Brown Chose Easy Over Right
... and in the process lost itself.
This past week will stand out in the history of Brown University as a shameful moment in time when easy defeated right.
President Christina Paxson chose to treat with the petulant children in the tents on the Main Green and to hand them a pyrrhic victory, seemingly making the Solomonic choice of saving Campus Dance and Graduation while giving in to protestors’ main demands for a divestment hearing.
BDS supporters get a “win” on their score card that will eventually be shot down in a Corporation vote by the adults who govern the University, and the seniors get their graduation free from protest and encampments (which remains to be seen).
As with all such attempts to split the baby, however, Brown managed to please no one while causing irreparable harm to its reputation, its avowed values, and its Jewish community.
In the wake of President Paxson’s capitulation to pro-Hamas bullies camping out instead of studying for their final exams, the bullies are emboldened. As soon as she promised them a Corporation vote on divestment from Israel in exchange for clearing out their encampment, she elicited from them the most stark antisemitism seen throughout the week.
And yet, she still met with them again the following day to seal her Faustian bargain, in spite of having access to videos of antisemitic, genocidal chants and knowing what had happened the night before on a campus known for tolerance and kindness.
Brown is the Gentle Ivy no more.
You see, any parent of a toddler knows that if you cave in to tantrums, children only learn the worst methods of achieving their desired aims. The moment Brown’s administration showed cracks in their purported steely resolve to punish policy violators harassing fellow students, those violators became exponentially more vile.
In fact, the very night after the first round of negotiations with the baby terrorists, they could be heard screaming, “There is only One Solution, Intifada Revolution!” and threatening individual students with personal Intifada. Students sent alumni videos of these horror scenes in desperation, hoping we could somehow help to stave off the inevitable.
But as the voices of the bullies rose in volume, we found moderate, reasoned exhortations entirely disregarded. One of the most intelligent alumni leaders I’ve met this year commented in bafflement that she used to think there was a methodology or order to how business is conducted. We are learning otherwise.
Voices of reason disappeared into the noise and fog of the angry mob as they captured the megaphone and Brown’s culture, embarrassingly tainting its reputation, trustworthiness, and future.
Brown chose easy over right.
I have seen articles praising Brown for avoiding the violence of police intervention by treating with the children and their imported, non-student, professional activist indoctrinators. Perhaps the most inaccurate piece I’ve enountered is Mira Fox’s article in the Forward, “‘Everyone gets to be uncomfortable’: How Jewish students at Brown kept antisemitism at Bay.” Her subheader reads, “Other university protestors made headlines for antisemitic chants. Brown students charted a different course.”
I present to you the antisemitic chants of the Brown protestors on Monday night, April 29th - the night in between the two rounds of negotiations with administrators. They were rewarded for this abhorrent behavior with capitulation to illiberal demands and the surrender of President Paxson’s previously staunch stance in support of institutional neutrality.
Not “everyone” was uncomfortable in this moment. I can promise you, only the Jewish students who refuse to check their identities at the door of leftist movements felt the full impact of this discomfort:
The mob frenzy devolved into direct threats against Jewish students who stand proudly by their Zionist identity in the knowledge that their Judaism is inseparable from that element of Jewish life and history:
On April 28th, photographs were taken of protestors holding some form of Marxist newspaper promoting the “Fight for Worldwide Intifada.” But please tell us again how Brown charted a better course and its students did not suffer antisemitic threats.
Now that we can dispense with the pretense that Brown “charted a different course” from other antisemitic protests, let us delve into what caving into childish bullies means from an institutional standpoint for Brown.
Antisemitism is emboldened. In the past week, SideChat, that most abhorrent of anonymous student chat Apps that most Jewish Brunonians deleted in the fall because of its steady stream of antisemitic vitriol, is once again awash in antisemitic content. On Saturday, Jewish students were treated to medieval blood libel of the most heinous variety. Some particularly hateful student posted the image embedded below of an advertisement for a blood drive at Brown RISD Hillel and commented, “I thought their matzah eating holiday was over…”
Brown’s refusal to adopt the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism means that anonymous posts comparing Israelis to Nazis can be deemed protected speech and can avoid University censure under Title VI. Just check out this charmer posted on Sunday by a keyboard warrior distracting himself from the boredom of studying for finals by harassing some Jewish classmates from the safety of an anonymous chat room.
