At Cornell, Pro-Hamas Stormtroopers Are At It Again

No sooner had Cornell University opened its doors for the Fall Term to begin than the pro-Hamas protesters appeared, invaded a college building and proceeded to vandalize it. Will they get away with the kind of violence and campus destruction that they were allowed to get away with last year? Not likely. More on these wet-behind-the-ears Stormtroopers can be found here.

Anti-Israel students at Cornell University vandalized an administrative building on Monday, a provocation which marks an early test of the resolve of the interim president who announced new policies on “institutional neutrality,” discipline, and encampments around the time of incident.

The new rules are these: No more encampments will be allowed on campus. No more harassing or physically abusing Jewish students. No more disruption of classes, either by making noise or intruding into classrooms to demand a show of support for anti-Israel protests or to deliver a hysterical harangue. No more taking over of campus buildings. No more destruction of campus property. No more non-students allowed on campus to join these protests.

According to the Cornell Daily Sun, the anti-Zionist agitators graffitied “Israel Bombs, Cornell pays” and “Blood is on your hands” on Day Hall. They also shattered the glazings of its front doors.

I expect that the Cornell administration has already asked the campus police to identify those who damaged Day Hall with graffiti and by smashing the glazing of its front doors. Once they have been identified, the administration will promptly institute proceedings to expel them from the university. It may also give their names to the Ithaca police, so that they may be prosecuted for the destruction of college property. They are not immune to prosecution just because they see themselves as fighters in a just cause — the destruction of the “genocidal” state of Israel.

“We had to accept that the only way to make ourselves heard is by targeting the only thing the university administration really cares about: property,” the students told the paper. “With the start of this new academic year, the Cornell administration is trying desperately to upkeep a facade of normalcy knowing that, since last semester, they have been working tirelessly to uphold Cornell’s function as a fascist, classist, imperial machine.”

These far-left pro-Hamas fascists dare to fling that epithet — “fascist” — at a long-suffering college administration that is doing nothing more than trying to preserve an environment on campus where learning can take place. What makes Cornell a “classist” and “imperial” machine? Is Cornell open only to the upper classes, the rich whom these protesters claim to despise (I wonder how many of them come from well-off families), or does it admit students — now that affirmative action has at long last been jettisoned by the Supreme Court — on the basis of individual merit? How does Cornell further the “imperial” machine? And while we are at it, could those student protesters explain what they think an “imperial machine” is?

The students also took aim at interim president Michael Kotlikoff, who assumed office following the resignation of Martha Pollack earlier this summer. Accusing him of duplicity in managing a strike of the university’s employees, they supplied additional reasons for their actions….

Kotlikoff has made clear that he will protect free speech, but will not tolerate speech that tries to silence the speech of others. Protesters who scream and chant in the middle of the campus, or inside classrooms, drowning out both professors and students, will not be allowed. Kotlikoff will not allow the protesters to infringe on the rights of others, including their right to learn in a calm and safe environment where they can hear the instructor and fellow students, undisturbed by unruly invaders. No harassment of other students will be allowed. Time, place, and manner restrictions on speech have long been upheld by the Supreme Court. The Brandenburg Test allows for punishing speech that is “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action,” and that is “likely to incite or produce such action.” Calling for fellow students to seize a campus building and vandalize it would certainly be punished under the Brandenberg rule.

Michael Kotlikoff is made of sterner stuff than his predecessor as Cornell’s president, Martha Pollack. He intends to preserve order by identifying and punishing those who invaded and vandalized Day Hall. He promises to have them expelled and will also press criminal charges. These protesters are entering a world of woe.

The protesters have thrown down the gauntlet just as Cornell’s academic year was about to begin. They have invaded a campus building. They have written expensive-to-erase graffiti on its walls. They have smashed the glazing on its front doors. Michael Kotlikoff is prepared for this challenge. Cornell’s motto has been, for 159 years, not a brief Latin tag, like those of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, but a promise from its founder, Ezra Cornell: “I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study.” Now Michael Kotlikoff needs a new motto to fit the current pro-Hamas bullyboys who have caused a crisis on his and other campuses: “Don’t you dare.”