Picture Courtesy of Pam Roehl
Two weeks ago, Northwestern announced their updated tuition and fees for the 2024-2025 school year- $89,448 for one year of undergraduate instruction.
“The total cost for undergraduates living on campus will be $89,448. Undergraduate tuition will be $67,158; standard room and board will be $21,126; and fees will be $1,164.”
It’s mind-boggling – especially considering that there is nothing superior about the students that are accepted at NU than the students accepted to second tier schools. One doesn’t even need to prove that with comparative analysis of grades on standardized tests. We only need to look at the idiotic protests going on at the elitist campuses around the country including Northwestern.
As I wrote on Facebook and X this week,
“These are not America’s best and brightest. They are spoiled children living in the most luxurious time and place in the world, unencumbered by daily manual labor, the threat of having to personally defend their homeland or their home, the convenience of fast-food and ChatGPT. Their soft bodies and soft minds will destroy the country if they ever win leadership positions. And the faculty joining them and administration not expelling them are simply an older version of their infantile students.”
Sure, college students have been protesting on college campuses since campuses first came to be. Zachary Jason, writing in Ed. Magazine a publication of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, noted that.
“American college students wouldn’t stage a real protest until 1766, with Harvard’s Great Butter Rebellion. After Asa Dunbar (class of 1767) allegedly mounted his chair and bellowed, “Behold, our butter stinketh! Give us, therefore, butter that stinketh not,” students boycotted the dining hall for a month until President Edward Holyoke suspended more than half of the student body. Culinary outcries regularly erupted at Harvard until the Civil War.”
I guess this was just a butter debate and not even a guns vs. butter debate
Anyway, given today’s plentiful meal options, protesting dinner likely doesn’t happen anymore.
Protests in the 1960’s were commonplace over feminism, racism, and the Viet Nam War. In some places, violence erupted. On May 4th, it will be 54 years since four students were shot at Kent State University while protesting the Viet Nam War. Their shooting led to further student protests and the shutdown of campuses across the nation. By comparison, the current protests camps seem tame.
Still, there’s a difference to be made. Today’s protestors are on the wrong side of history. What’s worse, they apparently don’t even know their history when it comes to Palestine, Hamas, Israel and even the October 7th massacre by Hamas.
Writing for Stand Up America US Foundation, Ray DiLorenzo succinctly explained in their newsletter today about the advent of Palestine, Hamas, and the conflict with Israel. Here are some excerpts from that newsletter:
Hamas was founded in 1987. They are an Islamic fundamentalist group, and by the very core of their being, they will never accept a Jewish state.
The preamble of the first version of the Hamas charter in 1988 reads, “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”
In 2005, Israel withdrew from Gaza, giving the Palestinians their own land. Some will remember news broadcasts of Israeli soldiers, sometimes forcefully, moving fellow Israelis out of their homes around Gaza and the West Bank.
It is important to note that every time Israel gave Palestinians land, it became a base of operations to attack Israel. It would be like giving Michigan to terrorists, then ducking missiles from Dearborn.
In 2006, the Palestinians voted, giving Hamas much more power than they had, a clear plurality. The Fatah Party of Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority, was losing its grip on the people. In 2007, Hamas launched a bloody campaign against Fatah and took complete control over Gaza. Since then, Palestinians haven’t held an election.
Hamas began conducting terrorist attacks in Israel, killing 506 and wounding thousands.
Hamas was designated a terrorist organization by the United States, Israel, the EU, Canada, Egypt, and Japan. Israel and Egypt imposed a blockade on Gaza, restricting travel and trade within and outside the Strip. After the blockade, the number of attacks plummeted.October 7, 2023, was a Holocaust-like event. Over twelve-hundred innocent men, women, and children were slaughtered, and over 240 taken hostage. Hamas raped and mutilated women without mercy. Among the bodies identified were found broken pelvises, bruises, cuts, and signs of sexual assault, with victims ranging from children, teenagers to the elderly.
