Kerby Anderson
The Pro-Hamas campus protests could only last so long before some people in charge exercised some common sense. One of my cliches on radio is “common sense is breaking out all over.” We are seeing that in the words and actions of people who understand what is happening.
Even at Columbia University, police were called and arrested 108 protesters last month, but not much has happened. The President at the University of Texas at Austin took stronger action and was criticized by the faculty. But presidents and university administrators are starting to realize they cannot continue to function with these protests on campus. Classes have gone online, and graduations have been cancelled.
Bill Maher on his TV show encouraged the protesters to start protesting truly evil groups like: Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. He also wondered why they weren’t protesting North Korea, China, and Myanmar.
On radio, I’ve questioned why there has been no protest about other Muslims being killed. These students never protested when Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad used poison gas against his own people. They have not been in the streets when Muslims in Sudan kill millions in an endless civil war. Boko Haram kidnaps whole villages of women, and yet we had a short protest ten years ago and but nothing since.
Common sense seems to be breaking out in the corporate world. Google recently fired 28 employees who were protesting the company’s cloud-computing contract with Israel. According to the company’s vice president, the employees “took over office spaces, defaced our property and physically impeded the work of other Googlers.” They were all shown the door.
We need more people in charge to exercise common sense. And we need to tell the protesting students they are focused on the wrong cause.