University Presidents “have participated in the creation of a monstrous movement on campuses that uses targeting of Jews and Israel as an organizing mechanism”

University Presidents “have participated in the creation of a monstrous movement on campuses that uses targeting of Jews and Israel as an organizing mechanism”

I appeared Daily Signal Podcast on April 24, 2024, hosted by Virginia Allen. I’ve been on the DS podcast many times, and I appreciate how Virginia makes the guest the spotlight, not the host.

Here’s the segment as written up by the DS, What’s Behind Antisemitic Protests on College Campuses:

Pro-Palestine protests on the campuses of some of America’s most elite colleges have resulted in hundreds of arrests and led Columbia University in New York to move classes online for the remainder of the semester.

The anti-Israel protests at Columbia University, Yale, and New York University aren’t just representative of an “antisemitic movement,” but a “fundamentally an anti-Western and anti-American movement,” Bill Jacobson says.

Jacobson, a Cornell University law professor and the founder of Legal Insurrection and the Equal Protection Project, joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to explain who or what is driving the antisemitism on America’s college campuses.

Jacobson points to the activist organization National Students for Justice in Palestine as the organizing force behind the current protests.

“They are an organization I have followed and written about for well over a decade,” Jacobson says of the pro-Palestine group. “They support terrorists. They honor people like Rasmea Odeh, who killed two Jewish students in Jerusalem.”

Jacobson points to the ideology of critical race theory, which has spread across college campuses, for this rise in antisemitism. The related push for “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” or DEI, is fundamentally anti-colonialism, Jacobson says, explaining that Israel is viewed by antisemites as “colonial occupiers.”

The anti-Israel and anti-American sentiment likely will continue on college campuses, he says, because “unless you are going to change the faculty at these schools, unless you are going to change the fundamental ideologies which drive them, removing students from the courtyard isn’t going to change a thing.”

Listen to the full conversation with Jacobson on the podcast below.

(If player doesn’t load, click here)

Transcript (auto-generated, may contain transcription errors)(Sorry, no time stamps)

Virginia Allen: It is my pleasure to welcome back to “The Daily Signal Podcast,” Professor Bill Jacobson. Professor Jacobson is a Cornell law professor. He is the founder and publisher of Legal Insurrection and the founder of EqualProtect.org. Professor Jacobson, thanks so much for being back with us today.

Bill Jacobson: Thank you for having me back.

Allen: Well, this is a wild time in the world of education and universities, specifically what we have seen in the past over. I guess about a week now, 4 or 5 days, we’ve seen that pro-Palestine and anti-Semitic protests have been breaking out at Columbia University, at Yale, New York University, MIT, Tufts, Michigan universities in California. We’ve seen this all over. NYPD has arrested over 100 pro-Palestine protesters encamped at the University of New York. That was on Monday. In recent days, we’ve seen over 100 people arrested at multiple universities Columbia University, New York University. There were 45 students arrested out at Yale and the encampment. And the protests are growing and they’re growing in intensity. And they actually at Columbia University, they’ve now moved classes online for the rest of the semester, as there are safety concerns specifically for Jewish students. These are very prestigious universities.

What are the presidents of these universities doing in response to this situation?

Jacobson: For the most part, they’re really not doing anything. They’re occasionally issuing statements. They’re occasionally issuing warnings that people have to leave, which are typically ignored. So I think the presidents really don’t know what to do. They have participated in the creation of a monstrous movement on campuses that is anti-American, anti-Western, anti-capitalist, and that uses targeting of Jews and Israel as an organizing mechanism.

And that’s a point I really need to stress for people. This is not just an anti-Israel movement. It is not just an anti-Semitic movement. It is fundamentally an anti-Western and anti-American movement. If you listen to the rhetoric, they talk about decolonization. They refer to the United States as Turtle Island. They say that October 7th is what real decolonization looks like. So this is a dangerous, terrorist supporting, violence supporting movement which has not yet turned into October 7th on our campuses, but has serious potential to do so.

