President Biden clear: Campus protests are not peaceful

By Brian Greenspun (contact)

Sunday, May 5, 2024 | 2 a.m.

It is about time. President Joe Biden finally spoke.

America is a country that likes to think that it learns from the past. Americans believe that we understand the mistakes we have made and we endeavor not to repeat them. The best way to do that is to teach each succeeding generation our history and their responsibility to apply that knowledge to the present and their future. That doing so helps us become a more perfect union — the Founding Fathers’ idea of a republic based on the democratic ideals of freedom of expression and the right to vote.

We have witnessed in the past few weeks some students as well as many others who have no business on campus, under the guise of free speech, storm university buildings, camp out on university quads, prevent free passage of other students to their classrooms, libraries and dorms, intimidate and bully Jewish students and others interested in their education and not this particular protest movement. And, generally, shut down higher education at some or many of the nation’s most elite universities. Or, at least, what used to be some of the nation’s most elite universities.

All this has been done because the students in the quads have not paid attention to their history lessons, paid too much attention to a cadre of professors hell-bent on manipulating their young, gullible and unknowledgeable minds or relied to their detriment on the algorithmic machinations of others as manifested on their smartphones. And when they do focus on the only history they have lived through — the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021 — the lesson they learn is that half of their countrymen condone the mayhem that day as merely a walk in the park.

All this is to say that the rich and proud history of peaceful protest in the United States has been bastardized by outside forces and inside forced ignorance. And it has been aided and abetted by university leaders who both refuse to lead and refuse to take responsibility for the way their institutions have not educated.

Good. I feel better now that I have gotten that off my chest.

But, what made me feel so much better was when President Biden spoke Thursday morning after weeks of silence in the face of campus anarchy that many of us who were alive back then haven’t seen since the 1960s.

And that is where the similarities end as far as I am concerned.

What hasn’t ended, though, is a nationwide disgust that emanates from every hamlet — and many homes that are currently paying for their kids higher education — as they watch some of the most entitled Americans (those fortunate enough to go to college) spew antisemitic hate, hate for America and disdain for the lessons of history, which they obviously have not learned.

With all of that in play, it was way past time for the president to speak to the nation, to tell us what was right about protest and what was so wrong about what we see on our TVs and tablets each night.

I realize he has a lot on his plate. Certainly, with the war against Hamas threatening to reach the final and, unfortunately, fatal stages in the Gazan city of Rafah, as well as the incredible opportunity for a U.S.-led remake of the Middle East if we can herd the cats sufficiently to make the deal, one could surmise that a bit of campus unrest was just an unwanted distraction.

I don’t believe that Joe Biden thinks that way. But, still, I couldn’t understand why he took so long to speak out. To tell Americans what they already knew—protest was good, what is happening on college campuses is bad. Very bad.

I was in Los Angeles the night the police were finally called in (long overdue) to clean up the mess at UCLA by removing those causing the mess from the campus grounds. It was tense and ugly and so not the Los Angeles in the movies.

We have all witnessed the police being called in (again, way too late) across the country to remove the lawbreakers who violate school rules and violate the rules of decent behavior as they restore law and order to places designed for peace and calm and safety and security. And we have even seen a few university leaders act proactively to stop the anarchy before it could begin. Good for them.

What America is finally showing the rest of the world right now is not that democracy is messy but that anarchy—which is spreading across the globe— is dangerous. Now is the time when our leaders must speak out and speak up — even in the face of domestic political adversity —if we are to keep our democracy and help keep the rest of the world safe for theirs.

Joe Biden has finally spoken up. Now the rest of America — the part that wants to learn from history and make our country better — needs to speak out for itself.

At least, those of us who know our history and have learned a little something from it.

Brian Greenspun is editor, publisher and owner of the Sun.