There has been a loud and growing conversation about the execrable state of academia, laid bare by the savage Hamas war on Israel. AEI’s Matt Continetti dives in here, and Yascha Mounk notes the dispositive point that university leaders who fell over themselves to make pronouncements on everything from George Floyd to the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision have remained conspicuously silent in the face of the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
Another dimension of the revelations about academia has been the depths of depravity of some of the students – particularly students at elite universities. It’s been widely reported that dozens
of student groups at Harvard threw their lot in with Hamas; the leader of an NYU law student grouping similarly aligned herself with the baby butchers (losing her post-grad job in the bargain; kudos to Winston and Strawnfor kicking her to the curb). There are innumerable examples.
But one thing we have heard less of – perhaps the cup of outrage runneth over – is the social media of America’s young people. My own kids have been forced to block, to unfriend, to recast algorithms, in order to excise the antisemitic vitriol from their pages. (Apparently, you only learn who your online ”friends” really are in days like these…) Take a look – with thanks to our own Clara Keuss who was steely enough to help hunt down the media you’re about to see. We’ve left out some of the more celebratory posts about killing babies, but they’re there too.
Now, a lot of this is standard issue anti-Zionism, antisemitism, run-of-the-mill Israel and Jew hatred. But it comes in the wake of one of the most savage attacks against the Jewish people in almost a century -- the mutilation of children, the rape of women and girls, the taking of hostages, the celebration of torture. And it bears repeating that so much of this reflects a pathetic grasp of history, of reality. Martin Luther King, for just one example, stood with Israel. American Jewry was at the forefront of the civil rights movement. Then there’s the apartheid trope so beloved not only in academia, but across international organizations and throughout Europe. And of course, the tough fact that Israel did not start this war.
Here's the thing. These “kids” and pseudo-adults are the future of the United States of America. Sure, older Americans despaired in the ‘60s at the willingness of a previous generation to celebrate the murder of U.S. troops, the slavish devotion to communism, the insane celebrations of Pol Pot and others. And they grew up. But there is a real question to be asked whether the environment in which this generation will age will be different.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the United States had an education system that taught history and civics. It had a university system that emphasized merit and rational argument – for the most part. It had community groups organized around civic life, not grievances. It is not insane to ask where it is that the authors of the screeds above will learn truth. Anywhere? There is no osmotic process in which the evolution from youth to adulthood delivers maturity and knowledge from nowhere. There must be fonts of education, of wisdom, of mentoring and of growth. It is not unreasonable to ask just what those are in this day and age.
And there’s another point: The sheer savagery of it all. Once upon a time, the images of a Holocaust shocked and horrified. No longer. Now they are denied, or explained away. Or worse… celebrated. Can America tolerate the glorification of brutality in our society such that images of decapitated children are shrugged off? How did we get here? How will we get out?