The latest obsession of the self-appointed constables of political correctness, writes James Kirchick, involves not simply identifying victims but constantly adopting new categories, upgrading some, and downgrading others. At the very lowest rung lie the Jews, whose persecution or murder merits scarcely a peep. Such thinking is not just the domain of far-left websites; in the promotion of “Islamophobia” as a hate crime, it has penetrated the highest reaches of the U.S. government. Kirchick writes:

Like gay men, Jews have been relegated to the bottom of the progressive victim pyramid, a low ranking that has held fast in spite of the rampant bigotry and violent attacks directed at them. . . .

Since the philosophy of the progressive speech police is so obviously shaping high-level U.S. government policy, it is hard to dismiss the efficacy of their tactics. Here it is important to note that all the hypersensitive concern about “Islamophobia,” and corresponding lack of ardor for combating anti-Jewish hatred, has no relation whatsoever to actual facts. The latest FBI crime statistics report six times as many hate-crime incidents directed against Jews as they do against Muslims. Likewise, in Europe, Jews are more likely to be victimized by hate crime than Muslims, who are themselves usually the perpetrators of anti-Semitic attacks.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.