After interviewing four candidates for the newly founded Edward Said chair in Middle Eastern Studies, California State University at Fresno abruptly deferred the search for a year due to “critical procedural errors.” Vida Samiian, the professor directing the search, responded by resigning from the university, alleging that the administration had given in to “vicious and discriminatory attacks launched by Israel-advocacy groups,” who objected to the fact that the four finalists for the job were “of Middle Eastern ethnicity.” Jonathan Marks comments:

Samiian, [in her resignation letter], presented virtually no evidence of outside pressure [and] no evidence at all for the charge of racism. Nonetheless, people who describe themselves as intellectuals and academics were off to the races. The U.S. Campaign for an Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel decried the “bullying by Zionists” that had taken place at Fresno and agreed that the cancellation constituted “discrimination against Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims.” Jewish Voice for Peace sponsored a “faculty letter” [repeating Samiian’s accusations, which] hundreds of faculty members, supposedly accustomed to disciplining themselves to follow the evidence, signed.

But more egregious, and revealing, were the claims of Joe Parks, another faculty member who joined Samiian’s accusations:

Parks, unschooled in the nuances of covert anti-Semitism, forgot to speak of “Zionists” and said outright that the search was derailed by “the Jewish faculty.” . . . Parks conceded that he could not materially support his claim. . . . His explosive allegation that “Jews on the faculty and community members of the Jewish community” contacted search-committee members to complain that the finalists for the position were “of Middle Eastern ethnicity” was unsubstantiated and unlikely to be true. Even if some faculty or community members were inclined to make such a complaint, it seems implausible that they would be as open about their anti-Arab prejudice as Parks is about his fixation on Jews.

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.