Fall Campus Forecast: Dark and Stormy Skies [Updated]

I’ve been on record for a while predicting that campus anti-Semites will attempt to shut down several high profile college campuses this fall, in particular Columbia. Columbia classes are scheduled to resume on September 3, the day after Labor Day.

Today’s Columbia’s embattled president, Nemat “Minouche” Shafik, abruptly resigned, effective immediately. She held the job for barely a year. There is no reporting yet as to whether Columbia’s trustees lost confidence in Shafik. She claims it is for “family reasons,” and tacitly owns up to being defeated by the stress of the situation, so she may be telling the truth. (Her complete letter can be read here.) Still, it seems notable to have an immediate resignation just weeks before the beginning of the fall semester.

But Columbia announced two days ago that it will try to restrict access to the campus:

“This change is intended to keep our community safe given reports of potential disruptions at Columbia and on college campuses across the country as we approach the beginning of the new school year.  We are particularly concerned about non-affiliates who may not have the best interests of the Columbia community in mind,” Holloway said.

Holloway’s home was found vandalized the day before the new campus access rules were announced. Suspects allegedly splattered red paint onto his Brooklyn Heights apartment building, left live bugs in the lobby and posted flyers warning him not to expel students who participated in the takeover of Hamilton Hall last spring.

Good luck with that, Columbia. Given that Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg dismissed all charges against the protestors who occupied and vandalized Hamilton Hall in the spring (but never forget that Donald Trump is the biggest threat to democracy and public safety in Manhattan), right now the default assumption is that protestors have been given the all-clear to resume aggressive campus disruptions.

I expect Columbia will end up moving a large number of courses online, as they did during Covid. At this point, students should sue for fraud and demand a refund of tuition. (I will also be curious to find out whether the proportion of Jewish students enrolling at Columbia this year has declined. If Columbia holds back the data, as I expect it will, you will know the answer.)

Meanwhile, a civil rights lawsuit against UCLA (another prime campus targeted by the left’s brownshirts) by Jewish students who the anti-Semites forcefully prevented from accessing parts of campus last spring hit paydirt. Here’s how Federal District Court Judge Mark Scarsi (a Trump appointee) opened his ruling imposing an injunction on UCLA in Frankel v. Regents of the University of California:

In the year 2024, in the United States of America, in the State of California, in  the City of Los Angeles, Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith. This fact is so unimaginable and so abhorrent to our constitutional guarantee of religious freedom that it bears repeating, Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith. UCLA does not dispute this. Instead, UCLA claims that it has no responsibility to protect the religious freedom of its Jewish students because the exclusion was engineered by third-party protesters. But under constitutional principles, UCLA may not allow services to some students when UCLA knows that other students are excluded on religious grounds, regardless of who engineered the exclusion. . .

Under the Court’s injunction, UCLA retains flexibility to administer the university. Specifically, the injunction does not mandate any specific policies and procedures UCLA must put in place, nor does it dictate any specific acts UCLA must take in response to campus protests. Rather, the injunction requires only that, if any part of UCLA’s ordinarily available programs, activities, and campus areas become unavailable to certain Jewish students, UCLA must stop providing those ordinarily available programs, activities, and campus areas to any students. How best to make any unavailable programs, activities, and campus areas available again is left to UCLA’s discretion.

If I read this right, Judge Scarsi has thrown down the gauntlet to UCLA, essentially telling them that if they don’t prevent selective discrimination against Jews, they will effectively have to shut down the campus to everyone. This provides extraordinary leverage to the protesters, but that’s a good idea. In other words, crack down on the anti-Semites, or else look like the buffoons we all know you administrators to be. The next step will be hefty damages against the University of California.

UPDATE: UCLA is appealing.

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