Colleges and Universities Must Be in the Fight Against Evil

The rape, torture, kidnapping, immolation, and genocidal massacre of Jews in Israel by Hamas has exposed not only fault lines within American society but also the dangerous corruption of academia.

The insidious decades-long indoctrination by propagandists who self-identify as “progressive educators” in our colleges and universities has fomented antisemitism barely concealed behind the term “anti-Zionism,” which, in turn, misrepresents the evil ideology and actions of Hamas and its kindred antisemitic groups.

This infection has burst open and spilled its putrescence where the world can no longer ignore it. Its stench can be smelled on prestigious university campuses and in the streets of purportedly civilized cities.

Leftists infected with a mal-understanding of human nature, history, and truth have controlled secular colleges and universities for half a century. Two generations of young people have had their beliefs, values, and morals deformed by ideologically non-diverse faculty members with little to no investment in having students critically examine leftist assumptions. Criticism of leftist assumptions would risk undermining the socio-political project of “progressive educators” to create (socially construct) activists in their own image. Can’t have that. Wouldn’t be prudent.

The toxic fruits of their constructivist project can be seen in the pervasive cultural inability to distinguish evil from good. We need no longer marvel at the German people’s sheeplike non-resistance to or complicity with the Nazi regime. We see it here on our campuses.

We see it in President Biden’s insulting hectoring of the Israeli government to observe the rules of war. We see it in demands that Israel show restraint when responding to Hamas’ massacre, which was carefully planned by the savages since the inept, senile Biden took office.

We see it in efforts to establish moral equivalence between the actions of Hamas and the necessary reaction of Israel, which rational, morally grounded people know must destroy Hamas or await the torture and annihilation of its own people.

We see it in pernicious calls for proportionality. Is that really what appeasers want? Proportionality? Proportionality demands the lives of 1,500 Gazan civilians in one day. Proportionality demands 220 kidnapped Gazans. Proportionality demands shooting the faces off innocent, non-violent Gazans; burning families alive; beheading the same number of Arab infants that Hamas beheaded; raping the same number of girls and women and doing so with such force that their pelvises are broken; and kidnapping the same number of infants, toddlers, children, and elderly that Hamas kidnapped.

Good thing for Gazans that, unlike Hamas, Israelis are civilized.

Some colleges and universities—our seats of intellectual, ethical, and moral formation—have shamefully issued tepid statements saying, in effect, all human suffering is bad, so let’s everyone just dial it back a notch. Some have shamefully issued no statements, hiding behind policy statements that they voluntarily created and now use to justify their silence. That booming silence is even more shameful when it echoes from Christian colleges and universities.

And some did what decent humans, wise leaders, and molders of minds and characters do: They made statements unequivocally condemning the evil the world just witnessed.

In a statement titled, “We Stand Together with Israel Against Hamas,” signed by a multifaith group of college presidents, including the presidents of Baylor College, University of Notre Dame, and the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities wrote,

Dear Colleagues,

We are horrified and sickened by the brutality and inhumanity of Hamas. Murdering innocent civilians including babies and children, raping women, and taking the elderly as hostages are not the actions of political disagreement but the actions of hate and terrorism. The basis of all universities is a pursuit of truth, and it is times like these that require moral clarity. Like the fight against ISIS, the fight against Hamas is a fight against evil. We, the presidents and chancellors of universities and colleges across the United States of America and the world, stand with Israel, with the Palestinians who suffer under Hamas’s cruel rule in Gaza, and with all people of moral conscience.

Colleges and universities are feeling pressure to clean their filthy houses. The Wexner Foundation has ended its thirty-year relationship with Harvard’s Kennedy School for its “tiptoing” around Hamas’ barbaric assault on Israel. Jon Huntsman is threatening to cut off donations to the University of Pennsylvania, writing in a letter to the UPenn president,

The University’s silence in the face of reprehensible and historic Hamas evil against the people of Israel (when the only response should be outright condemnation) is a new low.

Academia must rid itself of both faculty and student organizations that endorse terrorism. Schools must fire professors like the “trans”-identifying UC Davis professor Jemma DeCristo who tweeted,

One group of ppl [people] we have easy access to in the US is all these zionist journalists who spread propaganda & misinformation. They have houses w [with] addresses, kids in school. They can fear their bosses, but they should fear us more.

DeCristo ended the post with “emojis of a knife, an axe and multiple drops of blood.”

DeCristo is far from alone. Chicago's School of the Art Institute employs climate activist Dr. "Mika" Tosca, a viciously antisemitic, cross-dressing man who tweeted,

Israelis are pigs. Savages. Very very bad people. Irredeemable excrement. ... May they rot in hell.

And campus groups like Students for Justice in Palestine that support terrorist organizations must be shut down as the Florida State University system has just done.

No freedom is absolute and boundary-free, and that includes academic freedom. Endorsement of organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah that are openly committed to the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people everywhere has no place in civilized society.

Many believe that Christian colleges and universities bear a particular burden of responsibility to expose and oppose evil. Dr. Perry Glanzer, Professor of Educational Foundations and a resident scholar with Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion, urges Christian institutions to be part of the solution to the problem of evil. While acknowledging that Christian institutions “are not in the business of making continual, and sometimes uninformed, public pronouncements about [the evil that exists throughout the world], Christian colleges and universities should “issue occasional statements that try and form their audience to order their evils according to the Christian tradition and offer redemptive solutions.”

Pointing to the biblical admonition to Christians to “expose evil,” Glanzer urges Christian universities to make statements “especially where humans made in God’s image are being killed, tortured, raped, and brutalized.”

Too many conservatives seem either confused or deceived by the sophistry ‘o’ the day that preaches there is no objective truth; there is just "your truth” and "my truth”—phrases philosophy professor Peter Kreeft calls both oxymoronic and moronic. Those confused conservatives should heed the words of Richard John Neuhaus who wrote, “Reasonable people may disagree about the truth, but the reality of disagreement does not imply the unreality of truth.” The truth is Hamas is evil and must be destroyed. Full stop. And it is incumbent on colleges and universities to participate in the fight against the evil they have in many cases facilitated.