After a spring semester full of encampments on New York college campuses, chants for the death of Jews at NYU and pro-Hamas strongholds at Columbia’s Hamilton Hall, Jewish students were hoping for a quiet fall semester — at least one without Jew-hating radicals destroying their college experience.
Unfortunately, the antisemites are back in full force.
Cornell Professor Russell Rickford is making headlines again.
He’s the one who went viral for calling the Oct. 7 massacre of over 1,200 Jews “exhilarating.”
The university — as has been the case in many institutions across America — did nothing to hold him accountable.
This week, he returned to campus from his voluntary leave and went right back to his old ways: He joined a student rally that marched across the campus chanting “Long Live the Intifada,” while taking over a career fair.
You might be wondering: How in the heck is it possible that this terrorist-sympathizer is still gainfully employed by Cornell and right back to his old ways?
Look no further than Cornell’s ex officio Board of Trustees member, New York Gov. Hochul.
The day after this professor glorified Hamas, Hochul could have picked up the phone and immediately gotten this lunatic kicked to the curb.
After he was back on campus calling for the genocide of Jews this week, she could have done the same thing.
She could’ve delivered a forceful condemnation of Rickford and publicly demanded the university never allow him to set foot on campus again.
Hochul could have taken action to leverage funding to this institution to protect Jewish students and used her bully pulpit to rally support for the Jewish community on Cornell’s campus.
Instead, some staffer issued some BS boilerplate statement, and in her eyes, that’s it: Problem solved.
Her inaction — disgracefully deliberate at worst, incompetent at best — is exactly why antisemitism is spreading like wildflower across college campuses.
But Hochul’s inability and unwillingness to successfully tackle antisemitism started long before Oct. 7.
As I crisscrossed the state in 2022 while running for governor, I talked to many Jewish voters who no longer felt safe on our streets.
Many were taking off their yarmulkes before riding the subway.
Jewish business owners were being targeted, and synagogues across the state were being vandalized with swastikas and suffering other antisemitic attacks.
Hochul’s attacks on yeshiva education have been extremely damaging.
Her office worked up a hit piece with The New York Times in 2022, emails showed.
Hochul hid while the City University of New York Chancellor ditched not one, but two, hearings on antisemitism within the CUNY system.
She was nowhere to be found after Fatima Mohammed delivered her Hamas-propaganda-filled 2023 commencement speech that ruined a graduation ceremony at CUNY Law.
Kathy Hochul’s brand is to cower in the face of crisis — which explains why she has reached record low favorability ratings.
Now that New Yorkers know Hochul all too well, they are rejecting her more than ever.
But for Jewish New Yorkers concerned about their safety and the quality of their children’s education, it absolutely doesn’t have to be this way.
If we elect Donald Trump, along with a Republican House and Senate, woke universities like Cornell, Columbia and others will hopefully face severe repercussions for their actions.
Federal funding should be cut, terrorist sympathizers on visas must be deported and weak university presidents held accountable.
At a time like this, American Jews need bold leaders who will not pander to the pro-Hamas wing of the Democratic Party.
Our greatest power right now is with our votes at the ballot box.
Lee Zeldin represented eastern Long Island in Congress from 2015 to 2023.