'I'm a professor': Caroline Fohlin, an Emory Instructor, gets arrested by campus police during anti-Israel protest

American universities have weathered student protests for more than half a century. They've experimented with various tactics to manage these episodes, ranging from delivering pizzas to student protesters camping in the president's office to calling out the National Guard.

This year, the colleges are taking a tough stand against the anti-Israel protests that are sowing disorder on their campuses. All over the United States, universities are calling the cops to arrest protesters who violate school policies or refuse to obey police orders to disband.

At Emory University, police arrested 28 people in one day, including Caroline Fohlin, an economics professor who was charged with battery of a police officer. The incident was videotaped and makes for fascinating viewing.

Professor Fohlin saw an individual being arrested during an on-campus protest, and she came to his defense. As she said in the video, she lightly touched a police officer to get his attention while he was subduing the protester.

The police responded aggressively, throwing Fohlin to the ground and restraining her with plastic cuffs. She identified herself as an Emory professor, but the cops didn't care.

Fohlin maintained her presence of mind throughout the incident, even instructing a video operator to be sure and document her restraints. Indeed, as she was being escorted away, her narrative sounded remarkably like she was testifying in a deposition. My guess is that she’ll file a lawsuit against the police.

My sympathies lie entirely with Professor Fohlin. I think the police overreacted when she mildly intervened on behalf of a protester, who may have been an Emory student. She doesn't deserve to be charged with battery.

Nevertheless, sensible adults know not to interfere with a police officer making an arrest. That’s never a good idea.

Bystanders watching anti-Israel protests need to understand that these events aren’t fun and games. Some protesters are scuffling with police, others are shouting antisemitic slurs, and some are calling for the destruction of Israel—genocide. The universities aren’t going to put up with hate speech on their campuses.

According to her attorney, Professor Fohlin wasn't even a protester on the day she was arrested. She merely intervened to help someone she believed to be a student. Nevertheless, she was charged with battery of a police officer.

So, if you are a college student or a professor, you should think twice about inserting yourself into a pro-Palestine demonstration. The universities have stopped coddling people who disrupt their campuses. Even professors whose only motivation is to help their students can get arrested by the police.

You may think your university status entitles you to special consideration when the cops arrive, but Professor Fohlin's experience tells you that's not so.

Image credit: TYT.com

Colleges sow the wind with DEI and reap the whirlwind of racism

 In recent years, American universities have invested millions of dollars in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).  The goal, of course, was to scrub campuses clean of the last vestiges of bigotry and racial discrimination.

How’d that work out? Not so well. All across America, student protesters are spewing antisemitic bile, intimidating Jewish students, and scuffling with police.

Racism is most pronounced at the nation’s elite schools—Harvard, Yale, Columbia, etc.  A degree from one of these swank institutions costs a quarter of a million dollars. Yet students are willing to sabotage their education to promote Islamic terrorism and persecute Jews.

Professors have primarily sided with the anti-Israel mobs. When college presidents summon the police to rid their campuses of disruptive protesters, the faculty howls in outrage.

Meanwhile, chaos reigns. Columbia has stopped face-to-face instruction due to safety concerns and switched to online teaching. USC canceled this year’s main commencement ceremony for the same reason. At the University of Texas, professors have called for a work stoppage to show their support for the anti-Israel protests.

Here's my advice to young people who think an Ivy League education is a ticket to a better life: Steer clear of the elite universities. Our nation’s most prestigious colleges have become cesspools of antisemitism and racial intolerance. Don't take out student loans to attend one of these morally bankrupt institutions. You'd be better off going to trade school to become a plumber. You'll meet a better class of people.

Photo credit: Times of Israel

RFK Jr. needs Secret Service protection. Did his siblings ask President Biden for it?

 Robert F Kennedy Jr. is a serious candidate for president of the United States. So far, he's qualified to be on the ballot in nine states and hopes to be on every state ballot when the presidential election takes place in November.

The Biden administration has repeatedly denied RFK Jr.’s requests for Secret Service protection, which has placed a significant financial strain on his campaign. As a result, Kennedy is compelled to allocate campaign funds to cover his security expenses.

Early this month, six of RFK Jr.’s siblings publicly endorsed Joe Biden for president, even appearing at a Biden campaign event in Philadelphia. “[Biden]has us thriving again, believing again, behaving like good neighbors again,” Kerry Kennedy gushed, while five of RFK Jr.’s siblings smiled approvingly.

Did any of Kennedy's brothers and sisters ask President Biden to provide their brother with Secret Service protection? Did any of Biden’s Kennedy endorsers condition their support on a presidential promise to give their brother the personal security Biden enjoys?

Apparently not. RFK Jr.’s docile relatives performed for Biden’s dog and pony show without demanding Secret Service protection for their courageous brother.  

Perhaps that's understandable. After all, who could imagine a Kennedy being assassinated by political enemies?

How many Kennedys does it take to screw in a light bulb? The Kennedy clan endorses Joe Biden

How many Kennedys does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Six. One to hold the light bulb and five to drink until the room spins around.

How many Kennedys does it take to screw a relative? About a dozen. That’s the approximate number of Kennedys who snubbed RFK Jr.’s presidential bid by endorsing Joe Biden.

Six of RFK Jr.'s siblings—Kerry, Kathleen, Rory, Christopher, Maxwell, and Joe Kennedy II—were among the relatives who cozied up to our cognitively challenged president.

In other news, Bloomberg won my nomination for the Joseph Goebbels Shameless Propaganda Award for this paragraph in Bloomberg’s Kennedy endorsement story:

Securing the endorsement of the remainder of the Kennedy clan is personal for Biden, who considers Kennedy’s father, Robert F. Kennedy, a senator, US attorney general and presidential candidate, as a political idol.

