A pro-Palestinian protester holds a sign that reads, “Faculty for justice in Palestine,” during a protest urging Columbia University to cut ties with Israel, Nov. 15, 2023, in New York City. Photo: Sipa USA via Reuters Connect

Last week, Columbia’s interim president resigned after eight turbulent days since she accepted conditions given by President Trump to receive approximately $400 millions in Federal funds.

A few days after agreeing to the deal, however, it was clear that she either didn’t intend to fully honor it — or that she was trying to pacify both sides. She resigned (or was forced to do so) when it became clear that one cannot sit on two chairs. Perhaps she realized that she and Columbia University were not poised to accept Trump’s demands to cancel the withdrawal of Federal funds after all.

The most recent events on Columbia’s campus indicate that the university did not just cave in to the anti-Israel mob, but that a significant number of faculty and students are the mob.

Certain professors urged pro-Palestinian students to skip classes and wear Hamas style-masks in protest to Columbia accepting Trump’s conditions. Columbia’s new president will be Claire Shipman, a journalist who was a member of Columbia’s Board of Trustees for many years and became its co-chair in 2023. Is she going to implement the requirements needed to restore Federal funding to Columbia? I doubt it, as I did not get the impression that the Board of Trustees was truly ready to accommodate Trump’s demands.

Mainstream media outlets have claimed that the requirements imposed by the Trump administration are ways to limit academic freedom, free speech, independent scholarship of Middle Eastern studies, and more.

Somehow the media omitted several major things that have been happening on campus, such as: incitement of violence, support of terrorism, destruction of property — and, perhaps most importantly, denial of civil rights to Jewish students and faculty through harassment, intimidation, and denial of access to Columbia’s (and Barnard’s) campus.

Progressives and other Americans are lamenting the suppression of free speech at rallies supporting a major terrorist group (Hamas), which the organizers claim were peaceful, when they actually weren’t. These students are complaining that they are afraid to even come to campus now.

Apparently, it did not occur to them that their actions had the same effect on Jewish students — or it did occur to them, but the Jews deserved it because, after all, they are white supremacists and settler-colonialists.

What struck me as perhaps the most dangerous step was transforming pro-Hamas and violent rioters to victims who are suffering under President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s actions. It is the same method used and perpetuated by Palestinians since Israel was founded in 1948 — and the same inversion that blames Israel (the victim of October 7) for launching a defensive war in Gaza to prevent such an atrocity from ever happening again.

And yet many gullible journalists, intellectuals, university professors — and also quite a few Jews — believe and help propagate these lies.

These protesters have well organized system of lawyers who standby to file a lawsuit against the US government — and a well-coordinated media network to get out their talking points. (And don’t forget, many of these progressive protests featured materials that claimed to be from the “Hamas Media Office.”)

Some foreign students want to support terrorist organizations — and also call for violence and other actions against the West. Is it any surprise that they may have violated the terms of their academic visas and other programs by doing so?

Now those students and professors who justified the Oct. 7 attack are speaking out against the latest action — but does free speech really have no limits when one is supporting terrorist massacres and terror supporters?

If so, American colleges — and the students they serve — are in serious, serious trouble.

Dr. Jaroslava Halper has been a professor of pathology at The University of Georgia in Athens, GA for many years. She escaped from communist Prague because of antisemitism, and lack of freedom and free speech. The gradual increase of antisemitism and anti-Zionism in certain circles in her second homeland, and the devastating October 7 massacre by Hamas, led her to realize that more active engagement is necessary to combat antisemitism, including anti-Zionism.