As a Professor Emeritus, I can attest to a certain contradiction or irony in academia. My four decades of experiences with colleagues from many universities have convinced me that Isaac Asimov was correct when he said, “The saddest aspect of life right now is that science [read “academia” here] gathers knowledge faster than society [read “it”] gathers wisdom.” This seems especially true in today’s Ivy League schools, all populated by highly erudite professors, some of who have recently demonstrated a lack of wisdom.
Wisdom is elusive. We can strive for it, strive to be “a Solomon,” but proof of achievement only comes in retrospect. Achieved wisdom appears in that rear view to be sibling of common sense. In the recent campus protests supported by some faculty, common sense played no significant role. In fact, it was absent, its place taken by agenda-blindness.
Campus Riots for Hamas, 2024
The news cycle in April and May 2024, months after massacre of Jews on October 7, 2023 has been filled with reports on campus unrest as supporters of Palestinians seem to have conflated the people of Gaza with a terrorist organization called Hamas, those perpetrators of the massacre and subsequent rocket attacks on Israel. The American protests morphed into property damage, intimidation, and actual violence in an evolution guided by outside instigators.
Failing to anticipate the inevitable lawlessness of an anarchic mob repeatedly shouting antisemitic and anti-American threats, the administrators of universities took no firm stand. There was no “15-minute rule” in place at Columbia. Instituted by Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, CSC, Notre Dame’s president during the Vietnam War, the “rule” gave protestors just a quarter hour to clear the office hallway—or any other place—they chose to block. Noncompliance meant suspension or expulsion, consequences the “Notre Dame Ten” suffered for their protest.
Columbia, in contrast, has made a sweeping cancellation of all graduation ceremonies, essentially punishing the majority of seniors who did not participate in the encampment or harassment. Wise, truly wise. Right? Solomon-like: No offer to cut the graduation “in half”; instead, just kill “the baby.” [I write this in the assumption that even antisemites know the story of “Solomon and the baby” though in the parochialism of the college student mind stories from various cultures like Judaism are probably unknown]
The Vietnam War that motivated the Notre Dame Ten to protest was simultaneously similar and different from the Israeli military action motivated the Columbia protest of 2024. It was similar in that collateral damage and injury occurred to innocent people. In the instance of the Vietnam war, there were many Vietnamese villagers who suffered, most notably, those in the village of My Lai, the site of a massacre perpetrated by American troops. It was different in that the Vietnam War was not a response to a Pearl Harbor-like attack the Israelis suffered during the October 7 massacre. Instead, the Vietnam War was a geopolitical action aimed at an encroaching Communism during the Cold War, sparked by the alleged Gulf of Tonkin incident. In contrast, the Israeli incursion into Gaza was a response to an Israeli analog of Pearl Harbor and 9-11.
The Missing Piece
Interviews with Columbia's protesters indicate that many, if not all of them, cannot acknowledge the October 7 massacre. They cannot acknowledge the thousands of rockets fired at Israeli citizens, and they cannot acknowledge that Hamas is a brutal enslaver of Gaza’s citizens. It is an organization that has redirected humanitarian aid to buying weapons and building fortifications. Hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid have gone not to building schools and hospitals in Gaza, but rather to buying rockets from Iran. Hamas, hiding among the people of Gaza, has a single intention: Genocide of Jews. The Israelis, in defending themselves, have no genocidal intention. Rather, they seek to free themselves of an imminent threat whose embodiment occurred on October 7. They seek to destroy a sworn enemy with whom no previous negotiations have worked.
Somehow the actual and verifiable situation in Israel and Gaza has not been taught at Columbia. It is a missing piece in a geopolitical picture puzzle that prevents Columbia’s protestors from seeing the big picture. And Columbia’s faculty bear some blame for not providing that missing piece, but the facts of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are readily available to anyone who can read. No expensive degree required.
In his Fragments, Heraclitus wrote that one cannot have wisdom without knowledge, nor knowledge without wisdom. The two are codependent. Strangely, some of the erudite professors and managers of Columbia seem to have neither if their students are to be taken as representative of their teaching.
Knowledge Is Easy; Wisdom Is Hard
Columbia’s administrators did not have the insight to see what many outside the institution saw prior to the escalation in obstruction, violence, and destruction that would unfold in a confrontation between protestors and the NYPD. The trajectory of the protest was plain to see among all but the school’s leaders. Obviously, Colombia’s President is no Father Hesburgh. Columbia’s erudite failed to anticipate the obvious and have now given, as a result, the impetus for a generation of neo-Nazis, 18 to 22 year-olds who will perpetrate hate as much as it is perpetuated by Hamas’s propaganda machine. Thus, by lacking the wisdom to act decisively and promptly, the Columbia administration has created an analog of the Middle East on the campus.
