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How College Campuses Became Bastions of Extremism and Intolerance
Solidarity encampment at Columbia University, located in the Manhattan borough of New York City. Photo:
The 2023-2024 academic year will be remembered for its inept university presidents, antisemitic college deans, fringe left activist professors, and gullible, pro-Hamas students.
Collectively and individually, especially at the Nation’s top schools, they have twisted to the breaking point the carefully-curated reputations of their institutions. Across the country, campus sympathy has shifted from the victims to the perpetrators of terrorism. College students are waving Hamas and Hezbollah flags, and chanting their praise for Yahya Sinwar.
To specialists who follow the problems of Middle East studies, the displays on college campuses after October 7 were not surprising. But to the majority who do not follow the ins and outs of academic politics, watching college students and faculty members align themselves with political violence in the name of “resistance,” celebrate the murder of Israelis, and call for a “global Intifada” had many Americans questioning whether the results of a college education are worth the cost — and not just in dollars.
On one level, academic brands are merchandizing tools — bumper stickers and clothing displaying school mascots and logos. More importantly, though, is the intangible dimension of the academic brand — one part reputation, pointing to the past, and one part promise, pointing to the future. Universities with storied histories promise that their past success will be repeated with future success.
At the nation’s top schools, brands are focused on exclusivity. Only a very small percentage of students can attend these elite institutions. If the people who run them don’t appear to be the smartest, most impressive and erudite people in the nation, the brand suffers. Claudine Gay lost her job as president of Harvard because of the damage she did to the brand.
Academia could not have been brainwashed without Middle East studies programs and their leaders in the embattled Middle East Studies Association (MESA). Together, they are largely responsible for academia’s realignment against Israel and in favor of Palestinian “resistance.”
They are also responsible for much of last year’s academic brand deterioration. The more prominent the Middle East program at any given school, the greater damage to that school’s reputation.
Since the 1980s, academia has been dominated by leftists, many of whom view the US negatively and elevate America’s adversaries to heroic status. David Rapoport argues that, for many on the left, “When the Vietnam War ended in 1975, the PLO replaced the Viet Cong as the heroic model.” For today’s campus radicals, Hamas has replaced the PLO as the heroic model.
Middle East studies professors have spent the last several decades supporting academic boycotts of Israel, excusing or downplaying Palestinian violence, and “normalizing” Hamas.
They have dedicated their energies and expertise to creating a language that justifies “resistance” against “settler-colonial empires.”
MESA and the Middle East studies professors who control the profession lead by example, demonstrating how they expect their students to think and write and behave. Too many accept political violence by Palestinians as a form of “social justice” and expect their easily-influenced students to do likewise. After all, they also control how or if graduates have access to the job market.
In 1993, one of those professors at the University of California, Berkeley, founded the most virulent of all the student protest groups — Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).
SJP is a leading vector of the antisemitism eroding academia. It published a “Toolkit for Resistance” on October 8th that provided the template for the first wave of anti-Israel, pro-Hamas protests and continues to be the most significant instigator of campus unrest. Schools that have an SJP chapter have protest problems. Most schools that don’t have an SJP chapter don’t have protest problems.
Schools that do not have an SJP chapter should do everything possible to prevent one from being established. Fordham University is the biggest winner in this category, since it didn’t allow an SJP chapter to take root on its campus.
Because Ivy League schools represent the top brands in academia, they also have the most to lose. Partly because of its location, Columbia has become the epicenter of anti-Israel protests. Consequently, its brand degradation has captured a great deal of media attention. Not surprisingly, Columbia is also a leader in the Palestinization of academia. Its Center for Palestine Studies, founded in 2010, employs ideologues like Joseph Massad and Rashid Khalidi, the former PLO spokesman.
The Columbia brand suffered a damaging blow when Judge Matthew Solomson of the US Court of Federal Claims announced in The Wall Street Journal that he and dozens of his colleagues will not hire law clerks from Columbia.
The new academic year began at Columbia with protests continuing, followed by news that the university had hired one of the pro-Hamas protesters who took over Hamilton Hall in April, to teach a class on Western Civilization.
Brown University has also suffered self-inflicted brand erosion, almost as long as Columbia. In 2020, it endowed the first ever chair for Palestinian studies at an American university, naming it the Mahmoud Darwish Chair, and installing a BDS-supporter.
Harvard was the first school to have its brand tarnished in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’ October 7 massacre of civilians. On October 8, a group of 31 student organizations issued a joint statement blaming Israel for the attack. They gathered on campus to have their photo taken, which subsequently went “viral.” It was the first of several devastating blows Harvard’s brand suffered last year. Another came when hedge fund billionaire and Harvard alum Bill Ackman announced that he would no longer hire graduates from his alma mater.
