Columbia’s Protest Crackdown Is Another Free Speech Blunder
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/GettyThere is a simple solution to the student protests at Columbia University and a growing number of other campuses over the Israel-Hamas war: universities should enforce their own student conduct codes and only ask for police help when a crime has been committed.
The botched response that saw Columbia simultaneously seeking the arrest of students as well as imposing suspensions and expulsions without going through their normal disciplinary process reflects an abandonment of principles, as well as common sense.
The situation started with the pressure applied by loudmouth billionaires like Bill Ackman, whose selective outrage over students expressing their First Amendment rights ignored his own expressions of support for a the vigilante shooter Kyle Rittenhouse, who killed two unarmed people and maimed a third at a 2020 Black Lives Matter protest in Wisconsin.