Weaponization of the U.S.academic institutions

The current crisis engulfing the U.S. campuses is a toxic mix of the influx of Qatari and Chinese funding on one hand and ideological indoctrination on the other.

- CHAOTIC PROTESTS ROCK U.S CAMPUSES

Some of the recent scenes around the prestigious Columbia University (CU) campus in New York City were reminiscent of those played out thousands of miles away a few years ago on the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus in the Indian capital city of New Delhi. Before Columbia, the “azadi“ (a Hindi/ Urdu word of Persian origin, meaning freedom) chants reverberated the leafy JNU campus in the Aravalli hills. Full disclosure: the author is a JNU alumnus who spent four years at JNU—two as a graduate student and two as a research scholar before coming to the U.S. for graduate studies.

Very similar to JNU, where those chants meant calls for the breakup of the Indian state, the “azadi” chants of CU were a call, among others, for the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel. They were to “instill fear among Jews,” posted (on X) Suhag Shuka of the Hindu American Foundation. For the context, she wrote, “the slogan being bastardized for Palestine was first chanted by Pakistani militias in 1989, to instill fear amongst Kashmir’s indigenous Hindus before hundreds of thousands were raped, massacred and ethnically cleansed.”

As Shai Davidai tried to enter the CU campus, he found himself locked out. His ID card, which gave him access to university buildings, had been deactivated because the university could not “guarantee his safety.” “Earlier today,” Davidai posted on X, “@Columbia University refused to let me on campus. Why? Because they cannot protect my safety as a Jewish professor.” Israel-born Davidai is an assistant professor at CU and a fierce critic of the pro-Palestinian protests around the U.S. campuses.