On May 7, police arrested at least 44 Columbia University students and 13 Barnard College students – many were masked – for taking over the university library. “Once inside the agitators passed out pamphlets that endorsed Hamas’s violence and chanted ‘There is only one solution, intifada revolution,’ ‘We want divestment now,’ and ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,’ using megaphones and banging on drums,” according to the Washington Free Beacon. “They renamed the library after Basel al-Araj, a Palestinian terrorist killed in a 2017 shootout with the Israel Defense Forces.”

Columbia’s admission of students disposed to break the law to endorse Hamas’ genocidal intentions against Israel and to call for extending the jihadists’ violent revolution beyond the Middle East is only the most conspicuous of the university’s many problems.

FIRE’s 2025 College Free Speech Rankings assessed the “speech climate” at Columbia as “Abysmal” and placed the university second to last, 250 out of 251 schools. Only Harvard scored lower. The results might have turned out differently if, following Iran-backed Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, massacre and kidnapping of mostly civilians in southern Israel, the rankings had focused on universities’ handling of anti-Israel protesters who erected illegal encampments on campus, harassed and intimidated Jews, and otherwise disrupted academic activities. In that case, Columbia might well have beaten Harvard for last place in the nation.

Before the encampments, according to the FIRE rankings, approximately 30% of Columbia students said they self-censored “very” or “fairly” often in conversation with other students, and 20% said they self-censored in conversation with professors and during classroom discussion. The encampments worsened the dismal condition of free speech at Columbia. After they were erected, almost 40% of Columbia students said they self-censored “very” or “fairly” often in conversation with other students, and around 30% said they self-censored in conversation with professors and during classroom discussion.

With Columbia a poster child for dysfunctional university governance and the erosion of free and robust speech, it is jolting to read Lee........

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