Albert Einstein said, “Any fool can know. The point is to understand.” Are the president, deans, and staff of Columbia erudite fools?
Wisdom is elusive. We can strive for it, strive to be “a Solomon,” but proof of achievement only comes in retrospect. Achieved wisdom appears in that rear view to be sibling of common sense. In the recent campus protests supported by some faculty, common sense played no significant role. In fact, it was absent, its place taken by agenda-blindness.
Campus Riots for Hamas, 2024
The news cycle in April and May 2024, months after massacre of Jews on October 7, 2023 has been filled with reports on campus unrest as supporters of Palestinians seem to have conflated the people of Gaza with a terrorist organization called Hamas, those perpetrators of the massacre and subsequent rocket attacks on Israel. The American protests morphed into property damage, intimidation, and actual violence in an evolution guided by outside instigators.
Failing to anticipate the inevitable lawlessness of an anarchic mob repeatedly shouting antisemitic and anti-American threats, the administrators of universities took no firm stand. There was no “15-minute rule” in place at Columbia. Instituted by Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, CSC, Notre Dame’s president during the Vietnam War, the “rule” gave protestors just a quarter hour to clear the office hallway—or any other place—they chose to block. Noncompliance meant suspension or expulsion, consequences the “Notre Dame Ten” suffered for their protest.
Columbia, in contrast, has made a sweeping cancellation of all graduation ceremonies, essentially punishing the majority of seniors who did not participate in the encampment or harassment. Wise, truly wise. Right? Solomon-like: No offer to cut the graduation “in half”; instead, just kill “the baby.” [I write this in the assumption that even antisemites know the story of “Solomon and the baby” though in the parochialism of the college student mind stories from various cultures like Judaism are probably unknown]
The Vietnam War that motivated the Notre Dame Ten to protest was simultaneously similar and different from the Israeli military action motivated the Columbia protest of 2024. It was similar in that collateral damage and injury occurred to innocent people. In the instance of the Vietnam war, there were many Vietnamese villagers who suffered, most notably, those in the village of My Lai, the site of a massacre perpetrated by American troops. It was different in that the Vietnam War was not a response to a Pearl Harbor-like attack the Israelis suffered during the October 7 massacre. Instead, the Vietnam War was a geopolitical action aimed at an encroaching Communism during the Cold War, sparked by the alleged Gulf of Tonkin incident. In contrast, the Israeli incursion into Gaza was a response to an Israeli analog of Pearl Harbor and 9-11.
The Missing Piece
Interviews with Columbia's protesters indicate that many, if not all of them, cannot acknowledge the October 7 massacre. They cannot acknowledge the thousands of rockets fired at Israeli citizens, and they cannot acknowledge that Hamas is a brutal enslaver of Gaza’s citizens. It is an organization that has redirected humanitarian aid to buying weapons and building fortifications. Hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid have gone not to building schools and hospitals in Gaza, but rather to buying rockets from Iran. Hamas, hiding among the people of Gaza, has a single intention: Genocide of Jews. The Israelis, in defending themselves, have no genocidal intention. Rather, they seek to free themselves of an imminent threat whose embodiment occurred on October 7. They seek to destroy a sworn enemy with whom no previous negotiations have worked.
Somehow the actual and verifiable situation in Israel and Gaza has not been taught at Columbia. It is a missing piece in a geopolitical picture puzzle that prevents Columbia’s protestors from seeing the big picture. And Columbia’s faculty bear some blame for not providing that missing piece, but the facts of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are readily available to anyone who can read. No expensive degree required.
In his Fragments, Heraclitus wrote that one cannot have wisdom without knowledge, nor knowledge without wisdom. The two are codependent. Strangely, some of the erudite professors and managers of Columbia seem to have neither if their students are to be taken as representative of their teaching.
Knowledge Is Easy; Wisdom Is Hard
Columbia’s administrators did not have the insight to see what many outside the institution saw prior to the escalation in obstruction, violence, and destruction that would unfold in a confrontation between protestors and the NYPD. The trajectory of the protest was plain to see among all but the school’s leaders. Obviously, Colombia’s President is no Father Hesburgh. Columbia’s erudite failed to anticipate the obvious and have now given, as a result, the impetus for a generation of neo-Nazis, 18 to 22 year-olds who will perpetrate hate as much as it is perpetuated by Hamas’s propaganda machine. Thus, by lacking the wisdom to act decisively and promptly, the Columbia administration has created an analog of the Middle East on the campus.
Albert Einstein said, “Any fool can know. The point is to understand.” Are the president, deans, and staff of Columbia erudite fools?
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