership has failed – and they’ll continue winning so long as our administrators, local governments, and world leaders do not act swiftly and decisively.
'Never again' happening before our eyes
On the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day and particularly after October 7, which marked the most tragic day in Jewish history since the Holocaust, “never again” is happening before our very eyes. Antisemitism is back in style: its undergarments thrifted, topped with fashionable new outerwear.
The intellectualization, moralization, institutionalization, legalization, and normalization of antisemitism is a threat not only to the Jewish people but to Western civilization as a whole.
We must all wake up and act – now. A robust deradicalization and a swift restoration of law and order are imperative to uphold this most fragile civilization that has reached the precipice of utter demise.
The writer is a senior at George Washington University and served as the commissioner of GWU’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism.