Yesterday marked the anniversary of the burning of a synagogue by a Christian mob in the Levantine Roman city of Callinicum—roughly contiguous with Raqqa, currently the capital of Islamic State—in 388 CE. David B. Green writes:

[This] was not the first time that a Jewish place of worship had been destroyed by Christians in the early decades after the adoption of Christianity by Emperor Constantine. . . .

Much less is known about the background to the arson than about what followed, but apparently the bishop of Callinicum incited from the pulpit against the Jews and their evil teachings and ways. The burning of the synagogue was the response the bishop’s followers deemed appropriate. . . .

[T]he secular legal authorities of the province ordered the rioters of Callinicum and their rabble-rousing priest to compensate the Jews—either by rebuilding the synagogue for them or by paying them so they could undertake the reconstruction themselves. That judgment was then confirmed by Theodosius, at the time ruler of the eastern part of the Roman empire, whose seat was in Milan.

Under pressure from the church father St. Ambrose, then bishop of Milan, Theodosius eventually reversed the verdict.

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.