Commencements canceled. Ceremonies disrupted. Buildings and spaces damaged. Exams and classes moved online. One set of students has been suspended, expelled, and arrested. Another group of students is scared, frustrated, and silenced. Universities continue to fail to quell the pro-Hamas demonstrations and encampments that have erupted on hundreds of campuses across the country because they misdiagnose the problem. Antisemitism commissions and reviews of speech-and-assembly policies do little to address the question of why so many university students and faculty have such abhorrent views about Jews and America. Instead, university leaders should examine whom they are admitting and why they are educating their students to think this way.
Universities’ whack-a-mole strategies for calming their campuses have failed. They suspended pro-Hamas student groups for violating university policies only to have such groups continue to operate on their campuses. They created antisemitism commissions only to have many of the members resign, complaining that the commissions were toothless. They refined and clarified permissible protest spaces and times only to have protesters transform into rioters. They restricted certain campus spaces to university affiliates only to realize that many of their own affiliates were offenders. They sought to appease the protesters by letting them violate scores of university policies only to have them violate the law by attacking fellow students and damaging university property. Having seemingly exhausted all approaches, some universities had no choice but to call in law enforcement and restore order, while many others pursued appeasement.
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