How did we get to the point where mobs of students feel the need to protest against Israel, to threaten Jewish students, and to express solidarity with the murderous group Hamas? It seems odd: Unarmed Israelis are attacked and killed, so American students suddenly organize to support the killers.
In today’s Martin Center article, Cornell University law professor William Jacobson reflects on this situation. He argues that it was long in the making, a result of anti-Western trends in our universities that began decades ago.
He writes:
In my view, the October 7 assault ignited an antisemitic blaze that has been decades in the making. I can trace it back to my days at Harvard Law School in the early 1980s, with the racialization of education. That is when Critical Legal Theory, later repackaged as Critical Race Theory (CRT), took hold at Harvard and quickly spread throughout American colleges and universities. At my website, CriticalRace.org, we have documented how deeply CRT, and variants like “anti-racism” and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), have captured American education.
The attack on Israel is part of a broader assault on Western civilization.
American students have been taught by many professors who are steeped in illiberal ideologies. “They are intent on tearing our system down and have made common cause with Islamicists who desire a world with only one religion, which they would enforce through Sharia law. This is what many now call the Red-Green alliance,” Jacobson observes.
American education leaders have allowed classrooms to be taken over by teachers who promote their anti-Western beliefs rather than teaching bodies of knowledge. Now, they can’t bring themselves to condemn the violence. “American education leaders proclaim that they are against hatred and bigotry,” Jacobson writes, “but if they were serious about that they would stop propounding harmful DEI ideology and instead uphold the dignity of each individual. Unfortunately, they won’t do that without a lot of pressure.”
Correct. Maybe the barbarity of the October 7 attack will rouse Americans to exert that pressure.