On Tuesday, the University of Texas announced that law enforcement had seized weapons from pro-Hamas protesters—including, according to reports, “guns, buckets of large rocks, bricks, steel-enforced wood planks, mallets, and chains.”
Social media was replete with images of buckets filled with throwable chucks of concrete, staged in key areas where protesters expected resistance.
But the weapons at the University of Texas at Austin were collected—and the missiles were confiscated. Police tore down the illegal encampment, erected by campus radicals in solidarity with Hamas, the terrorist regime responsible for so many deaths in the most recent Middle East conflict.
Texas’ response to campus calls for violence—and actual violence—is in stark contrast to our “elite” universities, such as Columbia, Northwestern and UCLA. Radicals arrived on Texas college campuses with the intent of disrupting daily life and activities at the schools. But after trying that in a small town, the radicals were forced to retreat. While some arrests were made late Tuesday, for the most part, feckless administrators have vacillated between coddling the lawbreakers and calling the police.
Here’s New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s version of a Biden-esque “strong statement” on the campus unrest: “What we need to do is de-escalate the situation, restore a sense of normalcy on campus, and be sure that every student is safe and unharmed. The State of New York has offered our universities any assistance, should they need them.”
She boldly called for people to be nice to each other.
The situation is even worse at UCLA. Fights between protesters and counter-protesters contributed to the “multiple acts of violence” at the university late Tuesday night, NBC News reports.
And California Gov. Gavin Newsom, still focused on his shadow campaign for president, hasn’t said a word about the turmoil. The White House has condemned violence, but very broadly—going as far as acknowledging that “forcibly taking over buildings is not peaceful.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s response has been very, very different.
“No encampments will be allowed,” Abbott tweeted simply and succinctly. “Instead, arrests are being made.”
UT Austin President Jay Hartzell didn’t mince words in his recent statement on the protests: “Today, our University held firm, enforcing our rules while protecting the Constitutional right to free speech. Peaceful protests within our rules are acceptable. Breaking our rules and policies and disrupting others’ ability to learn are not allowed. The group that led this protest stated it was going to violate Institutional Rules. Our rules matter, and they will be enforced. Our University will not be occupied.”
This won the well-deserved praise of my friend, Congressman Chip Roy (R-Texas).
“The leadership at the University of Texas has done a phenomenal job, in my opinion, of protecting free speech rights while maintaining order,” he said.
And UT Board of Regents Chairman Kevin Eltife warned that “any attempt to shut down or disrupt UT operations will not be tolerated… There is no rationale whatsoever that justifies the endangerment of our students and campus environments.”
Gov Abbott, who has long defended the freedom of speech on college campuses, is now being accused of abandoning the principle.
But there’s a big distinction to be made here; vandalism, assault, incitement and intimidation are not covered by the First Amendment. Nor should Americans tolerate the antisemitic hate speech we’ve witnessed on college campuses, even if it may be protected free speech.
In this tale of two responses, it’s clear which is the best path forward.
The Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on civilians in Israel were inexcusable, no matter how many woke students and faculty at our top-tier universities are busy excusing it in the name of “decolonization.”
“Activists and academics have embraced this simplistic binary logic of colonizer-colonized, of evil West versus the virtuous non-Western other, and turned it into a moral crusade,” British academic Doug Stokes points out. “And in doing so, they have cast aside so much knowledge and culture as the product of colonial oppression and white privilege.”
It’s time to call “decolonization” and these campus protests what they are—openly racist and anti-Semitic. And it’s time they are mocked and scorned into oblivion, rather than coddled and cooed over.
Robert Henneke is the executive director and general counsel at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
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