Elite campuses are a source of weakness for America - opinion

The latest bout of pro-terror protests on elite American college campuses has us thinking about the contributions these universities make to our national strength.

Admittedly, private universities funded by private funds have every right to serve global interests instead of American ones.

But the eight Ivy League campuses, plus Stanford and Northwestern, have received $33 billion in federal grants and contracts since 2018. Are these taxpayer dollars making America stronger, or are they undermining America’s interests and the resilience of its future generations?

Schools that undermine America's interests and its future

We define strength as taking responsibility, and weakness as demanding entitlements.

As an extraordinary case of entitlement, Columbia University’s student protesters added a new item to their list of demands in a press briefing in April: food, which protesters said the university is under obligation to provide.

“It’s ultimately a question of what kind of community and obligation Columbia feels it has to its students – do you want students to die of dehydration and starvation or get severely ill, even if they disagree with you?” said Johannah King-Slutzky, a representative for the People’s University, a PhD candidate at Columbia’s Graduate School of Arts and Science, and a teacher.

For many young Americans, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a microcosm of two Americas. On the one hand, those who embrace Hamas embrace the entitlement culture.

Unfortunately, entitlement has been the pattern of much of Palestinian history. Instead of taking responsibility for the Palestinian people’s future by accepting a state in 1947, some Palestinian leaders waged a war of annihilation on the nascent State of Israel, believing they were entitled to the entire land.

When they lost the 1948 war, they could have taken responsibility for their failure. Instead, they blamed Israel for the many Palestinian refugees and then demanded entitlements from Israel and the United Nations.

Even in their loss, they could have taken responsibility through institutional growth, economic development, building infrastructure, mature executive, legislative, and judicial governance, and more skills-based education, less indoctrination – instead, the Palestinian cause has largely been a failed revolution against the permanence of the State of Israel.

Similarly, Hamas’s American protesters seek revolution for revolution’s sake. Israel has a right to defend itself and its citizens, and it takes that responsibility seriously. Hamas does not defend its citizens, it hides under them and behind them.

Early in this current war, Hamas claimed that it had no responsibility for governing the Gaza Strip – that was the responsibility of the United Nations, it said.

Instead of taking responsibility for its own people, their real needs, and the basics of governance, Hamas embraced perpetual revolution – terrorism.

This is also the goal of the campus protesters. Their goal, like Hamas’s, is entirely unrealistic – the destruction of the State of Israel.

WE MUST remember that Hamas gained power and autonomy over the Gaza Strip in 2007. For 16 years, it squandered the vast majority of its donated resources on a violent revolution. And now it demands humanitarian aid, as well as the means of distribution, for a war it started.

Of course we want to see humanitarian aid delivered to innocent Palestinians rather than hoarded by Hamas. But our point of view is that, when responsibility is forfeited, accountability is required. And Israel is holding Hamas accountable.

So on the other hand, there is the culture of responsibility that the State of Israel embodies. Zionism, its founding ideology, said that the Jewish people are responsible for their own future and that self-determination is exactly what the phrase means.

Before Israel attained statehood in 1948, it built all the institutions necessary for independence – ready as soon as the opportunity arrived. It built a self-reliant economic institution, the Histadrut; a national army-in-the-making, the Hagana; a democratic governing body, the Jewish Agency; a network of agriculture and settlement in the kibbutz movement; and a unified program for investment in the Jewish National Fund.

Zionism prepared the Jewish people for independence and self-reliance while the Palestinian cause has mostly been focused on perpetual dependence and donations.

To stave off the entitled mindset that weakens our nation, we need American educational institutions that create environments where responsibility is celebrated, nurtured, and expected.

A glimpse of responsibility was demonstrated by University of North Carolina students, which included Jewish Americans, who protected the American flag from those who would replace it with the Palestinian one.

A whisper of the spirit of the Marines at Iwo Jima was there. Those students demonstrated responsibility for their flag, their campus, their country, and their future.

Our universities aren’t supposed to teach students exactly what to think, but they do have a responsibility to develop American leaders, especially when taxpayer dollars are being invested.

And developing leaders is about holding people accountable so that they learn to be responsible. We have seen countless university administrators and faculty failing to hold their students accountable for misconduct, even participating with them.

That breeds entitlement and weakness. Ultimately, we need new generations of American youth who will take responsibility for America’s future.

No matter what discoveries are made at America’s most elite campuses, they will not benefit America’s national strength until the faculty and administrators develop student-leaders who will take responsibility for those discoveries, their own learning, their own personal needs, and the interests of their own nation.

When students and faculty join the cause of an entitled terrorist organization, something has gone deeply wrong in the purpose of American higher education.

Jason Olson received his PhD from Brandeis University in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies in 2016 and serves as a US Navy foreign area officer.

Bart Marcois is a former US diplomat and the former principal deputy assistant secretary of energy for international affairs. He served 10 years in the Arab Middle East, and now heads a private consulting practice in Washington.

Judge Alan Clemmons is the founder of American Patriots for Israel and served for 18 years in the South Carolina House of Representatives, where he authored the first law establishing penalties for those businesses that engage in any discriminatory boycott of Israel. 

His state-based template has now been employed in 37 US states. He is also the author of the Israel plank in the Republican Party platform.

The writers’ views are theirs alone. They wish to thank Mr. Joseph Sabag for his editorial support and various insights into the subject matter.