I think there’s a couple of things. Part of it the ostensible protests are organized by National Students for Justice in Palestine. They are an organization I have followed and written about for well over a decade. They support terrorists. They honor people like Rasmea Odeh, who killed two Jewish students in Jerusalem. She was one of their heroes. So they are coordinating it. That’s clear on their Twitter accounts and on their social media accounts. They are organizing this. They have branches, they say, in 300 colleges and universities in the United States.

And there’s obviously a high level of coordination for these encampments, because if you look at the photos of the encampments, almost all of them look like brand new, identical tents, like somebody put in an order. We need a thousand tents quickly from someplace, and they distribute them. These are not tents where people just, students just grabbed the tent they went camping in last summer and bring it to the protest. These are highly organized. Someone is purchasing this material. Someone is coordinating it.

But that is the short term. That’s the mechanical mechanism by which they are happening. If you want to truly understand why it’s happening, you have to understand how the campuses in the last 20 plus years have been completely captured by what is euphemistically referred to as Critical Race Theory or Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. And the ideology is one that they call anti-colonialism, and they consider the US a colonial power also.

So what you are getting is an ideology endorsed by administrations, endorsed by universities, taught by faculty, which calls for the decolonization of the world. Of course, they’re very selective. They’re not talking about the decolonization of China. They’re talking about the decolonization of the Western world. And they put Israel in that category.

So you have an ideology which has been taught relentlessly to students and which focuses on Israel as the object of their ire. So when they look at Israel, they don’t just see Israel, they see Westernism inside the Islamic world. They see the United States as the villain. So I think it’s a combination of an ideology which has been working its way to the surface and has completely captured many campuses, far more campuses than we’re seeing protests at. But certainly the so-called elite campuses have been captured by that ideology.

It’s driven by the DEI programming, which focuses students on race and ethnicity, and it is highly organized and funded by people like Students for Justice in Palestine.

So it’s a number of factors which have just risen to the surface because October 7th emboldened them. October 7th, exhilarated them, which is the term a Cornell professor infamously used at a rally soon after October 7th. And they are energized by it. They are energized and exhilarated by seeing violence in the most brutal forms perpetrated against people they think are colonial occupiers.

Allen: What has been the response on your campus at Cornell?

Jacobson:Well, initially in the fall [of 2023] it was one of the worst campuses by far. I mean it was in the headlines frequently because of things like the professor who led a rally and it was in downtown Ithaca, not on campus, but attended by a lot of people from campus downtown. If it was not that far from campus, in which he exhorted the crowd about how exhilarated he felt when he heard the news. The crowd cheered. The crowd broke into a chant of From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free, which is a call for the ethnic cleansing and, genocide of Jews in the Land of Israel.  There was a student at Cornell who’s now in federal custody, who made online threats to slit the throats of Jews on campus and to shoot up the kosher dining hall.

I think it’s very interesting, and nobody wants to talk about it, there’s no history of that student engaging in this sort of conduct. There’s no history of him having problems before he got to Cornell. He claims in his defense case that he was suffering from deep depression and mental illness. But the question is, what is it at Cornell that made this allegedly depressed student turn his depression and his mental illness against Jews? What is it at Cornell that caused that student to want to kill Jews, or at least threatened to kill Jews?

And I think it’s the campus culture. It’s a campus culture in which the killing of Jews was found to be exhilarating. It’s a campus culture in which there’s a core group of faculty who relentlessly dehumanize Israeli Jews and who relentlessly push the decolonization ideology. So that was Cornell in the fall. There were other incidents. There were mobs of students who marched through the campus and sometimes inside buildings with bullhorns calling for Intifada and revolution. And so it was pretty bad, I think.

Winter break calm things down a little bit, but it’s back. It’s back. Cornell anti-Israel students are organizing again. I assume there will be more protests inspired by what has happened on other campuses. They have significant faculty backing, and there is no real counterweight among the faculty other than perhaps me and 1 or 2 others. The faculty who are active on the issue, and most faculty aren’t active on the issue, but of the ones who are active on the Israel issue, almost 100% of them do not consider Israel legitimate, want Israel destroyed, and assist the students in that advocacy.

