POLITICS: Dems defending Columbia agitator Mahmoud Khalil yet another example of how they, elite schools failed Jewish students

Watching Democrats try on different arguments to thwart Donald Trump, I’m reminded of a story involving the late Indiana basketball coach Bobby Knight.

After John Feinstein wrote an unflattering portrait of Knight, he responded by attacking the author mercilessly.

In one barrage, Knight called him both “a whore and a pimp,” leading Feinstein to quip: “I wish he’d make up his mind so I’d know how to dress.”

So it is with Democrats as they search desperately for a way to rally the public against Trump.

Their only guiding light — to be against whatever he is for — is creating confusing contradictions and leading them ever deeper into political parody.

Consider that the same members of Congress who refused to stand as Trump honored a child with cancer and families who lost loved ones to murderous illegal immigrants are now defending an Arab immigrant who is a leader of a group that sympathizes with terror organizations Hamas and Hezbollah and calls for the “end of Western civilization.”

Defending him is a strange hill to die on, but the Dems have become a very strange party.

‘Pro-Hamas flyers’

The decision to embrace Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian green-card holder who had been a Columbia University grad student, is especially bizarre given the charges against him.

As White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt put it Tuesday, “This is an individual who organized group protests that not only disrupted college campus classes and harassed Jewish American students and made them feel unsafe on their own college campus, but also distributed pro-Hamas propaganda flyers with the logo of Hamas.”

Yet Dems are rushing to his defense, with the X account for senators on the Judiciary Committee carrying a picture of him and a one-line post that reads: “Free Mahmoud Khalil.”

The suggestion that he’s a political prisoner led an astonished GOP senator, Tom Cotton, to respond by asking if it’s true “that Dems are fighting for a pro-Hamas foreigner who has made life hell for Jews on campus?”

Sadly, it is true, with House Dem Jamie Raskin confirming it with an outrageous attack on the White House.

The arrest of Khalil “is ripped straight from the authoritarian playbook,” Raskin said in a statement, and charged it proves Trump “is hellbent on wielding fear and intimidation as weapons to crush political dissent.”

Ho hum, another day in the crazy lane.

The case is instructive for another reason, too.

Beyond the Dems’ madness, they and their lickspittle media are hell-bent on distorting the facts by echoing Khalil’s claim that he was just exercising his free speech rights.

This is especially rich coming from the party that created cancel culture and defended the Biden administration’s censorship regime on social media.

But the sudden conversion to defenders of free speech doesn’t pass the smell test.

It would be laughable if the facts weren’t so clear and the stakes so enormous.

The case goes well beyond Khalil’s misconduct.

It goes to the heart of how Columbia and other campuses failed to protect the civil rights of Jewish students after the Hamas terror attack of Oct. 7, 2023.

Indeed, it was no coincidence that Khalil was arrested at about the same time the Trump administration canceled grants and contracts with Columbia valued at $400 million.

Although there’s been no formal linkage of the two actions yet, the administration justified its move against Columbia by citing a provision of the Civil Rights Act that prohibits “discrimination based on race, color, or national origin” to any organization that gets federal money.

Trump’s promise

As Trump himself put it, his team “will not tolerate pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American” activity on college campuses.

“We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again.”

He added: “If you support terrorism, including the slaughtering of innocent men, women, and children, your presence is contrary to our national and foreign policy interests, and you are not welcome here. We expect every one of America’s Colleges and Universities to comply.”

Given the Columbia penalties, the last line is no idle threat.

Officials now say 60 colleges and universities are under investigation for religious discrimination, including 40 probes started by the Biden administration.

Clearly, that administration never had any intention of carrying out honest probes.

If it did, it would have undercut its own rancid criticism of Israel, which often sounded similar to what Khalil and his ilk were screaming on campuses.

For example, charges from the Biden White House and State Department that Israel was potentially guilty of war crimes were not unusual.

And its withholding of critical ammunition and efforts to help challengers try to unseat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were well received by the keffiyeh-wearing, Palestinian-flag-waving campus antisemites.

That was the whole point.

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First Biden and then Kamala Harris were trying to court the Muslim vote by demonizing Israel’s actions in Gaza.

Many of Columbia’s administrators and faculty were on the same team.

A clear sign is that the university moved to suspend Khalil last year, then foolishly withdrew its complaint, saying it lacked evidence.

But elections have consequences and the Trump team is showing there was plenty of evidence against him.

What Columbia lacked was a spine.

Had its leaders followed through, they could have protected the school from the federal hammer now.

Instead, by doing nothing to stop Khalil and others from disrupting classes and harassing Jewish students, Columbia threw open the door to the $400 million penalty.

And Education Secretary Linda McMahon has said, the number could grow.

The risk the university now faces goes well beyond the dollar cost of the grant and contract cancellation. Both its reputation and quality could be damaged for a decade.

Made their own beds

Even before the latest probes were announced, Harvard, MIT and Penn had imposed hiring freezes because the Department of Health and Human Services aims to save money by reducing its grants by $4 billion.

The schools’ hiring freeze came because of the way most federal research grants are structured. In addition to a specific dollar amount for the actual research involved, grants also include additional amounts of up to 75% to pay for administrative and facility-wide costs, including salaries.

The added funds are fungible, an example being that Columbia says it gets 25% of its annual operating budget from Washington.

But even before the civil rights crackdown, the Trump administration planned to cap the added amount to 15% of the original grant.

That would be a huge hit to big research institutions like Columbia, making the penalties for civil rights violations the equivalent of a second earthquake.

Even the elite schools with large endowments would face major turbulence, especially if big donors pull back.

As the potential consequences become clear, some defenders are wailing that Trump is out to destroy higher education.

Blah blah blah.

Just remember that the schools have only themselves to blame.