12 thoughts about the Columbia University protests and what is happening on campuses across the country. By Isaac Paul

1. I have to be honest about something: I'm really starting to hate writing about anything related to Israel or Gaza. I feel like I can't write authentically about this latest controversy without acknowledging that first. I’ve written this newsletter five days a week for nearly five years, covering COVID, abortion, gun control, trans issues, immigration, and every other controversial topic out there. I’ve never felt the kind of deranged tension I feel right now. For every sentence I write, there are people on one side accusing me of being complicit in a genocide and people on the other side accusing me of contributing to the killing and hatred of Jews. For anyone speaking on this topic publicly, the environment is so untenable, so unhelpful, so fraught, that it's no wonder we are seeing protests like these play out on college campuses. It makes me both want to run to my corner of like-minded people and just shut up and disappear. 2. A very, very large part of me does not care at all about what is happening on these campuses. I understand these students are “future leaders” and the “next generation,” but we should remember what it’s like to be their age. I went to college not that long ago. I barely remember it. When I was a teenager, I was still learning not to call things “gay” that I didn’t like. In college, I thought Natural Ice was a good beer and Barack Obama was going to unite the country. In 10 years those kids are going to look back on some of their ideas and actions now and think they were idiots. I’m sure in 10 years I'll look back on some of the things I believe now and laugh. 20-year-olds are not wizened foreign policy experts; 20-year-olds are 20-year-olds. I’m interested in their opinions, but they don’t keep me up at night. They are growing, evolving, ignorant young adults who deserve space to be wrong and screw up. That’s what college is about. When I see 30 college kids from NYU chanting "from the river to the sea," a chant that means vastly different things to different people, it ranks as about the 212th most important or notable or interesting thing I saw that hour, let alone that day or week or month. I do not know why we continue to focus on these kids so much, or call for ruining their careers, or insist we need to send in the troops against them. I hate feeling like I am falling into the trap by giving the protests any more coverage. 3. If I were ranking the importance of the actions of Hamas and the Israeli governments to the war in Gaza on a scale from 1 to 100, I would put them both somewhere in the 90 to 100 range. If I were ranking the importance of what was happening on a half-dozen elite college campuses in the U.S. on the same scale, I'd score them less than 5. Yet, in the context of the conflict, government actions and campus protests receive about the same amount of media coverage in the U.S. I have no idea how to reconcile this. I am happy to say we've covered the former a lot more than the latter, but I can't figure out the obsessiveness of so many reporters and pundits — on both the left and the right — with such minor players in the story. 4. All students have a right to protest. In fact, I encourage them to protest (though they should find some time to study, too). Movements like the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement are perfectly rational ways to protest Israel. Personally, I hope the BDS movement fails because I oppose its goal. I sometimes scoff at it because I do not think getting Columbia to rid itself of some $200,000 investment in an Israeli company is going to meaningfully change anything (not to mention, genuine divestment is easier said than done). I do not think Columbia University, its professors, its dean, or anyone on its faculty are “complicit” in anything Israel’s war cabinet decides to do 7,000 miles away, and I actually find the idea pretty silly. But guess what? It is a non-violent form of protest that offers tangible action for genuine objections to policy. When you criminalize or stifle non-violent protests like that, you often get violent protests instead. This is one thread of the story of pro-Palestine activists: Many non-violent, peaceful pro-Palestinian demonstrators end up being criminalized, silenced, or killed. Criminalizing or trying to destroy movements like BDS is therefore dangerous and counterproductive. Argue with them if you like, but let them be. 5. Student activism is a great way to learn and participate in democracy. Non-violent student activism is excellent. It is legal. It is not (and should not) be a violation of school rules. At the same time, if you are a student and your school makes simple rules about student protests like, say, "you can't protest on this lawn or at this time," and then you break those rules, you should be prepared to get suspended or arrested. Schools are responsible for not making rules so arduous they effectively restrict or end student activism, and students are responsible for following reasonable rules. Columbia’s initial update to their rules on protesting were overly restrictive and were rightly criticized. Then they set some reasonable rules that ensured students could attend class without too much interruption, and many of the protestors intentionally violated those rules. So they got in trouble. 