Columbia University's president Minouche Shafik has now joined her counterparts at UPenn and Harvard in falling on their collective swords and resigning after massive anti-semitic protests erupted on their campuses following the massacre of 1,200 Israelis in October 2023. Each of these presidents, women who were the first, second, and third women to serve in this role at their respective universities, left their positions because they could not handle the violence, anger, and hatred of the students on their campuses.
Now we are facing the potential election of the first woman president of the United States, and she's facing these same campus protests writ large across America. Like the women who rose to power at Penn, Columbia, and Harvard, she has little to distinguish herself apart from her identity and the assumption that this identity magically guarantees moral rectitude to her opinions and policy decisions. That assumption flows from the same ideology which drove the campus protests across the US, forcing the resignation of three Ivy League university heads.
The campus occupations, which popped up on campuses from Harvard to UCLA, from Princeton to the University of Washington, had in common an opposition for US foreign policy in Israel, a belief in the concept of settler colonialism, and a faith that being oppressed was the equivalent of being morally good. It was under these conditions that students at Columbia quit going to classes, abandoned their dorms for tents on the quad, and occupied Hamilton Hall. As they sat in their tents, screaming about the occupation of "Palestine," they refused to allow Jewish students to cross their encampment.
It wasn't just at Columbia, but across the nation that encampments like this, organized by students and agitators, prevented Jewish students from walking freely through campus. The rhetoric that came from these student agitators was nothing less than extreme. They called for the eradication of the nation of Israel, the murder of Israeli soldiers, and the destruction of the United States. This may sound hyperbolic. It's not. These were the rallying cries coming from the mouths of the most elite students in the United States, the ones being groomed for future leadership.
Which brings me back to Shafik. Along with UPenn's Liz Magill and Harvard's Claudine Gay, Shafik was hauled before Congress to answer for her students last year. All three women were asked if they thought anti-semitism was an acceptable use of free speech on campus. No answer. They were asked what they were doing to make sure that Jewish students could still access the education they had signed up for. No answer. They were asked what they intended to do about these protests going forward -- protests which are due to break out on campuses again as soon as students return to campuses. Crickets. It was clear that all of them had let resentments and hate fester and flare up on their respective campuses and had no game plan for how to stop it.
Each one of these presidents had overseen curriculum steeped in Marxist ideology, grievance and oppression studies. Professors would stand among students at the protests and occupations telling the students that these agitations were what they had been taught to do. The professors saw the occupations as practicums where students could put what they'd learned in their queer and gender studies classes to the test. In fighting for the right of terrorists to take up arms and fight their oppressors, the professors intimated, the students were fulfilling the promise of their studies.
In each of these cases, Columbia, Harvard, UPenn, and the other universities that faced the same protest actions, the students stood up against Jewish students as a proxy war against Israel itself. And the presidents not only let it happen, but could not get control over it even when they tried. When Shafik called in the NYPD to clear Hamilton Hall, where the occupiers had barricaded themselves, it was a sign of defeat. If Shafik had control of the campus, she would not have needed the largest police force in the country to come to campus and remove students from an administration building.
And now they are coming for Kamala Harris, the illustrious, identitarian veep. Only a short week ago, Harris was heckled by pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protesters, like those who has spilled out from college campuses after October 7. Protesters screamed out at her as she stood on stage repeating her stump speech. As they yelled, Harris tried to shame them. "I'm speaking," she said, hearkening back to her VP debate against Mike Pence in 2020. "I'm speaking" in context means several things, including an attempt to grab control based on her identity factors: black, female. By identitarian logic, the vice president is oppressed, and by the logic of progressive discourse, that means that she gets to speak first, and that what she has to say carries all that much more weight. An event simply in favor of her candidacy was crashed in New York City on Wednesday night where agitators set off smoke bombs and held up signs saying "No Votes for Bombala's Genocide." 14 of them were arrested.
The agitators wanted some kind of response, some kind of indication of what Harris' policy on Israel and Gaza might be if she gets voted into the White House. And they haven't gotten it. Meanwhile, there are clearly massive anti-Israel events planned for the Democratic National Convention next week. While Kamala is trying to keep the euphoria going, attempting to dance and sing her way into the White House, her base will be out in the street demanding answers. Will she be lenient like Magill? Bend over backwards like Gay? Or call in a bigger force, like Shafik, because she doesn't know how to handle it on her own?
The far left of Harris' party hates Israel. They love Palestinians not for their culture or policies–which include anti-LGBTQ and anti-female regulations as in other strict, Muslim countries–but simply because they are "oppressed." And Harris can't handle them. Even at her speech, rarefied identity wasn't enough to keep them in their place. The campus riots will likely start up again. As soon as the college-bound finish their orientations, they'll be picking up their marching orders and protest signs to join their comrades on the quad.
There is already noise that Harris would like to throw Israel under the bus, to eradicate funding and arms shipments. The same woman that waved the flag of Ukraine in Congress as she promised to send him endless weapons and aid, may think the aid packages and arms sales to Israel go too far. Harris may sympathize with the protesters. She may even think that her best course of action is to ignore them, shame them, as she tried to do in Detroit. But she would also do well to heed the warnings of Shafik, Gay, and Macgill: it doesn't matter how close your identity is to the top of the oppression hierarchy. If you don't find a way to quash the protests, your career is going down. Of course, if she doesn't quash them, her career is likely going down, too.
