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MICHAEL GOODWIN

Opinion


THE ANTI-ISRAEL AGITATORS WERE ACTUALLY OUTSIDERS – AND THE SCHOOLS COULD NOT
HAVE HANDLED IT WORSE

By Michael Goodwin

Published May 4, 2024, 9:00 p.m. ET
NYPD police officers remove and arrest Pro-Palestine protesters who occupied the
Hamilton Hall building the campus at Columbia University in New York City on
Tuesday, April 30, 2024. John Angelillo/UPI/Shutterstock

For many Americans, the words “outside agitators” evoke memories of southern
segregationists complaining about northern civil rights workers organizing black
Americans.

But times and issues change and those same words now have a very different
connotation.

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This time they are used by police and northern mayors, some of them black, to
refer to professional radicals who helped start the antisemitic, pro-Hamas riots
plaguing colleges across the country.

Mayor Adams early on accused “outside agitators” of radicalizing students when
unruly mobs formed on campuses within the five boroughs, including New York
University, City College, Fordham and Columbia.

“Outside agitators were on their grounds, training and really co-opting this
movement,” Adams said about Columbia.

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Police statistics confirm the outsiders’ lopsided role.


MORE FROM MICHAEL GOODWIN


NYPD’S BUST UP AT COLUMBIA DOESN’T MEAN THIS DISGRACEFUL ANTISEMITIC EPISODE IS
OVER


THE MEDIA IS PROPAGATING EVIL LIES ABOUT THE SITUATION IN THE MIDEAST


THIS IS NO 1960S LOVE-IN DURING ANTI-ISRAEL RALLIES AT ELITE UNIVERSITIES

In some cases, more than half of those taken into custody by the NYPD have no
affiliation with the universities where they were wreaking havoc.

NYU, for example, said 68 of the 133 people arrested there one day last month
weren’t students, faculty, or staff.

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At City College, 102 of the 170 who were arrested last week had no affiliation
with the college, police said.


TERRORIST HEADBANDS

The Post identified one of the most violent leaders of the Columbia takeover as
James Carlson, a former silver-spoon kid who is now a 40-year-old professional
agitator who lives in a Brooklyn home valued at $3.4 million.

Described by police as a “longtime anarchist” with a rap sheet that goes back to
2005, Carlson has no affiliation with Columbia but was arrested inside Hamilton
Hall on Tuesday night where protestors broke in and barricaded themselves behind
piles of furniture.

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Considered a possible leader of the group, he has been charged with burglary,
reckless endangerment, criminal mischief, conspiracy and criminal trespassing.

Many of the outside radicals come ready for battle with a “uniform” of masked
faces and Arab kaffiyehs used as scarves and head coverings.

They also have a steady supply of Palestinian flags, one of which flew above
City College until police took it down and raised Old Glory.

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Green Hamas headbands and yellow Hezbollah flags also have been spotted,
evidence that some of the hooligans are proud of their allegiance to groups
designated by the United States as terrorist organizations.

The fact that many of the protesters’ tactics and the tents they’ve set up on
campuses also are identical suggests there is a super structure guiding the
turmoil.

The Wall Street Journal reports some activist groups have been training for the
campus protests since soon after Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7.

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It identified the National Students for Justice in Palestine, which has branches
on more than 300 campuses, as a chief organizer, trainer and advocate for tent
camps and the takeover of buildings.

It also reportedly helped guide the students’ agenda, which everywhere includes
demands for colleges to end investments in companies doing business with Israel.

Given the many crimes charged in police crackdowns, as well as the antisemitic
harassment and the embrace of terrorists, the evidence of an organized
conspiracy should be fodder for the Department of Justice.

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So far, however, the department has been silent and there is little chance
Attorney General Merrick Garland will lift a finger if it might hurt President
Biden’s chance of re-election.

Although Biden demanded that Garland prosecute Donald Trump, and Garland obeyed,
the last thing the White House wants is a probe of terrorist wannabes.


DEMOCRATIC BASE

Radical-left students and Muslim Americans are a key component of the Democrats’
coalition in swing states, and they are already unhappy with Biden.

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A probe could guarantee he won’t get their votes.

The political math also explains much if not all of the administration’s
pressure on Israel to agree to a permanent cease-fire with Hamas.

Until he realized the domestic downsides, Biden was a wholehearted supporter of
Israel.

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And so Garland has said nothing about the nationwide campus chaos and Biden
never mentions antisemitism without also warning about Islamophobia, as if they
are two equal sides of the same coin.

As the role of outsiders grows clear, the way most college presidents handled
their campuses’ protests looks even worse than it did.

Nearly all these presidents were frightened into submission by a mouse that
roared in the sense that relatively few students were actually involved.

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It’s bad enough that the presidents tolerated takeovers of university
properties, harassment of students and nonstop noise leading to canceled classes
and threats to disrupt graduations.

Many school leaders also foolishly offered concessions during negotiations even
though most protests included violations of rules and criminal laws.

Some presidents essentially capitulated, with Brown agreeing to vote on the
antisemitic divest demand.

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Northwestern agreed to a quota system by setting aside five scholarships for
Palestinian students each year and giving Muslim groups special spaces on campus
for “community building.”

Columbia, the epicenter of the outbreak, is a textbook case of a weak leader
allowing her campus to be held hostage for more than two weeks as she negotiated
with ringleaders.

The Ivy League school’s president, Minouche Shafik, also twice called in the
NYPD to arrest resisters who occupied university property and refused to leave.

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The first time was on April 18, when New York’s Finest rousted people who set up
a tent camp in the middle of the campus.

Police later said just 38 of those arrested were students, CNN reported.

During the second crackdown, 80 students were arrested, along with 32 outsiders,
including James Carlson.

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Combined, that means just 118 students were allegedly committing violations
serious enough to be arrested in the two raids.

It’s a drop in the Columbia bucket.

Across its undergraduate and graduate programs, the university enrolls nearly
37,000 students.

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Coddling troublemakers

Even if the scope is limited to the undergraduate programs at Columbia and
Barnard colleges, the total number of enrolled students is about 10,000.

And just 118 of them were arrested.

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Of course, more students than that participated in some demonstrations and no
doubt others supported the demands or just their friends.

But the small number of hardcore disruptors illustrates how badly Shafik and
Columbia’s board bungled the responses.

Had they firmly enforced existing policies against disturbances from the outset,
they might have been able to stop the harassment and threats before they
metastasized into full-fledged disasters.

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By coddling the troublemakers, administrators encouraged them and turned them
into campus leaders.

The result was a lost spring semester for serious students and more turbulence
for the institution, which will suffer serious reputational damage.

Civil rights probes by Congress and the Department of Education, combined with
class-action lawsuits over threats to Jewish students, promise expensive
problems for years.

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What do you think? Post a comment.

Alumni donations already are falling.

The pattern makes it hard to see any justification for Shafik remaining as
president.

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If she is forced out, she will join the former presidents of Harvard and Penn
who were fired after their appeasing responses to antisemitism.

Shed no tears for any of them.


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Filed under antisemitism ,  city college ,  cnn ,  Colleges and universities , 
columbia university ,  donald trump ,  eric adams ,  fordham university ,  gaza
strip ,  hamas ,  israel ,  Israel-Hamas war ,  joe biden ,  nyu ,  palestine , 
protests ,  terrorism ,  5/4/24
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