As you probably have read, viciously anti-Semitic threats were made against Jewish students at Cornell by an anonymous person. The apparent perpetrator has now been arrested:
Patrick Dai, of Pittsford, posted threats to shoot up a multicultural dining room on campus to an online discussion site, prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of New York said in a news release.
***
Dai, a junior, also called for the deaths of Jewish people and threatened to bring an assault rifle to campus, prosecutors said. He was charged with posting threats to kill or injure another using interstate communications.
Dai is not someone who would jump out at you as a suspect. He appears to be some kind of Asian, and it has not been reported that he is a Muslim. He is majoring in engineering, not grievance studies. While this is not clear, he appears to come from a modest background.
According to his parents, Dai has been suffering from depression, and he withdrew from school for two semesters as a result.
Perhaps new information will emerge to explain what turned a seemingly random Cornell student into a raving anti-Semite. At the moment, though, it seems that a slightly different question may be appropriate: what is it about Cornell, or higher education in general, that might cause a troubled young man to fix on anti-Semitism as the outlet for his mental health struggles?
I think that question likely answers itself. While all institutions of higher education claim to value diversity and campaign ceaselessly against “hate,” the one glaring exception, in many cases, is hate that is directed supposedly against Israel, but in reality against Jews. On campus, “anti-Zionism” has become a safe harbor in which the most vicious anti-Semitism is allowed to flourish. While the facts are by no means all in, I suspect that is the background against which Patrick Dai (assuming he proves to be guilty) made his violent threats.
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.