(May 6) This is a memo to all student “protesters,” one you should copy and send to all colleagues on every social media platform. Read it, think about it, and if it makes you angry or hurt, read it again. If you don’t learn from it, you’ll ruin your future, and you will deserve the ruination.
If, repeat if, you participate in “protests” that break clear rules or laws; protests that involve trespassing, “occupations,” threats, vandalism, or violence; or protests that involve yelling for the destruction of entire nations or people or involve harassing people as if they are responsible for their own perceived “group” or nationality, then most or all of the following judgments apply to you.
First, you deserve no respect or sympathy. None. You have every right to engage in respectful discussion or debate. You have no right to break rules or laws or to threaten anybody else. If you do the latter but not the former, you deserve to have people assume that the exact opposite of your intended message is the moral and truthful position.
Second, you reveal yourself as a spoiled, adolescent brat, utterly unworthy of adult society. And you look like fools.
Third, you reveal yourself as either woefully and willfully ignorant or morally and ethically despicable — or all of the above. This is especially true if your “cause” involves denunciations of Israel without any denunciations of Hamas’s torturous and murderous terrorism on Oct. 7; of the years of rocket attacks from Gaza against Israel citizens; of Hamas’s use of women, children, and hospitals as human shields; or of Hamas’s years of redirecting humanitarian aid (much of it from Israel!) to terroristic purposes.
Fourth, you deserve to be suspended or expelled from the colleges whose ordinary functions and whose other students’ ability to study and learn you are interrupting. And if you are breaking laws, you should be arrested, charged, prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned….. [The full column is at this link.]
