An NYU Conservative Alumni Reflects on the Pro-Palestine Campus Protests
The New York City, where I was born, and love with all my heart is no longer the same as violent protests take over the news.
The U.S. The Constitution gives students the right to engage in peaceful protests and debates. And on a college campus this may look like focusing on social issues and current world events.
As an NYU alumnus with constitutional conservative values, the appalling actions as the protests turn violent is a disgrace to NYU’s tradition as the center of higher education in the Big Apple. It’s important to note that violence is not protected by the Constitution.
One of the many benefits of attending highly prestigious colleges is that students come from all around the world with different cultural backgrounds and perspectives. This is essential to bringing people together from various perspectives to help us understand one another. These multicultural interactions are priceless.
However, highly paid liberal professors on college campuses, including NYU, continue to lead the way in indoctrinating students as an echo chamber for left-wing ideology involving propaganda and disinformation, instead of teaching critical thinking. As tensions increase amidst the Israel and Palestine conflict, antisemitism is spreading to many campuses, making Jewish students feel unsafe and scared.
Unfortunately the NYPD had to step in on NYU’s campus as protests turned dangerous. On April 22, the NYPD responded by arresting over 100 protestors. Police mitigated the situation for safety reasons by removing the tents and arresting perpetrators who were throwing bottles at them, turning this protest into a violent riot. Rioters chanting “Death to America” and burning the American flag need to be taken seriously with consequences for this horrific act.
The truly radical protestors ruined everything by being destructive and disrespectful on the campus grounds. Protestors lashing out at NYPD officers for doing their job to ensure public safety for all is unacceptable. The NYPD had to step in order to restore order and safety to the university community.
Students pay thousands of dollars a year to go to top universities. And now they are forced to take classes remotely out of fear of safety. That is not okay. Without Governor Kathy Hochul or Mayor Adams stepping in to hold university officials accountable, the violence will continue to spread, a callback to the BLM protests in New York City in the summer of 2020. However, there needs to be a crackdown with arrests and suspensions for both college faculty and students when violence erupts and protests become a public safety issue.
Moving forward, we need to find a more meaningful way to respect the dignity of all human beings through the core foundation of spirituality – to bring peace and love by building empathy and communication between both sides. Trauma has transformed us into violent extremisms stuck between the far right and the far left and that needs to be reversed.