Intifada on Campus

The violence in Israel and Gaza has increased tensions on college campuses across the U.S. Some protests have been anti-Israel, with protestors shouting pro-Palestine messages and slogans like “Death to Jews”. Jewish students have said they felt threatened by these protests. 

Recent protests on college campuses: 

• Anti-Israel protests: Advocates said that Jewish students in a campus library felt threatened by protestors shouting pro-Palestine messages.
• Pro-Palestine rallies: Columbia University students held pro-Palestine rallies.
• Senate condemns student groups: The Senate condemned student groups for protests in solidarity with Palestinian nationalism (read as HAMAS).

This may all seem fresh now, but conservatives know better. Ask any conservative speaker such as Ben Shapiro who has dealt with threats and violence for merely offering an alternative to the progressive/liberal democrat point of view.

The events at Evergreen College in 2017 were a harbinger of the things to come.

The “no whites on campus” incident at Evergreen State was the precursor to the “intifada on campus” activism now. The agitators learned that college presidents were too weak to oppose them. The universities tried to delegate moral questions to DEI officials—who were with the mob.

In 2017, students at the Washington liberal arts school harassed Biology Prof. Bret Weinstein because he refused to leave campus for the annual “Day of Absence” on April 12, The Washington Times reports.

They are trying to get him fired.

Once a year, nonwhite students and faculty leave campus and the whites stay on campus, but in 2017 it was reversed, and Weinstein told the director of a campus multicultural office that he was staying put.

Bay Area entrepreneur William Treseder posted Bret’s email to the diversity official, which said the requested absence of whites from campus was “a show of force, and an act of oppression in and of itself”:

You may take this letter as a formal protest of this year’s structure, and you may assume I will be on campus during the Day of Absence. … On a college campus, one’s right to speak – or to be – must never be based on skin color.

As an alternative to leaving campus, Weinstein offered to organize a public discussion of “race through a scientific/evolutionary lens,” as long as “people attend with an open mind, and a willingness to act in good faith.”

Protesters decided to raise hell after reading about Weinstein’s refusal to judge people by their race.

They recorded their harassment of Weinstein, apparently thinking they would be applauded for their bravery of surrounding and yelling at a professor (possibly unaware it backfired at Yale).

Weinstein tries to “reason with dozens of students who routinely shout him down, curse at him and demand his resignation,” as captured on video:

“There’s a difference between debate and dialectic,” Mr. Weinstein says in the video.

“Debate — wait a second — debate means you are trying to win; dialectic means you are using disagreement to discover what is true. I am not interested in debate. I am only interested in dialectic, which does mean I listen to you, and you listen to me.”

One student responds, “We don’t care what terms you want to speak on. This is not about you. We are not speaking on terms—on terms of white privilege. This is not a discussion. You have lost that one.” …

Another protester asks the professor whether he believes “black students in sciences are targeted.”

After asking for a clarification, Mr. Weinstein says, “I do not believe that anybody on our faculty, with intent, specially targets students of color.”

That remark draws shrieks of outrage.

Weinstein said the protesters are threatening to dox the students defending him and the school was remaining mum. He also asked President George Bridges, himself surrounded by protesters at one point, for a response.

Bret’s brother Eric, managing director of investment firm Thiel Capital, defended his brother against the “lying mob” on Twitter: “You SJWs just targeted the wrong guy.”

Student activists are also trying to get the college’s police chief fired because officers are allegedly seeking out and confronting “black trans disabled students” at the college, The Olympian reported.

Unsurprisingly, the administration is encouraging even more disruptive student protests by promising to work with the activists “to address their issues,” saying officials have had “an intense and useful conversation” with them.