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

Most 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 a 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 remained calm 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

Is Anti-Semitism the New Orthodoxy? Reflections on George Orwell's 1984 and the Attack on DNC Headquarters

Yesterday, a mob of anti-Israel protesters stormed the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington DC. CNN might describe this altercation as “mostly peaceful,” but the video images I watched showed protesters battling with police.

Who are these anti-Israel agitators? Why this explosion of anti-Semitism? Do these fools know anything about the history of Israel? Have they forgotten about the Holocaust? Have they no sympathy for the Israelis who were murdered and raped by Hamas terrorists on October 7^th?

Yesterday’s attack on the DNC headquarters reminded me of a passage from 1984, George Orwell’s dystopian novel. Orwell described a daily “Two Minutes of Hate” exercise, which the bureaucrats of fictional Oceana were required to attend.

The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. . . . A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledgehammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic.

Curiously, Orwell continued, the hatred that the bureaucrats expressed was impersonal. “[T]he rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blow lamp.”

Likewise, there is an abstract quality to the recent outbursts of anti-Semitism; the racial hatred is not directed at any particular person. And yet, there is an element of cunning in these explosive, racist rants against Israel. The rioters seem to know that it is now acceptable to hate Jews. Anti-Semitism has suddenly become the new orthodoxy—almost overnight. Even the universities have signaled that they will tolerate their students’ open hostility toward Jews and Israel.

“Orthodoxy,” Orwell reminds us, “means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.” Indeed, there is a thoughtlessness that permeates the new orthodoxy—much like the thoughtlessness of the German people as the Nazis came to power. Non-Jewish Germans tolerated the persecution of  Jews because they believed the Nazis would direct their bestiality only toward Jews.

Later, Germans learned that Nazi brutality knew no bounds. Anyone who opposed Hitler's murderous agenda would be liquidated.

I say again that anti-Semitism is intolerable in the United States.  The District of Columbia should prosecute the rioters who attacked the DNC headquarters as vigorously as they prosecuted the January 6th rioters. The universities should expel students who publicly espouse anti-Semitism, and they should fire the professors who spout racist propaganda in their classrooms.

 

"Mostly peaceful"
Photo credit: The Mirror