Columbia protester’s promotion shows corruption at institutions

During the pro-Hamas protests of 2024, an indelible image emerged from Columbia University, my alma mater, and, disgustingly, Ground Zero for jihadist propaganda.

There, in some instances bloodthirsty rioters effectively provided support for those who had massacred the equivalent of 40,000 Americans on October 7th – to the massacrer-ers delight – building encampments on the quad, occupying Hamilton Hall – where I took many a course – threatening and basically taking employees hostage, and destroying property, while paralyzing the school.

A spokesperson for the Hamasniks came forward at the height of the madness.

PhD student Johannah King-Slutzky held a notorious press conference, roundly panned and mocked, in which she demanded that the school provide “humanitarian aid” to the agitators who had seized the building, so that they wouldn’t “die of dehydration and starvation.”

“I guess it’s ultimately a question of what kind of a community and obligation Columbia has to its students,” she said – just not the students who oppose genocidal jihadists, I reckon.

The ridiculousness of these remarks, and the perverse sense of entitlement inherent to them, seemed to track with the absurdity of the grad students’ background. Her school biography notes that the notorious spokeswoman is:

particularly interested in theories of the imagination and poetry as interpreted through a Marxian lens in order to update and propose an alternative to historicist ideological critiques of the Romantic imagination. Prior to joining Columbia, I worked as a political strategist for leftist and progressive causes and remain active in the higher education labor movement.

Why is all this relevant to today?

Well, in the wake of a report from the school’s faculty-led anti-Semitism task force alleging that protestors hectored, spat on, leveled death threats towards, and assaulted students for supporting “Zionist causes,” burned Israeli flags, drew menacing swastikas, yelled pro-Hamas chants, and generally obstructed campus life, it has come to light that the PhD student who spoke on their behalf has received a promotion.

Johannah King-Slutzky will be teaching Contemporary Civilization this semester – a mandatory class as part of Columbia’s Core Curriculum, National Review recently reported.

In that class, one of my personal favorites, students read the classics of Western civilization, ranging from Plato and Aristotle, to Hobbes, Locke, Descartes, Kant, Tocqueville, Mill, and beyond. 

Marx is part of the curriculum, but so too is Adam Smith.

The purpose of Contemporary Civilization is to grapple with the essential ideas of the Western canon, and debate them. This is integral to the genuine liberal arts education that Columbia is supposed to foster, creating critical thinkers – critical thinkers who in turn should contribute to Western civilization.

While theoretically possible that a Marxist could teach this course to young and impressionable students in an even-handed and dispassionate fashion, color me skeptical King-Slutzky will be up to the task. 

I highlight the King-Slutzky saga at Columbia because it is so illustrative of the total corruption of our elite institutions of higher education.

Entitled Marxist mouthpieces for genocidal jihadists are rewarded by being put in positions to indoctrinate the next generation of Woke social justice warriors.

Those who would destroy or minimally cheer on those who would destroy our civilization are tasked with teaching students about our civilization. 

The response to these civilizational destroyers from elite schools like Columbia – where 18 of the 22 students arrested in connection with the occupation of Hamilton Hall – remained in good standing with the university as of August 2024, is not to punish them, but to reward them.

While Columbia’s president resigned, and we’ve seen other leaders leave, and schools claim a commitment to rectifying the takeovers of campus by Hamasniks last year, there is little to indicate fundamental change is coming — either at a high level in the ripping out of DEI from schools that is core to and a reflection of the progressive fanaticism driving not only the anti-Jewish or anti-Israel but anti-American and anti-Western agitation, or at a lower level in protecting if not promoting students who deserve censure.

The problem ultimately for society is that what happens in the Ivory Tower does not stay in the Ivory Tower.

Colleges elite and non-elite alike are credentialing institutions. The credentialed matriculate into all walks of life – and at places like Columbia, often times to the corridors of power that have disproportionate influence over the direction of this country.

With Marxists like Johannah King-Slutzky guarding the henhouse, what could possibly go wrong?