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What I Saw at Columbia's Demonstration
(Wall Street Journal) Peggy Noonan - Young people like to be part of something big and passionate. They want to care. It's romantic to be a revolutionary. However, a characteristic of the recent campus demonstrators was the covering of their faces, the hiding of their identities. This struck me as sinister. The 1960s antiwar protesters didn't hide who they were, they didn't wear masks. Students in the past two weeks did, to make observers feel menaced - some big, faceless force is enraged, occupying, and marching toward you. I was at Columbia hours before the police came in and liberated Hamilton Hall from its occupiers. Unlike protesters of the past, who were usually eager to share with others what they thought and why, these demonstrators would generally not speak or make eye contact with members of the press. They weren't a compassionate group. They weren't for anything, they were against something: the Israeli state, which they'd like to see disappear, and those who support it. A friend who counsels students at Columbia said these students don't believe the terrorist organization Hamas was unjustified in its actions on Oct. 7. They are "totally on board with neo-Marxist oppressor-oppressed ideology." They don't have compassion for Gaza and its people "any more than they've had compassion for Ukraine." They are driven by an anti-Israeli animus that is also and inextricably an anti-American animus. The people of my liberal town were relieved to see the NYPD come in, drag the protesters away, restore order, and let people clean things up.