So Cornell is not in a good situation. Just a couple of days ago, there was a fairly manipulative, deceptive resolution put to the student body which called for an immediate cease fire. I think that was a very strategic move brought by these groups because it doesn’t didn’t on its face, blame Israel for anything. But of course, a cease fire without the release of the hostages is not much of a cease fire. They also passed a resolution calling on the university to divest from ten military contractors who supply weapons to Israel. So that was more anti-Israel. And those both passed. The student body referendum hasn’t been widely reported yet. Just a couple of days ago, the results were released.

So Cornell is not a great place if you’re pro-Israel, it’s not a great place if you’re a Jewish student. They are very active, hostile groups on campus. Maybe not as bad as Columbia, certainly not as bad as Columbia yet, but they’re there, and it’s a problem the Cornell administration does not want to grapple with.

Allen: Yeah, those calls for one for a cease fire, we’ve seen those on these other campuses, Columbia and New York University, as well as those same calls for divestment from any connections with Israel, from weapons manufacturers related to Israel. When it comes to the the First Amendment rights of these students. What is the grounding to say, okay, well, yes, these you know, these students are really shouting terrible things, but it’s within their First Amendment rights to stand in the middle of campus and and shout anti-Israel or anti-Semitic statements.

Jacobson: It’s very interesting situation on campuses. And of course, you do need to distinguish between public campuses and private campuses because public are clearly governed by the First Amendment.

But the places we’re having the most problems are private campuses like Columbia, Harvard, Cornell, Penn, Yale, and they don’t honor the First Amendment. They only discovered the First Amendment the day after October 7th, when crowds were chanting for an Intifada. All of the sudden, these schools which mercilessly punished micro-aggressions, which mercilessly will punish you if you use the wrong pronoun for somebody, or if you dead name somebody. All of these campuses which have bias reporting teams, which have anonymous bias reporting, which clamp down on all forms of speech, all of the sudden on October 7th, when students are calling for an Intifada, and people should remember the Intifada was the bloody suicide bombing campaign against Israeli Jews that killed over a thousand Israeli Jews, including in universities, on busses and at Passover seders, that when students all of the sudden are chanting that all of a sudden schools like Cornell discovered the First Amendment.

Well, I am of a view that if these schools want to adopt a First Amendment standard for speech on campus, I am all in favor of that. Anything that is permitted by the First Amendment should be permitted on Cornell’s campus, in Harvard’s campus and Columbia’s campus. But the reality is, it’s not. Depends who you’re targeting. If there were equivalent statements being made against any other ethnic group, or racial group or identity group, you would hear howls from administrations.

And so I think it’s a completely false analogy to say, well, we support free speech, therefore these students can say that. Yes, if you always support free speech, but what the students don’t have a right to do, even on a public campus, is to engage in conduct which is meant to be and is physically intimidating to others. And that’s why they marched through classroom buildings with bullhorns. It’s an act of intimidation. That’s why they form these lines, blocking people from moving. It’s an act of intimidation.

So yes, they have a right under the First Amendment to say vile and terrible things. And the schools should have discovered that long ago, not just when those chants were made against Jews. So that’s the situation. They have a First Amendment right. But private campuses never honored the First Amendment. Why is it all of the sudden they’re honoring the First Amendment when the targets are Jews?

Allen: Let’s talk about some of the fallout that we’re seeing. We have seen that, you know, on some campuses, for example, the University of Minnesota, when these protests have popped up, they’ve actually shut them down very, very quickly. Why are they being allowed to continue to the extent where Columbia University has now said we’re canceling classes, in-person classes for the rest of the semester, moving everything online, in order to essentially allow these protests to continue, why not just shut it down?

Jacobson: Because at campuses like Columbia, the administrators largely agree with the students. The faculty largely agrees with the students.

We cannot view what’s happening at Columbia and some of the other Ivy League schools as something that is foreign to those schools. It is part of the ideology of the schools. It is not part of the ideology of schools elsewhere. And I think one thing that’s very notable is that it has not happened everywhere. We are not seeing this at schools in red states. We are not seeing this at most places in the country, we are seeing it at schools, private elite colleges and universities which have embedded this ideology deeply into the culture of the campus.