Brown kicked the can down the road and resolved nothing. Okay, so yes, the University can prepare for graduation on the Main Green without the interference of REI tents. The floors and stages can by assembled for Campus Dance. But what happens in October when the Corporation votes down divestment? Another tent city? Augmented anger? Round Two? The protestors are posting videos produced by those who brought you the propaganda film “Israelism” claiming that this is just the beginning and not the end of the fight.
While other colleges are reassembling the shattered pieces of their campuses this summer, Brown must prepare for another round of this madness in the fall. When all hell breaks loose on campus in October, will Brown call in the police to clear out the mob like nearly every other college to put a period on this episode? It seems that Brown only succeeded in postponing the inevitable and will still be mired in disruption long after other universities have returned to normalcy.
Furthermore, pro-divestment alumni openly are planning to disrupt graduation. The school has no jurisdiction over these individuals. It cannot threaten failure to graduate to someone visiting for their 25th reunion. The alumni are picking up the torch for the students who agreed not to protest at graduation and thereby circumventing the deal the University struck. I give you, Exhibits A, B, and C:
I wish the Brown administration much luck in figuring out how to protect current students from past students intent on disrupting graduation in place of the protestors. I have to give the Hamasniks points on this one. It is a clever loophole.
Brown set horrific internal and external precedents that will reverberate around the world. By embarrassingly becoming the first university to bring a divestment resolution to a Corporation vote, Brown knowingly advanced the progress of the BDS movement worldwide. No matter the outcome, Brown emboldened BDS supporters at all universities to pass faculty and student resolutions this week in support of divestment. It was the first domino in a line of fallen institutions in the past few days.
Brown also set a precedent for reaching negotiated deals with students. It now serves as the primordial example for fearful institutions to cave in to the demands of ignorant, biased protestors who do not even understand the implications of their requests. Northwestern has offered scholarships to Palestinian refugee students and restablished a committee to review divestment. University of Minnesota students won the right to address the Board of Regents weekly.
Rutgers fell the hardest. It has offered its protestors the farm - namely, every green checked item listed in the below graphic. It rewarded racist protestors who made Jewish students’ lives hell this year with an Arab Cultural Center, agreed not to penalize the students for their many legal and policy infractions, will hire more faculty and administrators to support the cause of Islamist bigotry, and plans to partner with terror grooming Birzeit University.
Brown also established a precedent of caving under pressure to the loudest and most obnoxious students. Like a toddler who learns he can win a cookie if he cries long and hard enough, the student protestors learned if they make life difficult and complicated enough for the University, it will abandon long-standing principles for the sake of expediency.
Before this week, President Paxson consistently refused to entertain divestment on the grounds that it is morally contrary to the values of a free, liberal institution that adheres to neutrality on political issues.
Several months ago, I quoted President Paxson’s letter to the students demanding divestment out of respect for her principled stand. Her letter to the February hunger strikers stated plainly, “Our campus is a place where difficult issues should be freely discussed and debated. It is not appropriate for the University to use its financial assets — which are there to support our entire community — to ‘take a side’ on issues on which thoughtful people vehemently disagree.”
Where has that President Paxson gone? The one who espoused reason, logic, consistency, neutrality, principles, and freedom of thought and expression? It is a short leap to boycotting Israeli universities and academics, an element that National SJP notably reinjected into its daily Instagram posts this past week. That is no mistake. Brown’s expedient choice not only emboldened its own students, but it set the national stage for further capitulation and more extreme asks.
As Brown student protestor Isabella Garo proclaimed, “It was very clear to me from negotiations that they were afraid that what they were seeing at schools like Columbia would happen in Brown.”
They were afraid.
And when a child smells fear on a parent, it is game over for authority.