Dartmouth has avoided the ignominy suffered by some of its Ivy peers during the current anti-Semitic moment. That is because its president, Sian Leah Beilock–I missed it when Congress passed a statute requiring every university president to be a woman–has reacted swiftly to illegal demonstrations on Dartmouth’s campus. The major incident was when anti-Jewish protesters erected tents on the Dartmouth Green, surrounded by anti-Semites who linked arms to “protect” the illegal encampment. (Note the masks, which provide little or no disguise and serve no apparent purpose, except as a symbol of devotion to an evil cause):
Needless to say, the New York Times is not amused:
As the police arrested student protesters at Dartmouth College, a 65-year-old professor ended up on the ground.
Two student journalists, reporting that night, ended up arrested themselves.
And a bystander, visiting his father who lives near Dartmouth College, found himself with a fractured shoulder.
That was some of the collateral damage…
A highly-charged characterization.
…after the president of Dartmouth College, Sian Leah Beilock, took unusually swift action and authorized the police action on May 1 to clear an encampment that students had, just two hours earlier, pitched on the college green.
Police brutality! The Times thinks she should have left the illegal encampment in place for a month or two.
Dr. Beilock, a cognitive scientist who studies why people choke under pressure…
How subtle!
…has been facing a campus uproar ever since.
No surprise there. Nor is it a surprise that the Times is on the side of the uproar, although it goes give President Beilock a moment to state her case:
In an email the day after the arrests, Dr. Beilock said that allowing the university’s shared spaces to be taken over for ideological reasons is “exclusionary at best and, at its worst, as we have seen on other campuses in recent days, can turn quickly into hateful intimidation where Jewish students feel unsafe.”
The Times doesn’t see it that way:
But to some faculty members, using law enforcement to arrest nonviolent protesters broke the compact that should exist on college campuses.
The compact that says protesters should be free to break the law, and inconvenience and intimidate other students. As long as the protesters are on the Left. Who, exactly, signed that compact?
There was also the matter of injuries.
Andrew Tefft, visiting his dad from out of town, took a walk to the green as the police moved in. He said he was unconnected to the college or the protesters, so when an officer ordered him to move, he was confused.
”I guess I was dumb enough to say, ‘Where?’” Mr. Tefft, 45, said in an interview. “I feel my phone get knocked out of my hands and go flying and I feel my arms getting pulled. I feel the metal cuffs go on. I was like, ‘Oh, I’m being arrested.’”
He said he fractured his shoulder during a scuffle with the police.
If you think that story sounds fishy, you’re not the only one.
An arrest report said that Mr. Tefft did not comply with orders and behaved aggressively during the arrest.
Another “victim”:
Annelise Orleck, the former head of Jewish Studies at the university, said she started taking videos of the arrests, when she was knocked to the ground as she tried to grab her phone from a police officer.
That is what Nabokov once called a “doughnut truth.” The truth, the whole truth, with a hole in the truth. No explanation of why she was trying to “grab her phone from a police officer.” There evidently is more to the story, but we don’t get it from the Times.
Two student reporters were also arrested. Those charges have now been dropped.
But the Times is on the other side:
On May 6, in a raucous online meeting with faculty, which quickly met the 500-person limit, Dr. Beilock tried to explain her fast reaction.
“An ongoing encampment is not something we can ensure the safety of,” she said, “especially if people outside Dartmouth decide to join with their own agendas.” She cited Columbia University, where some outsiders had joined the protests, but were certainly not in the majority.
Many faculty were not appeased. They said that the violence came from the police, not the protesters.
Arrests are rarely violent unless they are resisted. And there doesn’t seem to have been any great violence here. In fact, no one who admits to being a protester was even slightly injured.
Dr. Beilock is under attack on multiple fronts. The Times says that Dartmouth’s faculty is divided, which I don’t doubt is true:
The faculty is divided.
“Our president is Jewish herself and has been on top of how Jewish students are feeling on the campus,” said Sergei Kan, an anthropology professor. He said students at the protest were chanting offensive, “borderline antisemitic” slogans like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” (Many supporters of the Palestinians say the phrase is a rallying cry for the dignity of Palestinians).
A rallying cry for destroying Israel–the country that lies between the Jordan River and the sea–and killing all the Jews who live there. That is what you could call an inconvenient fact for Hamas supporters like the ones at Dartmouth.
Happily, Dartmouth’s Board of Trustees isn’t falling for the Times’s line:
Dartmouth’s board has also supported the action. Liz Cahill Lempres, Dartmouth’s board chair, said in an email to The Times that she had spoken with all board members and “each one unequivocally supports” Dr. Beilock.
But the Times thinks it is only a matter of time before Hamas prevails. It gives the last word to a Dartmouth freshman–where else to look for wisdom?
“We’re not going to stop,” he said. “Palestine will be free within our lifetimes. The students are taking up the burden of doing that work because no one else really is.”
Gaza was already free, of course, and it abused that freedom to launch the most sickening and morally depraved violence since the Second World War. But no one expects college students to know anything about history. Or the New York Times, either.
UPDATE: A friend sent me links to videos of the events of May 1 and May 2. This is the main one, almost six hours long. It shows much of the demonstration during the day, and finally long-suffering law enforcement officers politely arresting the principal lawbreakers, later that night. There is much that could be said about the spectacle, but I will only observe that 1) the protest appears to be led by Communists, like those of the late 1960s, and 2) the robotic manner in which the demonstrators repeat their leaders’ chants is depressing.
This is a left-wing “news” report filmed on the following day, and has some humor value. It is only a minute long.