The Kennedys are finished as a political dynasty. But did they have to take a dive for Joe Biden, a morally bankrupt, demented geriatric?

 

The Kennedy family with Biden on St. Patrick's Day
Photo credit: People Magazine

Civil War is a swashbuckling movie, but it's not prophetic

I caught the matinee showing of Civil War yesterday. It's a thrilling movie with several flaws, but well worth seeing. I have two criticisms.

First, director Alex Garland’s dystopian film posits a civil war between the United States and the Western Forces, comprised of the rebel states of Texas and California. Both sides field conventional armies equipped with jets, helicopters, tanks, and armored vehicles.

This scenario is implausible. If the United States implodes, it won't be because Texas and California fight a conventional war against the federal government. America will likely fall apart due to an external shock administered by hostile foreign powers—Russia, China, or Iran. Our enemies will not conquer us with missiles. Instead, our country will fall apart when our adversaries destroy the dollar's status as the world's reserve currency and our economy collapses.

Second, Alex Garland’s apocalyptic tale is told from the perspective of journalists who risk their lives and the lives of other people to get shocking photographs of the carnage of war. In the movie’s concluding scene, photojournalists Lee and Jesse are seen scurrying behind an Abrams battle tank in an attack on the White House. They come across as adrenalin junkies fanatically obsessed with their careers. I found them totally unsympathetic.

I encourage people to see Civil War. It is an entertaining movie on the level of the Indiana Jones flicks and the Mission Impossible series. Just remember this: America will not unravel because Texas and California besiege the White House; it will crumble when McDonald’s hamburgers cost fifty bucks apiece, and nobody wants to buy U.S. Treasury bonds.

Photojournalists chasing a Pulitzer Prize

Are the Democrats Anti-Semitic?

Until October 7th of last year, no one cared a fiddler's fart about the Palestinians. The world has long known that Palestinians residing in Gaza lead miserable lives. And the world knows that Israel mistreats Palestinians living in the West Bank. Until recently, no one cared.

Then, on October 7th, Hamas terrorists stormed into Israeli towns and raped, tortured, murdered, and kidnapped Israeli civilians. Israel went to war against these barbarians, and now everyone feels sorry for the Palestinians.

College students in the nation’s most prestigious universities regularly demonstrate against Israel’s military campaign against Hamas, even though Hamas holds American citizens in captivity. Some demonstrators openly display their anti-Semitic prejudices.

American politicians have also undermined Israel. Senator Chuck Schumer, the nation’s senior Jewish politician, publicly called for a regime change in Israel’s wartime government—an act of betrayal against the only democracy in the Middle East. President Biden gave his seal of approval to Schumer’s treachery, calling Schumer’s comments “a good speech.”

Elizabeth Warren, the native Oklahoman who represents Harvard in the U.S. Senate, gave her legal opinion that Israel’s war against Hamas qualifies as genocide. Genocide! What an outrageous accusation to make against a nation made up of the descendants of the world’s most famous victims of genocide.

I have heard all the mendacious justifications for abandoning Israel—once America’s closest ally, and I don’t accept any of them. In my view, Americans who undermine Israel in its existential battle against Muslim terrorism are anti-Semites.

I have nothing but contempt for the anti-Israel college demonstrators who have no complaints against the Biden administration’s pro-war policy in Ukraine. That senseless conflict has cost more than half a million casualties. And I despise all the oily Democratic politicians who have stabbed Israel in the back for no more noble purpose than to win Muslim votes in Michigan. 

Political expediency is a poor disguise for bigotry.

I am a Harvard law professor, and I know genocide when I see it.

Israel flies the flag of no quarter. Americans are morally obliged to back Israel's play

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler," Albert Einstein observed. Indeed, it is a mark of intelligence to analyze a jumble of complicated information, come to a straightforward conclusion, and decide what to do.

Unfortunately, our intellectual elites rarely try to make things as simple as possible. Instead, they obsess about complexity and often conclude that a particular problem is so complicated that it is insolvable. Homelessness, for example, is a complex problem, so tangled and tricky that San Francisco can't figure out how to keep people from defecating in the streets.

Sometimes, however, our failure to grasp the essentials of a problem leaves us with moral paralysis. Overwhelmed by complexity and contradictions, we do nothing even when the proper course of action is so apparent that even a child can understand what we should do.

Israel is in an existential battle with Hamas. What Hamas terrorists did on October 7, 2023, is so horrendous that Israel is justified in doing almost anything to eradicate Hamas. Israel's existence is at stake. That's a simple fact.

Thus, Israel flies the flag of No Quarter.  In my view, the United States, Israel's only major ally, is morally obligated to back Israel's play. That moral obligation stems from the Holocaust.

Unfortunately, the Biden administration fails to grasp the simple morality of Israel's war aims. The U.S. sends weapons and munitions to Israel, but it joined the feckless call for a ceasefire that would weaken Israel and benefit Hamas.

Enabled by our misguided President, pro-Palestinian protest groups have sprung up on the nation's college campuses, revealing latent anti-semitism in academia.

Astonishingly, Senator Chuck Schumer, America's senior Jewish politician, is undermining Israel by meddling in the Jewish state's domestic politics. 

None of this underhanded and cowardly behavior will deter Israel from doing what it must do for its own survival, which is to annihilate Hamas.

In short, the unwillingness of America's political and intellectual elites to recognize the simple fact that Israel is fighting for its survival is morally indefensible and will only prolong the suffering of innocent Palestinians and Israelis.

Photo Credit: Jack Guez/Getty Images