Videos of eyewitnesses detailed bloodied naked women, gang rapes, mutilation, executions, and wombs ripped open with the fetus stabbed before killing the mother. Some Hamas killers even called their proud parents, keeping the line open, as they were killing Jews, asking for and receiving their blessing.
In this picture a woman obviously infers that people should speak with her if they want to know how life is in Gaza. Good idea. The fact is Hamas is holding the civilian population hostage. Those who can, need to be participants in freeing themselves from the violent repression of Hamas.
There is obviously much more to the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but it is doubtful that many of the students have an even basic understanding of it.
Administrators could help understanding by mandating lectures on the history of the formation of the Israel, the legitimate wars they engaged in and won territory from, their relinquishing of the that territory back to their sworn enemies, and the formation of Gaza and their subsequent election of Hamas.
From roving reporters, we find out that some students have no idea why they are protesting.
NY Post reported that this Columbia University student even admitted, “I wish I was more educated.”
Here’s how the conversation went
Asked if there was “something NYU is doing,” the student meekly replied: “I really don’t know, I’m pretty sure they are…”
She then turned to her friend and asked, “Do you know what NYU is doing here?”
The friend, who was wearing a face mask, then bluntly asked: “About what?”
“About Israel. Why are we protesting, here at NYU specifically?” the student asked.
“I wish I was more educated,” her friend confessed.
She may regret taking that question as the video has over 3 million views.
With each passing day these universities allow the protests to continue, the value of their degree lessens and they put their endowments in trouble as donors pull money.
CEOs Ken Griffin and Bill Ackerman vowed to not hire student leaders from Harvard.
The owner of the Patriots, Robert Kraft has said he is stopping his donations to Columbia.
Leslie Wexner said six months ago he was pulling his donations to Harvard.
Others are doing the same.
The good news is some universities are handling the situation with strict rules and enforcement. The University of Florida set out clear guidance and consequences for protestors which still allow for free speech.
Be sure to read the last two lines on the consequences of violating the protest rules–
Students will receive a 3-year trespass and suspension.
Employees will be trespassed and separated from employment.
That’s leadership.
From the University of Illinois Systems, at the start of the conflict, President Killeen put out a good statement that reads in part that:
In the past few days, we have watched the events unfolding in Israel and Gaza with great anguish and alarm. The unspeakable brutality of the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians is simply horrifying. Such acts can never be justified and we condemn them in the strongest possible terms….
We are not in a position to affect the progression of the conflict or the outcome. However, we can decide as a community that we will support and care for one another, and we can recommit to our deeply held belief that the multicultural communities that compose our universities are our greatest strength. We are one University of Illinois System community and – at our best – we bring empathy and compassion to our work together.”
In the past few days, we have watched the events unfolding in Israel and Gaza with great anguish and alarm. The unspeakable brutality of the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians is simply horrifying. Such acts can never be justified and we condemn them in the strongest possible terms….
We are not in a position to affect the progression of the conflict or the outcome. However, we can decide as a community that we will support and care for one another, and we can recommit to our deeply held belief that the multicultural communities that compose our universities are our greatest strength. We are one University of Illinois System community and – at our best – we bring empathy and compassion to our work together.”
The best line in his statement is a recognition that the university is not in a position to affect the progression of the conflict. Exactly. At least in the 1960’s the focus of the protests were American domestic and foreign policy.
These protests are a wake-up call.
- The protestors’ call to action is “From the River to the Sea, Palestine must be Free,” a call for genocide.
- The protests have been infiltrated by professional activists according to reports.
- The participation of faculty in the protests further justifies a divestment of higher education by donors, parents, and taxpayers.
- The failure of the administration to reign in the encampments that have threatened Jewish students and others has shown the cowardice of those leaders.
How does that Sam Cooke melody go?
Don’t know much about history
Don’t know much biology
Don’t know much about science book
Don’t know much about the French I took
For some students, that seems to be the case. And the last thing we need to do is pay off any student’s, let alone those students standing with Hamas, pricey student loans just because they took a non-profit social services job or a job at a government agency.