I’ve done multiple media appearances in the past few weeks about what to expect on campuses this fall from the anti-Israel activists.
I was interviewed earlier this week by Fox News digital, and the story just dropped, focused on the outrageous cry-bullying by the tentifada and campus checkpoint crews, US colleges revise rules as campuses brace for more anti-Israel chaos [archive]:
Critics say a wave of new rules limiting anti-Israel protests on college campuses impinge upon free speech. But a Cornell Law professor told Fox News Digital that many of these new policies are just explicitly stating already existing policies and protect Jewish and Israeli students’ rights to safety on campus.The summer break provided a respite from the protests against the Israel-Hamas war that swept colleges nationwide. As students prepare to return to campus this fall, higher education officials have developed strategies in an attempt to balance the rights of protesting students with other students’ safety and their ability to get to the classes they paid for.”Schools need to reach a balance between the right of students to an education and the rights of other students to protest,” William Jacobson, Cornell Law professor and founder of equalprotect.org, told Fox News Digital.Risa Liberwitz, a professor of labor and employment at Cornell, told NBC that “we are seeing a resurgence of repression on campuses that we haven’t seen since the late 1960s.”But Jacobson said that in most places “the additional measures are things that are already in place.””A lot of these things that people are complaining about were already implicit in the rules already but [had not been stated] explicitly,” he said.For example, he said Cornell already had a policy against camping on campus grounds; although encampments have now been banned, they technically were already against the university’s rules….”A lot of these things are trying to deal with the abuses that took place,” Jacobson told Fox News Digital.”A lot of what is going on is not actually free expression, it’s intimidation. When you use a bullhorn inside a building, you’re not doing it to express yourself, you’re doing it to intimidate other people,” he said. “People who are complaining about these rules, for the most part, are people who want to intimidate others.””It’s trying to create a toxic atmosphere on campus for Israel supporters, particularly Jewish Israel supporters,” he continued.Jacobson conceded that universities banning protests after 5 p.m. did seem “a bit harsh.””But just because the concept of these rules is reasonable doesn’t mean each and every one of them are reasonable,” he said.Jacobson said he had “no doubt” that some of these new policies would be challenged, particularly those imposed by public universities.However, he said that he “would think as long as there are reasonable time, place and manner restrictions, that is consistent with the Constitution, [for example], you can’t have bullhorns in a building, you can’t have encampments that disrupt student flow.”Jacobson characterized criticisms of the new rules as “cry-bullying.””One pattern we see is that there is often a lot of what I would term ‘cry-bullying’. [Anti-Israel protesters] intimidate people, they bully people, they create hostile environments. [But] the second that anyone says, ‘You can’t do that,’ they cry like their rights are being infringed upon,” Jacobson said.”They want an exception to rules that everyone else has to follow. I think that’s what’s driving this: cry-bullies that think they don’t have to live by the rules that other people have to live by,” he said.
Here is video of a library disruption at Cornell.
Expect the cry-bullying to grow, as people become fed up with the harassment and intimidation tactics, and finally push back, as I discussed recently on NTD News:
Meier: In terms of protests, what can we expect to see on college campuses this fall?WAJ: I think it’s going to be what happened last year, but on steroids. I think that what we’re going to see at the DNC in Chicago, those very aggressive protests bordering on riots, are going to happen on campuses. I think a lot of the students that I’m observing, the anti-Israel students who are also, in many ways the anti-American students, are extremely frustrated. They built their encampments, they built their tent cities, and it had virtually no impact on any of the campuses. Yes, it did intimidate a bunch of people and it did cause legal problems for the schools, but no schools have really changed their policies. None of these schools are boycotting Israel.And so I think they’re frustrated and I think that frustration’s going to play out in more aggressive protests and potentially violence this fall.Meier: On that intimidation note, in your view, what will it take for Jewish students to feel safe on college campuses and go to classes?WAJ: Well, I think it’s going to be enforcing the rules equally as to everybody. I don’t think Jewish students or any other group of students are entitled to any special treatment. But when you have rules on campus, for example, at Cornell, that prohibit the use of bullhorns inside academic buildings, they should enforce those rules and they didn’t at Cornell. And same with Columbia, and same with other places. If you have rules that you can’t set up an encampment, those should be enforced. They should be enforced neutrally. They should be enforced against everybody.So I think what’s going to change the situation on the campuses is if the schools start actually enforcing the rules that they already have, which prohibit these sort of intimidation tactics.
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