6. I've never felt my own Jewishness more acutely, and never felt so surrounded by antisemitism more definitively. I know there is a difference between antisemitism and anti-Zionism. I preach that difference. Many of the pro-Palestine protestors at Columbia and on these campuses are, in fact, Jewish. But in the last few months, I am telling you that I have seen more videos of blatant antisemitism and more social media posts from friends that promote antisemitic ideas than ever before in my entire life. I feel like my perspective on how many people out there hate Jews or see us as evil, self-righteous, conniving people has shifted in an irretrievable way. I am not typically prone to these thoughts or feelings, so I can’t imagine how other Jews who are prone to those thoughts are feeling. This is deeply disturbing to me. 7. There are some genuinely frightening things happening on or around Columbia’s campus. We need to delineate between students and outside protestors who show up and do awful things. For instance, a video has been widely circulated of pro-Palestine protests outside Columbia University cheering on the militant leaders of Hamas and calling for the bombing of Tel Aviv, a city of half a million Jews, Muslims, Arabs, and Israelis. These are violent threats that should not be tolerated anywhere on a college campus. They are representative of a thread of the extremist pro-Palestine movement that I find incredibly frightening. Still, as far as I can tell, those aren’t students and they don’t appear to be on campus. So let’s not conflate the two. 8. That doesn’t mean some students aren’t doing some objectively awful things at Columbia. There are videos and firsthand accounts of Jewish students being assaulted, told to “go back to Poland,” or prohibited from entering spaces on their own campus. This is an affront to the safety and the freedom of Jewish students, and the university president must ensure that those students can participate in campus life freely. That a rabbi at Columbia feels the need to warn Jewish students they aren’t safe on campus (however alarmist it might have been) is quite frightening. 9. There are also some genuinely embarrassing videos of “pro-Israel” people trying to make innocent things look violent or make themselves into victims. For instance, a pro-Israel account tweeted a video of a bunch of protestors cheerfully dancing in a circle and called it a “cult-like tribal dance.” Another X user posted a video of a woman in a shirt that says “Jew” with a Star of David painted onto it standing in the middle of protesters while precisely zero people pay her any mind or care that she is there. Then there’s the Israeli professor at Columbia, Shai Davidai, who makes me very uncomfortable. He seems to seek out cameras, viral moments, and confrontation as much as he can, to get attention, clicks, and social media clout. Victimization porn is becoming more and more common in our country, but I assure you there are enough bad actors out there that no one needs to manufacture any additional tension. 10. I can’t believe I have to say this, but the vast majority of the students protesting on these campuses are probably good kids who feel horrified by the things they see happening in Gaza. It’s really that simple. They log onto social media and see heartbreaking videos and feel compelled to do something – anything. That is a human and normal and empathetic reaction to war. War is horrific. Many of us become numb to it as we age, but we shouldn’t. Having that reaction doesn’t make them evil Jew-hating terrorist-lovers. Even the ones doing or saying the worst things are almost certainly retrievable, having followed a good impulse into dark territory. As of this morning, many of the protestors are now cooperating with the school to break down tents and keep non-students off campus. Isolating and demonizing these kids now in response to their earnest commitment to a cause will only radicalize them further. 11. I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: In the news, we are inundated with stories of protest, clashes, and division. There are never headlines that read “Peaceful Day On 99% Of U.S. College Campuses!” even though that headline could run any day of the year, including yesterday. There was no front page story about the Palestinian and Israeli who both lost relatives in this conflict and then shared a TED stage together last week. The people who organize interfaith meetings to have dialogue about the conflict don’t get invited onto CNN or Fox News. Most of us will learn the names of Israel’s war cabinet or the head of Hamas’s military wing, but far fewer will learn about the people leading peace negotiations and ceasefire deals. This is how things are, and I hate it; but don’t be fooled into thinking the entire world is burning with animosity. It isn’t. 12. All of this campus obsession is distracting from the actual war that is going on in Gaza right now. When we covered Israel’s strike that killed workers from World Central Kitchen, I said it provided another example of how continuing this war is going to do long-term damage to Israel’s image and thus Israel’s future — which is core to my “Zionist case for a ceasefire” argument. I have to point out that the unrest and division this war is causing in the U.S. is also part of the Zionist case for a ceasefire. It is part of what I mean when I say this war is making Jews across the globe less safe. Animosity toward Israel is sometimes just anti-Zionism. It is sometimes antisemitism. And sometimes, anti-Zionism morphs into antisemitism before our eyes. Along with the 11 other thoughts above, one takeaway I have from all of this is that my worst fears about what would happen without a ceasefire continue to come true.