City University of New York police officers recently expressed concern to the New York Police Department about “potentially dangerous” anti-Israel protests and CUNY’s lack of preparedness for a response.
There are solutions for this problem, Nicholas Giordano, a higher education fellow for Campus Reform, said on American Family Radio Tuesday.
The solutions are multi-layered. Eventually curriculum has to come into play, but it should start with conservatives rolling up their sleeves, Giordano told show host Jenna Ellis.
It will help if colleges and universities are hit where it most hurts – the pocketbook. Some of that is beginning to take place, Giordano said.
Campus Encampments Round 2
In the short term, there are real concerns for college campuses, particularly in New York.
“It’s going to be bad,” one CUNY officer told NYPD, according to The New York Post. “Our numbers just aren’t there. If there’s a spontaneous protest that we don’t have any knowledge of, we’re going to be outnumbered. Just by the sheer numbers of students enrolled, we’re outnumbered.”
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, to borrow from most American grandmothers.
However, cure should come not from campus police forces but from campus classrooms. That’s where hate not only for the Jews but for Western Civilization has thrived.
“We’ve reported at Campus Reform how 30% of Gen Zers view Osama bin Laden's ideas as the right ideas and that 20% believe that Osama bin Laden was a good man. Then you have only 18% of Gen Zers that are extremely proud to be American,” Giordano said.
He’s concerned that those data points will add up to something far more tangible and damaging.
“With all the rhetoric and the anti-Americanism, how long is it going to be before one of these groups or an individual that's influenced by these groups engages in some type of terror attack? That’s my concern for what we're witnessing,” Giordano said.
The reason the hate has thrived is that Leftist educators and students have received no pushback. That only leads to feelings of invincibility for students, and, frankly, events from the spring supported those beliefs, Giordano said.
“This has been tolerated for far too long," he told Ellis. "There have been few consequences for those that commandeered college campuses, that took over classrooms, prevented Jewish students from taking their finals. Unfortunately, we see throughout the country over 300 charges have been dropped against those that were arrested towards the end of last semester. So, it tells these students that there are no consequences for their actions.”
Conservatives need to become more involved if the trend in education is to be reversed, Giordano said.
“For far too long, conservatives took a hands-off approach when it came to the education system. They have to get re-engaged," he warned. "Not only do they have to push back against what's being taught in the classroom, they need to start entering civil service, becoming employers, active on state boards of education, go to a local school boards and take them over.”
When those things begin to happen love of country, patriotism and a sense of obligation to faith, family and community will begin to reappear, Giordano said.
It can’t only happen in the schools.
“Parents have to re-engage themselves and they have to go through the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, the opportunity that America affords and what the core American values of liberty and freedom. I think those go a long way,” he said.
Withholding funds goes a long way too, and that could bring some relief in the short term.
The price of protests
Wealthy donors at some elite schools in light of the spring protests have begun to wonder if their money might be better of someplace else, BestColleges.com reports.
Employers are taking action too, some of them no longer requiring a four-year degree to be hired, Giordano said.
“It may not be overnight, but sooner or later, the financial mechanisms foster change on university campuses. So as donors pull back their funds, and as the value of a college degree drops, these institutions will start to rethink their approach to education. Maybe just maybe they'll get back to the core roots of intellectual curiosity, robust debate and what the idea of education is really about,” Giordano said.
