The Wall Street Journal‘s editors are in a tizzy over President Donald Trump’s (R) moves to freeze or cancel altogether Federal funds and grants to universities unless and until those institutions start acting concretely and seriously against the antisemitic bigotry rampant in them. The editors are upset because those fund freezes/cancelations include funds heretofore aimed at NIH sponsored projects.

One regrettable result is that important medical research is getting scrapped.
…
Because of Columbia University’s deep research bench of neurologists, the school in 2022 took over management of the study’s government funding, which is disbursed to some two dozen other sites across the US. A Columbia lead researcher says the study’s funding is now ensnared in the fight between the university and feds over its handling of anti-Israel protests.

Columbia medical professor José Luchsinger:

It’s a pity that all the institutions across the United States, the investigators in these institutions, the staff in these institutions, and the study participants in these institutions are being held hostage to a situation that is occurring in Columbia only[.]

Indeed, it is a pity. Columbia should stop holding all that hostage, should stop namby-pambying around, and should get serious about ending the antisemitic bigotry rampant in its student and professor populations and within its management teams—and then act on that newfound seriousness and get rid of the bigots among its students and professors and university managers.

It is a pity, too, that there even is a fight between the university and feds over its handling of anti-Israel protests.

This is a cynical mischaracterization of what’s going on, and the editors should know better, even if Luchsinger pretends not to. What is there to fight about? What’s going on at the universities is not “anti-Israel protests,” it’s naked antisemitic slurs, intimidations, threats, cutoffs of others’ right to speak in favor of Jews and Israel or just to speak conservatively. Mixed in with those bare assaults (can’t call them bare-faced, the bigots cower behind masks) is overt support for Middle East terrorists and terrorism.

But the editors favor spending money on medical research, which is important when spent efficiently, over getting rid of the bigotry and terrorist support so rife in these institutions. The editors ignore the simple fact that the bigotry and terrorist support not only threaten the institution population at large, but also that very research by making those institutions unsafe for anyone.