Since October 7, there’s been one story that’s captured the world’s attention and dominated the headlines. The Hamas invasion of Israel and Israel’s subsequent response.
This is a story that is thousands of years old in the making and is a very heated topic.
In recent days, there hasn’t been much news coming from the region and the story has been picked up by American college students. If you haven’t been following it, students all over America have been protesting their university’s connections to Israel.
Truth be old, since October 7, many American colleges have found themselves in the crossfire resulting in a lot of collateral damage.
Irrespective of which side you support, it would appear that many prestigious universities such as Harvard, Yale and Columbia have suffered major reputational damage as a result of their action or inaction.
After her failure to condemn anti semitism, Claudine Gay, former President of Harvard was an early casualty of this although her ultimate downfall was due to plagiarism.
What has hurt the colleges has been a clear lack of leadership. They are confusing free speech for hate speech and so things got out of hand. The police finally acted as Columbia University and time will tell if this means the end of the festivities.
Will the students stay there even after classes are over for the year?
Further complicating matters are the claims that a percentage of the protestors aren’t even students. If this is the case, the universities really are liable for making it completely free for all.
Where do we go from here?
What will the fallout be?
The irony of all is that the protestors with their violence and hate speech don’t do their cause any justice. People don’t take them seriously and so this just becomes an annoyance.
These protestors may be trying to recreate what happened on campus in the 1960s but the two have nothing in common.
So then, people turn their attention to the college administration wondering why they’re allowing this to happen.
There is also the question of who is going to pay for the extensive amount of damage caused.
Historically there may have been a lot of prestige attached to attending a school such as Columbia and receiving an education from there but this may not be the case. If enrollments drop, there won’t be any great mystery as to why.