Appeasing the Pro-Hamas Protesters Puts Universities in Legal Peril

The promise of scholarships, faculty positions, and resources based on national origin is a violation of civil-rights law.

You’ve got to hand it to the pro-Hamas campus protesters: They know how to put pressure on universities. While students are stressing about final exams or trying to make graduation plans, busy protesters are messily expanding their tent cities on the most iconic portions of college campuses.

For universities that have so far acquiesced to this madness, difficult choices abound. Do nothing and pro-Hamas protesters promise to ruin graduation ceremonies for those very students who had their high-school graduations ruined by the pandemic. But using the police to clear out tents will play right into the protesters’ hands. Like the proto-socialist peasant in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, upon first contact with a law-enforcement officer, campus students are eager to yell, “Help, help, I’m being repressed!”