Will America survive if its next generation is taught to hate it?
I'm seriously asking.
I like to think of myself as a Free Speech Absolutist. I agree with those who say that the First Amendment is the bedrock of America; that it’s what makes our country truly exceptional.
But I’m not an expert on the First Amendment. So I look to those who are—namely the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)—to tell me whether a certain law, policy, or action violates it.
Right now, this question arises in the case of Mahmoud Khalil, the Syrian activist and Columbia graduate whom ICE arrested on March 8. The State Department has revoked his green card, alleging he supports the terrorist organization, Hamas. As evidence, Secretary of State Marco Rubio cited Khalil’s central involvement in the anti-Israel protests at Columbia, which, Rubio said, “runs counter to the foreign policy interest of the United States of America.”
Here, Rubio was referring to a U.S. law that “allows the Secretary of State to exclude, under certain circumstances, any applicant whose entry or proposed activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”
The Trump administration has not charged Khalil with a crime but instead deemed his speech “anti-American” and “pro-Hamas.” According to FIRE, this violates the First Amendment, which protects a permanent resident’s right to protest government policy and express rhetorical support for a terrorist group, so long as it is “not directly coordinated with it, which the government has not alleged here.” Additionally, Khalil’s right to due process of law is being denied, which violates the Fifth Amendment.
As far as the U.S. law that the administration is using to justify its actions—which Rubio said will continue—FIRE wrote:
If constitutionally protected speech may render someone deportable by the secretary of state, the administration has free rein to arrest and detain any non-citizen whose speech the government dislikes. The inherent vagueness of the “adversarial to the foreign policy and national security interests” standard does not provide notice as to what speech is or is not prohibited. The administration’s use of it will foster a culture of self-censorship and fear.
This is America. We don't throw people in detention centers because of their politics. Doing so betrays our national commitment to freedom of speech.
As I said earlier, I’m not an expert, but I’m inclined to agree with FIRE. And yet none of this solves the ongoing problem at the university, which, as a Columbia student from 2017 to 2020, I bore witness to.
Leaving aside the fact that many who now cry “Free Mahmoud” have failed to demand the same for the hostages in Gaza, five of whom are American (only one is still alive), how is the U.S. expected to keep its citizens safe if college students are being indoctrinated to hate America and its allies?
“America is built on genocide,” they mindlessly repeat.
“America is a white supremacist nation.”
“America must be decolonized.”
What should be the response when American students—sometimes but not always at the urging of foreign nationals whose allegiance lies with America’s adversaries—call for “Death to Amerika”?
Is the distribution at Columbia of “Hamas Media Office” pamphlets, which glorify the October 7th attack on Israel, simply the expression of “rhetorical” support for a terrorist organization—or might this count as being “coordinated with it”?
“Oh, please,” I can hear some of you saying. “Students are not ‘being indoctrinated to hate their own country.’ They’re simply being taught a more holistic view of world events and America’s role in them.”
If only that were true. Otherwise universities like Barnard wouldn’t be overrun by a new generation of Patty Hearsts.
But they’re not just being taught to hate America. They’re being taught to hate themselves.
“You are tainted by the original sin of ‘whiteness.’ But if you ‘do the work,’ you can exorcise yourself of this evil. Join our global intifada.”
The impressionable students respond, “Where do I sign?”
Why would a country teach its best and brightest to usher forth its own demise? Isn’t this just national suicide?
I asked myself this question a lot as a Columbia student, as I sat in courses like Hamid Dabashi’s Contemporary Islamic Civilization. As the Iranian-born professor denounced the West in front of a lecture hall of seventy of so students, I’d be tempted to interject: “Are professors at the University of Tehran allowed to publicly condemn the Islamist regime of Iran? I would imagine not. And yet here you are, earning what I’m sure is a very handsome salary, smearing the civilization that protects your freedom to criticize it.”
Am I saying I want the U.S. to start censoring and detaining its professors and students in the same way that Iran does? Absolutely not. Not only would this be un-American, but American authoritarianism only emboldens our authoritarian adversaries. Which I suppose is another reason I disapprove of what is being done to Khalil.
It’s also why I should probably oppose the Trump Administration’s list of “demands” of Columbia if it hopes to retain its full federal funding, in particular its demand that the school place its department of Middle East, South Asian and African Studies under “academic receivership” for at least five years. (This means the department would no longer be controlled by the faculty.) After all, the feds shouldn’t be dictating what is or isn’t acceptable to teach at a university. We don’t need more self-censorship on campuses. We need less. Much less.
But I’m torn. I deeply resent the free pass that anti-Western professors have been given at universities like Columbia. I resent the formation of entire academic departments whose goal is to engineer social change rather than to educate students. Most of all, I resent what all of this has wrought: an illiberal cult of trans/queer/Islamist sympathizers, which until now has marched unabated through our institutions.
Would the federal government be involved in this “receivership”? Or would it be something that Columbia handles internally, on it’s own? If it’s the former, it can’t happen. If it’s the latter, well… maybe this will force the university to finally deal with what’s been occurring on campus over the past couple of decades. I really don’t know.
What I do know is my subjective experience of being a student at Columbia—how I entered the university as a self-described radical progressive eager to resist the Trump administration, but within two years wanted to kill myself because I was impure. Because I was “cis” and “white.” Because I was gay and not “queer.” Because I still believed in the American experiment and did not want it to end.
So, yes. Free Mahmoud. Free the hostages. And free the young minds from the grips of this cancerous ideology.
Just for clarity (and to be annoying), I want to add: while Leftists do seem to hate America and the West, what they really hate is not being in total control of it.
Since the good ol' days of Karl Marx (of blessed memory), angry "intellectuals" have been concocting radical theories in which they posit themselves as an enlightened priesthood who can midwife an egalitairian utopia, if only given total power.
(Marx was best nailed by his rival Bakunin in "Statism and Anarchy": "The words 'learned socialist' and 'scientific socialism,' which recur constantly in the writings and speeches of the Lassalleans and Marxists, are proof in themselves that the pseudo-popular state will be nothing but the highly despotic government of the masses by a new and very small aristocracy of real or pretended scholars. The people are not learned, so they will be liberated in entirety from the cares of government and included in entirety in the governed herd. A fine liberation!")
This also explains the odd historical episode that seems to have been memory-holed, the multiple generations of free Western scholars who gave their hearts and souls to the Soviet Union, a brutal dictatorship that would have silenced them or worse if they'd actually lived there. But what they admired about the Soviets was the power it gave to theorists and commissars to inflict their plans on a subjugated populace—the Soviets may have killed many many profs, but at least they took them seriously!
And the same goes now with the Western Left's pimping for Islamism: whoever most hates their enemies (the bourgeois Westerners who run our societies and the people who vote for them) is their friend, and whoever can provide the frisson of revolutionary hatred (their real addiction) is their spiritual guide. What Western Leftists most want is to feel righteous and powerful and to be able to punish their perceived enemies—whether in the name of Marxism or Islamism is secondary.
I love FIRE but I'm ok if citizens have more rights than legal residents.
The amount of federal money in colleges seems outlandish--I don't have much sympathy for Columbia.