Now that the 2024-2025 academic year has begun, anti-Israel protests have resumed at some schools. Minus the tents, Columbia today looks like it did last year. Further brand erosion continues apace.
After enduring months of pro-Hamas encampments, Brown president Christina Paxon acquiesced to the undergraduate mob with a deal that brought temporary peace in return for entertaining student demands for divestment from Israel. Brown’s Advisory Committee on University Resources is scheduled to provide Paxon “with a recommendation on the matter of divestment by September 30, 2024.” If Paxon doesn’t make more concessions, expect more trouble. If she does make more concessions, the troubles may be worse.
Like Brown, Harvard too brought an end to its encampment problem by agreeing to discuss divesting from Israel. How long will that ceasefire last?
The administrations at these schools may think they have solved their problems, but by taking the demands of the students seriously, they have only emboldened them.
Not only are these administrators failing to convince most people that they are the most capable and wise among us; they are failing to demonstrate that they are competent stewards of the brands they inherited.
How soon until the majority concurs with William F. Buckley’s 1961 quip that he “would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Cambridge telephone directory than by the Harvard University faculty”?
Chief Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) Political Correspondent A.J. Caschetta is a principal lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology and a fellow at Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum where he is also a Milstein fellow. A different version of this article was originally published at IPT.
The post How College Campuses Became Bastions of Extremism and Intolerance first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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New Zealand Prime Minister Says Israel’s Netanyahu Has ‘Lost the Plot’
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon attends a press conference with Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (not pictured) at the Australian Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, Aug. 16, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Tracey Nearmy
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said on Wednesday that Israel’s leader Benjamin Netanyahu had “lost the plot” as the country weighs whether to recognize a Palestinian state.
Luxon told reporters that the lack of humanitarian assistance, the forceful displacement of people, and the annexation of Gaza were utterly appalling and that Netanyahu had gone way too far.
“I think he has lost the plot,” added Luxon, who heads the center-right coalition government. “What we are seeing overnight, the attack on Gaza City, is utterly, utterly unacceptable.”
Luxon said earlier this week New Zealand was considering whether to recognize a Palestinian state. Close ally Australia on Monday joined Canada, the UK, and France in announcing it would do so at a UN conference in September.
The humanitarian crisis in Gaza has reached “unimaginable levels,” Britain, Canada, Australia and several of their European allies said on Tuesday, calling on Israel to allow unrestricted aid into the war-torn Palestinian enclave.
Israel recently increased the flow of humanitarian supplies into Gaza, after imposing a temporary embargo in an effort to keep them out of the hands of Hamas, which often steals the aid for its own use and sells the rest to civilians at inflated prices. While facilitating the entry of thousands of aid trucks into Gaza, Israeli officials have condemned the UN and other international aid agencies for their alleged failure to distribute supplies, noting much of the humanitarian assistance has been stalled at border crossings or stolen. According to UN data, the vast majority of humanitarian aid entering Gaza is intercepted before reaching its intended civilian recipients.
Ahead of Wednesday’s parliamentary session, a small number of protesters gathered outside New Zealand’s parliament buildings, beating pots and pans. Local media organixation Stuff reported protesters chanted “MPs grow a spine, recognize Palestine.”
On Tuesday, Greens parliamentarian Chloe Swarbrick was removed from parliament’s debating chamber after she refused to apologize for a comment insinuating government politicians were spineless for not supporting a bill to “sanction Israel for its war crimes.”
Swarbrick was ordered to leave the debating chamber for a second day on Wednesday after she again refused to apologize. When she refused to leave, the government voted to suspend her.
“Sixty-eight members of this House were accused of being spineless,” House speaker Gerry Brownlee said. “There has never been a time where personal insults like that delivered inside a speech were accepted by this House and I’m not going to start accepting it.”
As Swarbrick left, she called out “free Palestine.”
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Gaza ‘Journalist’ Was a Hamas Terrorist — But the Media Ignores the Evidence
The Al Jazeera Media Network logo is seen on its headquarters building in Doha, Qatar, June 8, 2017. Photo: REUTERS/Naseem Zeitoon
Outrageous reporting this week enabled terrorism to hide behind the mask of journalism, portraying an Al Jazeera reporter targeted by Israel in Gaza as a heroic figure.
In reality, it was a sea of lies that ignored clear evidence that Anas al-Sharif was, in fact, a member of Hamas.
Almost all foreign media outlets mourned the death of al-Sharif in an IDF strike on Monday, August 12, while doubting or altogether omitting hard evidence presented by the IDF proving that he was a commander of a terrorist cell in a Hamas guided rockets platoon.
Western press have eaten up Al Jazeera *cough* Hamas propaganda over Anas al-Sharif’s elimination by the IDF.
