Last weekend’s edition of the New Times Book Review featured an interview with the author and Israel-hater Alice Walker, in which she was asked what books are currently on her nightstand. Among the four she named was And the Truth Shall Set You Free by David Icke, a longstanding peddler of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories; the book itself draws liberally on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, complains that Holocaust denial isn’t taught in schools, blames Jews for the Holocaust, and accuses the Anti-Defamation League of supporting far-right groups with the help of the Mossad and the Rothschilds. In Walker’s words, recorded by the Times without comment, the book is a “curious person’s dream come true.” Yair Rosenberg observes:

As can be seen from . . . its chapter titles (“Master Races,” “The Hidden Hand”), anti-Semitism is not incidental to Icke’s book; it is essential. It is impossible to miss. . . . That a celebrated cultural figure like Walker would promote such a self-evidently unhinged bigot might seem surprising [to those unfamiliar with her previous pronouncements]. But this is only because the cultural establishment has spent years studiously looking away from Walker’s praise of Icke and his work, and her [own] repeated expressions of anti-Semitism. . . .

Normally, . . . I’d say that it was good that the Times published Walker’s recommendation of Icke because it lets us know who she is. But we have known who she is for many years. It is rather the Times and other cultural elites who have opted to ignore this inconvenient fact. Thus, the only thing that is accomplished by uncritically disseminating Walker’s bigoted [recommendation] is ensuring that the racism is disseminated to more people.

Why has Walker escaped accountability for so long? Perhaps it is due to her Israel politics, which have been used to confuse the issue. Walker is a prominent supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, famously forbidding [her novel] The Color Purple from being translated into Hebrew. Because Walker—like Icke—is a strident critic of Israel, her defenders—like Icke’s—have dismissed allegations of anti-Semitism by claiming they are merely an attempt to quash her criticism of the Jewish state.

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.