And that ideology is an anti-Western ideology. It is a tear down the statues ideology. It is remove names from buildings ideology. It is a deconstruction of our society.

It is very reminiscent to me of a Khmer Rouge in Cambodia sort of ideology, where you go back to Year Zero. These are very dangerous ideologies which have gripped some of our most elite private institutions. And the fact that it has not yet turned into gross violence does not mean it’s not going to. But it certainly endorses that gross violence. There are many videos. We’ve posted them on our website of people talking about becoming martyrs. Notice how they idolized and idealized the tragic soul who burned himself alive in protest of what was happening in Gaza, and they held him up as somebody to be emulated.

I do not think it is unreasonable to think that at least some small percentage of these people chanting to honor the martyrs, which is what was projected on a building last fall I believe it was a George Washington University to honor the martyrs. It would not be surprising if one or 2 or 3 or more decided they needed to become martyrs.

Allen: Robert Kraft is the owner of the New England Patriots. Forbes estimates he’s worth about $11 billion. Columbia University is his alma mater. He actually announced this week that he is no longer comfortable supporting the university until corrective action is taken. What do you think the result will be from donors like Kraft pulling support from these university campuses? Is that something that could turn the tide and lead to action?

Jacobson:I think it might lead to superficial action. It might lead to window dressing. But unless you are going to change the faculty at these schools, unless you are going to change the fundamental ideologies which you drive them, removing students from the courtyard isn’t going to change a thing.

So I say to Robert Kraft and to others, where have you been? We’ve been warning about this for a decade. We’ve been telling you what has been happening, and you’ve ignored it, and you’ve ignored it because you have some sort of misplaced allegiance to the school you went to for four years out of your life, 50 years ago. Why are you doing that? You have been funding these, donors have funded the devastating situation we’re in now on these campuses, and they funded it to the tune of billions of dollars over decades. And now all of the sudden, they’re realizing the mistake of their ways.

Well, I’m glad they’re realizing it now, but they owe the rest of our society an apology for having helped create this. They should not simply withhold their donations pending corrective action, whatever that means. They should stop their donations completely and they should be redirected to something which helps build up our society instead of tearing it down.

Allen: Professor Jacobson, I want to give you a second to share a little bit about EqualProtect.org, the work you’re doing there as well as at legal insurrection.

Jacobson:Sure. EqualProtect.org, which is called the Equal Protection Project, is a project we started a little over a year ago to challenge discrimination, racial and ethnic discrimination done in the name of Eiversity, Equity, and Inclusion. What we began to see is many university and college programs and governmental programs and corporate programs, it’s almost everywhere, which openly discriminate on the basis of race, typically against whites and Asians, but not exclusively against them.

And so we challenged them. We file legal challenges. We filed almost 25 so far. About half the schools have backed down and changed their programing. We have a major lawsuit going against the State of New York for a program they fund, which operates at 56 colleges and universities in New York state, which discriminates, on the basis of race. We’re representing Asian, the parents of Asian students who are not eligible for this program because only, black, Latino and Native American students have an absolute right to enter it.

So this is everywhere, and that’s what we do. And so we’ve been very active. We’ve received a fair amount of media attention for our legal challenges, and we are ramping up to expand our challenges, because the motto of EqualProtect.org is that there is no good form of racism, and that the answer to racism never is more racism. And unfortunately, particularly in education, but not exclusively, particularly in education, there seems to be an Ibram Kendi sort of formulation that we can discriminate on the basis of race because of things that took place 10, 20, 50, 100 years ago. And we think that’s a dead end for society. So that’s what EqualProtect.org does. All of our challenges, everything we’ve done is on our website. And I would encourage your listeners to to go visit and take a look.

Allen: That website is equalprotect,org. And then, of course, they can find all of your writing. Professor Jacobson as legalinsurrection.com. Professor Jacobson, thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate it.

Jacobson: Great. Thank you so much

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