Reaction to Hamas massacre shows it’s time to decolonize College Campuses

 Nothing has so vividly revealed the moral rot of our elite universities as the reaction to Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre of Jews.

A closer look at the peculiar vocabulary of the dominant campus left points to the core of the problem — and the left’s insincerity.

Normal human beings not handicapped by a contemporaneous college education may be wondering why the pro-Hamas academics coming out of the woodwork make their chief complaint that Jews are “colonizers.”

It has long been tiresome to review the lengthy history of Jews living in “Judea” (as the Romans called the Holy Land when they occupied it) centuries before Islam was a gleam in Muhammad’s eye, not to mention the 20th-century international mandate to restore a Jewish homeland after centuries of occupation by the Ottoman Empire and other previous “colonizers” or Israel’s complete withdrawal from Gaza more than 15 years ago, after which Gaza decided self-government meant empowering Hamas.

Nor does it do any good to point out the entirety of human history is one of invasion and conquest and virtually no nation or ethnic group, including especially Jews, is without a history of conquest by a hostile or opportunistic neighbor.

Nothing has so vividly revealed the moral rot of our elite universities as the reaction to Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre of Jews.

A closer look at the peculiar vocabulary of the dominant campus left points to the core of the problem — and the left’s insincerity.

Normal human beings not handicapped by a contemporaneous college education may be wondering why the pro-Hamas academics coming out of the woodwork make their chief complaint that Jews are “colonizers.”

It has long been tiresome to review the lengthy history of Jews living in “Judea” (as the Romans called the Holy Land when they occupied it) centuries before Islam was a gleam in Muhammad’s eye, not to mention the 20th-century international mandate to restore a Jewish homeland after centuries of occupation by the Ottoman Empire and other previous “colonizers” or Israel’s complete withdrawal from Gaza more than 15 years ago, after which Gaza decided self-government meant empowering Hamas.

Nor does it do any good to point out the entirety of human history is one of invasion and conquest and virtually no nation or ethnic group, including especially Jews, is without a history of conquest by a hostile or opportunistic neighbor.

Nothing has so vividly revealed the moral rot of our elite universities as the reaction to Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre of Jews.

A closer look at the peculiar vocabulary of the dominant campus left points to the core of the problem — and the left’s insincerity.

Normal human beings not handicapped by a contemporaneous college education may be wondering why the pro-Hamas academics coming out of the woodwork make their chief complaint that Jews are “colonizers.”

It has long been tiresome to review the lengthy history of Jews living in “Judea” (as the Romans called the Holy Land when they occupied it) centuries before Islam was a gleam in Muhammad’s eye, not to mention the 20th-century international mandate to restore a Jewish homeland after centuries of occupation by the Ottoman Empire and other previous “colonizers” or Israel’s complete withdrawal from Gaza more than 15 years ago, after which Gaza decided self-government meant empowering Hamas.

Nor does it do any good to point out the entirety of human history is one of invasion and conquest and virtually no nation or ethnic group, including especially Jews, is without a history of conquest by a hostile or opportunistic neighbor.

The insincerity of the entire “colonizer” charge can be seen in a related campus fad: the “land acknowledgment.”

It is popular for faculty and administrators to declare at official functions like convocation and commencement that the university occupies land that belongs to — and often said to have been stolen from — an indigenous American tribe.

But if the land was acquired or held unjustly, why not give it back — or at least pay reparations from the multibillion-dollar endowments many universities have?

This is never suggested. Only the Jews in Israel are expected to give back land.

It is good some major donors to elite universities are publicly ending their financial support.

But it is unlikely to be enough to end the campus rot.

Only one solution will work: Close all the radicalized Middle East studies and “critical theory” departments that are hothouses for this noxious ideology and eliminate the faculty positions typically held by mediocre professors in the first place.

In other words, decolonize the campus!

It should be recalled some of the strongest early support for Nazism in the 1920s and 1930s came from German universities — the same time our Ivy League colleges discriminated against Jews.

Do our elite universities really want to repeat that story arc?

Steven F. Hayward is the Gaylord Visiting Professor at Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy.