Regarding the situation at Columbia University, my friend Jim Dueholm sent me the following message:
In watching what's happening on the Columbia campus, I recalled Eisenhower had been Columbia president for four years. I wonder what the five-star general would have done to bring peace to the campus, free Jewish students from fear and allow them to go back to class, and punish the malefactors?
For those of us who remember Ike, the question answers itself.
Those who don’t remember should consult this post by Peter Kirsanow. He reminds us that “President Eisenhower didn’t tolerate white mobs preventing black students from attending classes 65 years ago.”
That’s correct. Instead, when Governor Orval Faubus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to surround Central High School to keep nine black students from entering the school, Ike ordered the 101st Airborne Division into Little Rock to insure the safety of the "Little Rock Nine."
That’s called leadership and moral clarity. What we’re seeing from Joe Biden is called cowardice and moral confusion.
Kirsanow serves on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He points out that as far back as 2006, the Commission issued a report on pervasive and growing campus antisemitism. It has also issued statements describing and condemning increases in antisemitic incidents in American society at large, most recently in July 2021.
More recently:
[A]s incidents of campus antisemitism increased [last fall], I proposed that the commission at the very least issue a statement cataloguing and unequivocally condemning the increase in antisemitic incidents on college campuses.
My conservative colleagues all supported issuing such a statement. My progressive colleagues indicated they would be willing to issue a statement, but only if it also condemned, e.g., Islamophobia and anti-Asian racism. In short, they proposed to issue a statement only if antisemitism were simply one concern among many. Yet at the time there were no comparable mass protests calling for killing Muslims or Asians. We declined the progressives’ offer.
Circumstances have deteriorated markedly since. . . .
The “progressive” stance would be like the Commission, during a spike in attacks on black churches, refusing to condemn the violence unless it also condemns attacks on whites and Asian-Americans.
But progressives sympathize with blacks (as do conservatives). They don’t sympathize with Jews.
Pete offers a series of measures that should be taken in response to the reprehensible violence, calls for violence, and harassment against Jews on American campuses. They are:
Students who lead or participate in chants exhorting violence or terrorism should — consistent with the First Amendment — be disciplined or, where warranted, expelled.
The Department of State should require universities to immediately notify State of the names of foreign students who have engaged in violent or otherwise criminal behavior. State should revoke those students’ visas and require them to leave the country immediately. State should ensure these students’ departures or subject them to deportation.
The Department of Justice should investigate the funding of the violent protests, particularly whether such funding comes from foreign sources.
The Office of Civil Rights of the Department of Education should investigate all college and university campuses where Jewish students have been subjected to persistent and/or unremedied harassment and abuse and withhold federal funding as circumstances warrant.
Alumni should consider following the lead of Robert Kraft and other major donors and withhold or withdraw their donations until schools adequately address antisemitism.
The House Education and Workforce Committee should conduct an investigation into foreign funding of American colleges and universities, with particular emphasis on funding from China and the Gulf monarchies.
The House Education and Workforce Committee should also examine whether the Department of Education is enforcing existing reporting requirements.
Mayors should allow the police to enforce the law.
In addition:
[E]mployers have a major deterrent role. They should make clear that they will not hire any students who threaten, intimidate, or engage in violence against individuals or classes of individuals.
These are the kinds of things Eisenhower (and indeed) modern-day Republicans would do. They are nothing like things Biden and modern-day Democrats will.
Eisenhower was one of our best presidents. Biden is one of our worst.
Those are indeed the things Ike could have done and probably would have done. Presaging his deployment of the 101st Airborne to Little Rock, he also may have called for the national guard, since the mayor is apparently unwilling to deploy police force adequate to clear out the mob to the extent necessary to return the campus to normal. The Posse Comitatus Act bars federal troops from quelling domestic violence (except, I assume, to enforce federal law), but the Act doesn't apply to national guard troops controlled by a state. Thomas Dewey, a Republican, was New York governor when Ike was Columbia president, so Ike could have asked the governor to deploy the guard, and Dewey probably would have agreed to do so. New York now has a Democratic governor, but Biden won't call for the guard, and the governor would probably spurn him if he did. In the run up to January 6, 2021, Trump authorized use of the DC national guard on January 6, but the mayor and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to call for them. Jim Dueholm
Note that the time you discuss, that of the Civil Rights movement had its issues with moral confusion as well. We won't even discuss the segregationists who were purely evil. But let's discuss Southern Democrats who recognized it has wrong but we're afraid to speak. I don't think a single one ever did. I seriously doubt that Al Gore Sr, a died in the wool liberal on every issue but this one was in his heart of hearts a believer in segregation. But he did not dare speak a word. Even worse let's discuss the generations of Democrats from Wilson to FDR who ignored the plight of southern blacks because of electoral politics. So it's an old story. But today of course there is no risk to being a normal Democrat. Joe Biden won't lose the election if he strongly denounces the insanity at Columbia and elsewhere. Or if he stands by Israel rather than parrot Hamas lies. But he does it anyway. 3 cheers for Ike. I suspect Reagan and both Bush's would have done the same thing. And ultimately after trying to find a compromise I even think Clinton would have. Trump? Not so sure. He'd rather bellow and pronounce than actually do anything. But today's Democrats? Unless they are named Fetterman or Torres they are on the side of evil here.