Cornell University in upstate New York has been the center of much of the wrong sort of attention recently, and that trend continued this weekend. The campus was temporarily placed on lockdown under a high alert status yesterday, centered around the school’s Center for Jewish Living. The Center was the target of multiple antisemitic comments and death threats that were described by the university’s president as “horrendous.” The information was provided to the FBI and an investigation into potential hate crimes has been requested. While the full content of the messages was not released to the public, the intent was clear. The threats were not generalized, but targeted specifically at Jewish students and staff, directly referencing the Center for Jewish Living. (NY Post)

Cornell University was on high alert Sunday night after a series of “horrendous, antisemitic” messages threatening the school’s Jewish community were posted earlier on a public forum, school officials said Sunday night.

The school notified law enforcement agencies and campus police were taking precautions after a series of disturbing online posts made threats directed at Jewish students and the Center for Jewish Living, according to the university’s president Martha Pollack.

The FBI has been contacted of a potential hate crime at the upstate New York Ivy League school amid the Israel-Hamas war, Pollack said.

We can no longer look at situations such as this on American university campuses as an aberration or some sort of outlier. Cornell is only one of hundreds of campuses where anti-Israel hatred and antisemitic violence has been flaring up, though this college clearly seems to be among the worst. But what did you expect after the college hosted massive anti-Israel protests with little more than a tepid response initially? University President Martha Pollack has been trying to correct her course and crack down more sharply since then, but it appears that the horse is already out of the barn.

She described the threats as “absolutely intolerable” and promised to see that the perpetrator is “punished to the full extent of the law.” That may be possible now that the FBI is involved. While I frequently complain about federal abuse of private communications data, those threats must have originated on some sort of computer or phone and the feds have the ability to track such devices and even determine their location at any given moment in addition to the identity of the user.

Sadly, this is almost certainly not a case where one bad apple is causing all of this mayhem. Keep in mind that Cornell was the home to a professor who celebrated the October 7 Hamas attacks, calling them “energizing” and “exhilarating.” The best the university could eventually do in response was to allow him to take a leave of absence. These are the people molding young minds in our schools. How many more like that professor are lurking out there while not being quite as stupid or obvious in their public displays? Is it really any wonder that some of these young people feel “inspired” to threaten to start killing Jews?

Here’s another question that’s been raised by some politicians from both parties recently. How many students, professors, and staff members at Cornell are in the United States on student visas or other forms of legal immigrant status? Federal law allows for such visas to be cancelled and the holders deported if they openly express support for recognized terrorist organizations, and Hamas is formerly recognized as such in the United States. The FBI should be able to work with immigration officials and identify everyone at Cornell who falls into that category.

Then a quick review of all of the available online video of the pro-Hamas demonstrations on and around the Cornell campus using facial recognition technology should be able to produce an accurate list. If the school and the American government want to send a serious message, they should round every one of them up and ship them back to their country of origin. The others who are citizens should have their names published on a public list that’s made available to all employers. That may sound harsh, but we’re looking at a new holocaust brewing in our own country and it’s our own fault if we don’t find a way to nip it in the bud.