NewsNation Chief Washington Anchor and On Balance host Leland Vittert was a foreign correspondent for four years in Jerusalem. He gives you an early look at tonight’s 7 p.m. ET show. Subscribe to War Notes here.  

Send in the guard? It won’t work!

Columbia University’s president surrendered to the pro-Hamas protesters and shifted to hybrid classes for the rest of the semester, aka canceling in-person classes.  

• Saying you can’t protect Jewish students from being blocked or surrounded, so they must stay home and attend virtual classes, sounds like something the Nazis would have done circa 1936. 

Thought bubble: At some point, we need to consider that the university presidents and the faculty actually believe in what the protesters chant. 

Shai Davidai, who has led a very small number of professors standing against the pro-Hamas types, and who the university blocked from campus yesterday, tweeted, “To the best of my knowledge, the last time that a professor was denied access to their own university for being Jewish was Nazi Germany.”

Newsflash to all those demanding the university’s president, Dr. Minouche Shafik, resign: resignation won’t help; only changing the culture will. The board must hire someone willing to change the entire university faculty. 

Look forward: Senators Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., have called for the National Guard.

• It makes for a good headline and gets them cable TV hits, but it’s hard to understand how that’s conservative, and they are missing the point.
• The National Guard will only create the image protesters want — think Kent State, not Little Rock.

Ground truth: Unless the universities and their leadership change their mindset, things won’t change. 

• Bill O’Reilly last night had a better idea on how to end the threats of violence: simply follow Columbia’s own rules.
  • Suspend those calling for violence. If the protesters called for violence against anybody (Black, gay, transgender or Chinese people, for example) other than Jews, the “protesters” would be gone in an hour.
  • Ask the NYPD to arrest all those camping and clear out their tents.
  • Things could end quickly. 
• How to do it: You can’t force university presidents to do the right thing, but you can encourage them to do so. 

Presidential cover: The president of Columbia got a lot of cover from President Biden yesterday when he “bothsided” the protest.

• When asked if he condemned the protests at Columbia University, Biden said, “I condemn the antisemitic protests. …That’s why I’ve set up a program to deal with that. I also condemn those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.”

• It sounds a lot like “very fine people on both sides,” the out-of-context quote from Trump after Charlottesville’s neo-Nazi tiki torch rally.
• There are a few differences between now and Charlottesville:
  • For example, Biden wasn’t taken out of context.
  • The protests at Columbia and other schools continue and keep growing:
    • The protests are expanding to Minnesota. The daughter of Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., will fit right in after her suspension from Columbia.   

How about parents demanding refunds?

• Similarly, the owner of the New England Patriots, Robert Kraft, pulled funding from his alma mater over the response.
  • Important question: What took so long? 

Look back: For those comparing this to the 1960s and anti-Vietnam War protests, spare me! 

• Those were anti-war protesters, many of whom came back from war and organically protested for peace.
• Those on campuses around America now are arguing for the wholesale slaughter of an entire people.

Look forward: These protests are similar to the Black Lives Matter riots during the summer of 2020.

• At its core, the Black Lives Matter organization is neo-Marxist.
  • It wasn’t about Black lives; it was about destroying American institutions. 
• So was the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). 
• These groups at Columbia and other campuses are professionally organized and internationally funded.
  • It’s noteworthy that all the tents at Columbia look the same.
  • Remember on Oct. 8, one day after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, suddenly marchers had professionally made signs and flags for mass demonstrations.
  • There are flyers that give specific instructions on how to avoid arrest.  

Bottom line: Don’t believe the attempt to rationalize these as “misguided college kids” and explain away their chants, slogans and demands. 

• The very same ideology that justifies eliminating Israel justifies destroying all of America’s institutions as well.

Don’t believe me? “Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and others are grooming activists in the U.S. and across the West,” begins a Wall Street Journal opinion piece following the money: 

• Steven Stalinsky writes, “The collaboration between senior terrorists and their growing list of friends in the U.S. and the West has real-world consequences. These groups are designated terrorist for a reason. They don’t plan marches and rallies—they carry out terrorist attacks. And when the U.S. and Western activists, including college students, see that their marches and protests aren’t achieving their goals, they may consider their next steps—which will be influenced by the company they have been keeping.”

Trump trial coverage

The Trump trial coverage gives CNN and MSNBC a perfect excuse not to cover the anti-Israel protests.

• That’s a stark contrast to 2020 when the media became a de facto PR firm for Black Lives Matter. 

Watch: Jon Stewart hilariously mocked the nonstop coverage of Trump’s trial.

No cameras in court: Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told us yesterday the Trump campaign would like cameras in the courtroom.

• Democrats should be happy there aren’t.
• Today, prosecutors spent hours laying out how National Enquirer boss David Pecker used the “catch and kill” strategy to buy up juicy stories about Trump and not publish them.
  • So far, prosecutors are presenting evidence of unsavory but totally legal acts. 

We are getting dumber

Turns out social media and video games do rot your mind.

IQ scores dropped for the first time in recent memory, and teachers blame kids no longer being taught handwriting.

• Evidently, handwriting leads to other good things.

Life lesson: My handwriting is terrible, but my parents long ago taught me the value of handwritten “thank you” cards and notes. 

• Do the same for your kids — they won’t forget it. 

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily of NewsNation.