These riots are a disaster for Columbia. This is true in several respects; for one thing, the demonstrators are robotic morons, mindlessly repeating pro-genocide chants. Intellectually, they are about on a par with Joe Biden reading “pause” off the teleprompter. I wonder whether Columbia’s academic reputation can recover. For another, the university’s administration has behaved spinelessly throughout the crisis. Columbia administrators have thus joined those from Harvard, MIT and Penn as objects of ridicule.

Perhaps most notably, campus riots like the ones at Columbia could be a disaster for the Democratic Party. That is what happened in the late 60s. Voters hate these childish and destructive outbursts. Conservatives like Ronald Reagan (and moderates like S.I. Hiyakawa) who stood up to student tantrums became heroes, while soft-on-crime Democrats suffered. That likely will happen again.