Social media is guiding the protests’ narrative: Tim Hogan

The footage of violence on college campuses grabs the most attention, of course, but sometimes it’s the smaller moments or humiliation or confrontation that captured the deeper problems, such as at UCLA. I’m a UCLA student. I deserve to go here. We pay tuition. This is our school, and they’re not letting me walk in my classes over there. You guys are promoting aggression. You guys are promoting hate. What you can’t see in that angle is a security guard right there does nothing to let this student go to class. And Molly, This is why I’m appalled when I read in the Washington Post news story that the protesters are just chanting or the New York Times news story that some Jewish Americans have raised concerns about anti-Semitism as if no one else cares. You don’t have to be Jewish to worry about the spread of poisonous violence and anti-Semitism. Not at all. And it does. You know, I don’t think people look at that as conventionally violent to restrict access for students. But in fact, this is illicit. This is not OK to tell students who have every right to all parts of campus that they cannot travel in certain places if they’re Jewish. I mean, it sounds absurd that you have to even say it. And it wasn’t just UCLA. You saw it at MIT and other schools where security guards are just not really doing much. The police aren’t doing much. And when you don’t do much, of course that makes it risk greater violence. Happened. Yeah. And at Columbia, there was. They’ve now gone to remote classes for it until the end of the semester. So if you’re a student paying $90,000, you don’t get to have in person learning. Here is a situation when the Hamilton Hall had been taken over at Columbia and a spokeswoman for those who are the occupiers came out and made a certain plea and at least one reporter pushed back. So it seems like you’re sort of saying we want to be revolutionaries, we want to take care of this building. Now would you please bring us food and water? So, Tim, we engaged in lawlessness by seizing one of your buildings and could you send over some DoorDash? Yeah, I saw the Fact Check on that, that the dining services were open at Columbia University. Well, they’re not, but you can’t access them if you’re busy occupying a whole. Get them. Yeah, I mean, it does say something about the social media environment that we’re in here too, is you can take a moment like that from a press conference snippet. It goes viral, gets 40 million engagements or 40 million views. And that becomes a defining moment then for what we’re talking about and how the conversation goes forward. The Occupiers literally use the pulley. If we can show this to bring up a pizza box, but it wouldn’t fit. And so they had to settle for sandwiches. Molly Well, but it does also speak to some of the coordination that’s going on here. We’ve seen that some of the people who have been arrested aren’t even students at some of these universities. We have also seen, even. Politico reported today that some of the Democrat Party’s biggest donors, Gates, Soros, Pritzker, Rockefeller, are backing the groups that are backing these actions. There’s lots of opportunities for interested journalists to look at the coordination behind this civil unrest and how it’s being well financed, again by some of the Democrat Party’s biggest donors. And it also gives another opportunity for Democrats to speak back against some of this. Absolutely. And. And journalists are either being often blocked from doing their jobs, you know, in places like Columbia. And at UCLA, Tim. The student paper, Daily Brewing, reported that four of its journalists were followed and attacked 5 to 6 assailants, slapped the reporters, gassed them, recorded them on their cell phones, and at least one reporter had to be hospitalized. Yeah, and that’s that’s the second UCLA example that you’ve brought up, and they’re investigating that. And with the student before, those people are facing expulsion, suspension. It’s a serious problem. It should be. Maybe they should be facing jail if they’re literally attacking and beating up on absolutely journalists for the local student paper, which, by the way, read an editorial UCLA is complicit in violence inflicted upon protesters. They’re not even allowed to do their jobs. And they get, it’s not a question just of being caught up between your you’re trying to do your job and you’re between the police line and the protesters. They were actually targeted for physical violence by the UCLA protesters. And it also doesn’t help that you’ve had journalism professors at Northwestern and Columbia. And you’re absolutely right that these are schools that were viewed as very good in that department, who have come out in support of some of the more radical elements of these protest movements, do you think? I mean, these are, they are, they are paid ultimately with money, tuition and balance and so forth. Do you think they should keep their jobs by doing that? I’m not against academic freedom for them. Again, the entire institution seem to have been taken over by the social justice ideology, and that is one of the problems. And it’s not, you know, obviously the students have the right to protest. Freedom of speech is very important, but it’s also important to push back against the lies that are being told about the Jewish students, about Israel and about America itself. Yeah, this is really shine a spotlight on that. And I think it’s an important debate. And I think it has changed a lot of people’s minds about what’s going on here. Tim Hogan, Molly Hemingway, thanks so much for joining us. Up next to Columbia students on the climate and the fear on the Manhattan campus.