Here’s a
of some of the most egregious coverage. https://t.co/zrgp91N4EP
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) August 12, 2025
The IDF presented an internal Hamas document where al-Sharif was registered as a soldier and team commander, as well as a photo showing him embraced by former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7, 2023, attack against Israel.
كما قلنا منذ البداية ورفض البعض تصديقه: لا يجلس مجالس الارهابيين إلا الإرهابي. #أنس_الشريف لم يكن صحفيًا بل إرهابيًا حمساويًا pic.twitter.com/KG6DPrlyoW
— افيخاي ادرعي (@AvichayAdraee) August 11, 2025
The media did not even bother displaying these. Instead, al-Sharif’s photo in a press vest circulated everywhere, and Israel’s claims were either ignored or undermined.
Sky News, for example, lauded al-Sharif as a “crucial reporting voice,” but IDF evidence of his Hamas affiliation was disregarded.
On social media network X, Sky News also posted a story quoting Al Jazeera’s condemnation of Al Sharif’s “assassination.” The network did not respond when Israeli former hostage Shlomi Ziv commented: “I was held by a journalist in captivity and his father was a Doctor!!!!!!!”
Meanwhile, the AP and Reuters — the world’s two leading news agencies — failed to properly report what the IDF was stating.
The AP simply lied, saying that Israel said “without producing evidence that al-Sharif had led a Hamas cell. It was a claim the news organization and al-Sharif had denied” — as if a denial is a clear-cut refutation of hard evidence.
Reuters did the same, saying Israel did not disclose any evidence.
And instead of headlines such as “IDF kills Hamas terror cell leader posing as ‘Al Jazeera’ journalist,” both agencies’ headlines were one-sided.
They took the Palestinian narrative that Israel targets journalists as gospel, even though this narrative is based on the Qatari-funded network that supports Hamas and the denial that its worker has been exposed as a terrorist:
The New York Times went as far as eulogizing al-Sharif and the four other journalists who were killed in the strike, displaying Israel’s proven claims as mere accusations.
Nowhere did the Times display al-Sharif’s photo with Sinwar or the documents showing his Hamas affiliation.
This evidence was also omitted from a Washington Post headline and sub-header that made Israel look like it deliberately targets journalists:
Meanwhile, CNN produced hard-hitting videos showing al-Sharif’s Al Jazeera’s dispatches from war-torn Gaza, but without showing any of Israel’s evidence.
Ultimately, this is symptomatic of a wider problem throughout this war — whereby the media treat IDF statements with disdain while treating the claims of a terrorist organization as fact.
All these outlets, of course, failed to mention that al-Sharif conveniently ignored Gazans’ protests against Hamas throughout the war. Courage, apparently, applies only to reporting what Hamas wants the world to hear.
And almost none of them mentioned that al-Sharif was not the first terrorist who posed as a journalist in Gaza, perhaps in an attempt to hide the fact that it is a common phenomenon — from CNN’s Hassan Eslaiah to Al Jazeera’s Ismail Al Ghoul, among others.
Will the media ever doubt the Qatari network’s statements as it doubts the IDF?
Will they ever question what any journalist in Gaza says?
They can’t. Because they project their own conceptions on what it is like to cover a warzone, especially Gaza. They think that any journalist there deserves automatic solidarity and protection, instead of professional scrutiny.
With a pre-existing pro-Palestinian bias – it means the entire global media sings to Hamas’ tune.
Indeed, it proves Hamas’ evil brilliance of using the term “journalist” as a cover for terrorism. If anyone doubts it, it is an assault on the freedom of the press. Thus, the global media outcry over al-Sharif and his colleagues is a betrayal of real journalism, manipulated to demonize Israel and enable attacks against it. The outcry should have been directed against the exploitation of respected titles to promote terrorist agendas or fire rockets at innocent civilians.
Al Jazeera has already succeeded in promoting its own Hamas-friendly narrative in the aftermath of al-Sharif and his colleagues’ deaths — one where Israel is attempting to “silence voices” from revealing the truth of what is going on inside Gaza. As the IDF gears up for a potential invasion of Gaza City, we can expect to hear more of this narrative, as Al Jazeera and its fellow travelers in Western media falsely claim that Israel is attempting to cover up alleged crimes by deliberately targeting media workers.
The truth is quite the opposite. But it is unlikely to be reported.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
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Israeli Military Says Chief of Staff Approved ‘Main Concept’ for Attack Plan in Gaza
The new Chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, visits the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest prayer site, in Jerusalem’s Old City, March 5, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli military said on Wednesday that chief of staff Eyal Zamir has approved the “main concept” for an attack plan in the Gaza Strip.
Israel has said it will launch a new offensive and seize control of Gaza City, which it captured shortly after the war’s outbreak in October 2023 before pulling out.