Something tells me that the foreign-student agitator issue won’t trouble Columbia University for long. They may not get the chance to be troubled by foreign students at all after yesterday’s disgraceful paroxysm of anti-Semitic intimidation and violence.
As both John and David have already recounted, pro-Hamas demonstrators seized control of yet another building on the Columbia campus, threatened Jewish students for being “Zionists,” and committed violence and vandalism. They also revealed themselves as something less than von Clausewitz when it comes to planning their battles, Police showed up and locked them in the building, and refused to allow them to leave unless they unmasked and identified themselves.
That led to mass arrests … finally:
Maybe next time, they’ll stick to the quad, eh? This is what should have happened in every single riot and ‘occupation’ at Columbia. The NYPD do not have immediate jurisdiction in these matters; they had to wait for Columbia to request their intervention, which took months of riots and intimidation campaigns to finally happen. And it only happened in that instance because the rioters seized a building and took two janitors hostage, a case that is still playing out in courts.
This time, Columbia got the police involved quickly after a couple of its campus police officers got injured in the riot. This was no doubt motivated in part to avoid any more sanctions from the Trump administration, which has already suspended much of the federal funds Columbia receives. The quick call to the NYPD this time allowed police to intervene appropriately, and to close the trap that the terrorist sympathizers created for themselves. Seventy-eight were arrested after they realized that they had no choice but to acquiesce.
The police did their job, but it remains to be seen whether prosecutors in New York will do theirs. The DA in Manhattan is still Alvin Bragg, who takes a lot more interest in NDAs to porn stars than in keeping Jewish students and faculty safe in his jurisdiction from violent agitators. While these perps will at least get identified, photographed, and booked, they likely will receive the Left Wing Agitator Privilege routinely afforded such defendants and escape any kind of accountability.
Jim Geraghty recalls what Bragg did the last time Columbia acted to put an end to a riot:
Back in May 2024, pro-Palestinian demonstrators took over Hamilton Hall on the campus of Columbia University and dozens were arrested. But a month later, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg dropped charges in 31 of the 46 cases:
Apart from trespassing, a misdemeanor, proving any other criminal charges would be “extremely difficult,” [Bragg spokesman Doug] Cohen said.
For similar reasons, prosecutors also dismissed charges against nine of the 22 students and staff members at City College who were arrested inside a campus building and charged with burglary during a protest that took place on the same night as the arrests at Hamilton Hall.
Hey, a busy man like Alvin Bragg must prioritize. It’s not like those protesters committed a serious crime in New York City, like falsifying business records back in 2016 to conceal payments to a porn star. It was just burglary, destruction of private property, and assaulting janitors.
Progressive privilege is a hell of a drug — locally, anyway. Any foreign students in this group had better start packing for home, however:
How many of these were foreign students? So far, we don’t know, but when the State Department starts detaining them for deportation, we should get a pretty good idea. That may not be the end of the problems Columbia will face, however, even if they finally and belatedly have chosen to comply with the Civil Rights Act and local laws. The Department of Education will likely press Columbia to expel all of these students under Title VI enforcement. If the school fails to act, the Trump administration will almost certainly suspend even more federal funding and demand a new agreement to restore it.
And if there are a significant number of foreign students in this batch of detainees, the Department of Homeland Security might get involved, too. Three weeks ago, Kristi Noem threatened to revoke Harvard’s status that allows them to enroll foreign students, and this is hardly Columbia’s first rodeo with violent foreign agitators on campus. That would cut off another major revenue stream for Columbia and put their entire financial model at risk at the same time their credibility model is already circling the drain.
That might be for the best, Matt Taibbi writes today in a lengthy blast at Academia:
The problem with the American educational system (I feel like a product of this) is that easy manipulation of the subsidy complex means too many institutions can thrive offering liberal arts degrees of gross inutility to suckers like me. Instead of the two parties footballing back and forth dueling theories of federal First Amendment overreach, why don’t we just:
One, yank universities off the federal teat, toss them overboard, and see which find market takers for their graduates in intersectional self-flagellation. The vast majority will change curricula overnight, if they don’t close shop outright. By decoupling schools from taxpayer largesse I’m including severe reductions to federal student loan programs, not because I’m a heartless degenerate of years who wants to squash the dreams of youth (I am that, but that’s not the reason), but because the rats in my higher education maze need incentives to fight harder over tuition scraps. There are too many as is. Now they all just sit in place, get fat, and suck.
Please allow me to offer a joyous welcome to Matt in the Decolonize Academia Now! movement. This was exactly my point in October 2023. The best way to protect the Constitution and to force colleges and universities to offer full pricing signals and consumer pressure is to eliminate all federal subsidies, unconditionally, across the board, including access to foreign student visas. Right now the Trump administration enjoys the power these give them to force Academia into proper behavior, but the Civil Rights Act already gives them that authority via criminal prosecution and lawsuits. The next administration might just reverse these policies to reinforce the progressive agenda all over again. It’s better to dismantle it and salt the earth around it.
