It took three days before Magill was forced to tender her resignation at Penn. Gay at Harvard is hanging on by a thread, as she is now facing charges of plagiarism on top of condoning anti-Semites under the auspices of free speech, so long as that free speech doesn’t misgender anyone. And Kornbluth, for now, has the full confidence of her board of trustees at MIT.

Saturday Night Live, allegedly a comedy skit/variety show, tackled the issue in the most comedic way progressive anti-Semitic condoning leftists could muster – by mocking Rep. Stefanik. Needless to say, it really wasn’t very funny, and missed the entire point. If anyone deserved mocking and derision, it was the three university presidents who smirked at the questioning.

While MIT, Penn, and Harvard are the in the spotlight, they certainly are not alone, even in the Ivy Leagues, for having a problem with rampant Jew hatred on their campuses. After vacillation on what kind of action would be taken at either the Department of Education’s Civil Rights Division or at the Department of Justice, DOE announced they were opening investigations into seven schools, including Lafayette College, Cornell University, Columbia University, Wellesley College, the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.

The president of Columbia, Baroness Minouche Shafik, is an Egyptian-born, British-American economist, who in addition to running Columbia also serves in the House of Lords in the United Kingdom since 2020. She has had her hands full at Columbia, trying to find the balance point in keeping the crazy anti-Semites from going too far, but also not allowing those anti-Semites from being doxxed or harassed online when their pictures at Jew-hating rallies are shown and faces are identified.

How she handles the latest crazy antics from the pro-Hamas collection of students is anyone’s guess, but especially given her economics background and pedigree, she has been served up a golden opportunity to demonstrate a teaching moment, and we encourage her to take it.

Abigail Anthony at National Review writes over the weekend that the pro-Palestine gaggle of students have circulated a pledge with 1,000 names on it and are calling for a tuition strike in 2024 until Columbia quite participating in Israel’s apartheid.

“We want our university to refuse to invest in ethnic cleansing and genocide abroad. We refuse to accept our university’s silencing of student voices demanding decolonization on our campus,” reads a document by the students, who intend to announce a tuition strike after 1,000 pledges. “We refuse to allow our tuition dollars to fund apartheid.”

The strike is organized by the Barnard Columbia Abolitionist Collective, the Young Democratic Socialists of America, and Student-Worker Solidarity organizations.

The protesters demand a referendum for students across all Columbia University schools “on the issue of divestment from companies profiting from or otherwise supporting Israeli apartheid and Columbia’s academic ties to Israel.”

The students demand that Columbia remove Board of Trustees members whose personal investments, financial commitments, employment, or other business relations entail “profit from or support for Israeli apartheid,” and further demand a commitment to annually issuing “a comprehensive list of Board of Trustee conflicts of interest with Columbia’s investments.”

The students demand that the campus police disclose budget details, release organizational information and training requirements for staff members, as well as cease contact with the New York Police Department “for the purposes of crowd control and protest support.”

A strike pledge form states that “Columbia University has brought dozens of NYPD officers onto campus for these peaceful protests” and “these officers have only served to make students of color feel unsafe on their own campus and to stand idly by while students have been harassed and doxxed by outside organizations.”

A number of points to make here. First, a protester on campus feeling unsafe having the police keep an eye on things probably isn’t thinking about the protest from the university’s point of view, which is from a legal liability standpoint. It would be unrealistic to not realize the legal jeopardy facing the university if violence happens during a protest where the police were specifically not invited to provide overwatch. Columbia would be sued out of their ever-loving gourd if they just turned a blind eye on the obvious potential for conflict and refused law enforcement.

Second, the idea that Benjamin Netanyahu, nor anyone in his war cabinet, or the Israeli population at large for that matter, are going to heed threats of divestment from Columbia University is preposterous. Israel has already told Joe Biden, Antony Blinken and the rest of the American foreign policy contingent to pound sand with their demands for a ceasefire. Israel has given the United Nations a shovel and told them to get together with the Americans and pool their newfound resources and find somewhere to pound it. Even if President Shafik were predisposed to cave to the anti-Semites on her campus, it would not result in the purported outcome of which these misguided students are seeking.

Third, the students we’re talking about are not exactly bargaining from a position of strength here. Last year, 60,377 students applied to Columbia for acceptance. 2,253 were offered admission. That’s a 4.1% acceptance rate. Only Harvard has a lower acceptance rate than that. If you pay rack rate, it’s $81,680 a year for tuition, room, board, fees. If these anti-Semitic, terrorist-loving students get their way, they’ll cost the university $20 million dollars and bring them to their knees. Except there are things called university policies that are signed and accepted as conditions for enrollment, and there are broader economic principles involved called supply and demand.

If you do not pay your tuition, the school will hold your grades. If you continue to not pay your tuition, the university will not allow you to enroll in classes the next semester. If you continue to not pay your tuition, there are approximately 58,124 students out there who will. And if you’re currently here on a student visa from another country and you get thrown out of school for not paying your bill, the odds are that you will not remain in the country much longer – not to learn, not to protest, not to make jihad against Jews in your own special way.

President Shafik should bypass the formalities of policy and nip this in the bud right quick. She should issue a statement saying that any student participating in a tuition strike will be subject to immediate expulsion from campus. This is not a speech issue. This is a free market issue. If you are unwilling to pay for the goods and services Columbia provides, you violate your terms of enrollment and your contract with the university ends immediately.

Baroness Shafik seems a well-educated woman. I’m sure she, unlike House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, saw the viral video of her colleagues at other Ivy schools laying a gigantic egg at the Education Committee hearing. My guess is she, along with most other college presidents, are going to be very reticent about walking this particular plank at this particular time. Yes, the funding from Middle East countries like Qatar into these universities are enticing, but no amount of money is worth having to defend the indefensible, especially when Columbia is already under investigation from the feds.

If there is to be a BDS movement, it has to be waged against the anti-Semites wherever and whomever they are. Boycott, divest, and sanction anyone willingly choosing to support terrorists. Cut off ties from anyone openly embracing the oldest and most vile hatred in the history of mankind. It’s no longer a speech issue at Columbia. It has become extortion, and extortion that apparently is not very well thought out.

Send the message, President Shafik. Send them packing.