How Campus Politicization Fed Today’s Hatred

Princeton, N.J.

As college campuses erupted in support of Hamas’s atrocities, many administrators responded equivocally. Often they took refuge in the principles of free speech and institutional neutrality, saying universities have no business taking positions on controversial issues. That would have been convincing if they had adhered to those principles before this month, but many didn’t. Officials often took strong positions on far less significant and more debatable issues. This politicization set the stage for the morally and intellectually bankrupt protests that have caused administrators such embarrassment.