Pipeline of hate: From campus rhetoric to capital murder

The Hill

4 days ago

Hatred doesn't erupt — it festers, it seeps quietly into our culture through rhetoric, ideology and the institutions we trust to educate our young. Then, one day, it explodes.
Last week, that hatred turned lethal in the heart of our nation's capital. Two young Israeli diplomatic staffers were killed — victims not of a random act of violence, but of a deep-seated ideology that has been allowed to metastasize from college campuses to city streets.
The depraved act of terror stripped the world of two beautiful souls, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim; two souls filled with love for each other who dreamed of a future together; two souls this world needed so desperately to address the issues confronting the crisis of morality and security we are facing; two souls who strived for peace in the Middle East, on our campuses, and global city streets.
This tragedy did not begin with a gunman. It began with a lecture, a slogan, a chant shouted in the quad, a speech at commencement, or a tenured professor's tweet. It began the moment elite institutions chose to confuse academic freedom with moral ambiguity or abdication, and to shelter calls for violence under the banner of 'resistance.'
The alleged shooter was none other than a radicalized Elias Rodriguez, who had absorbed such teachings and joined the movements supporting them.
What we witnessed on that dark Washington street was not an isolated act. It marked the end of a pipeline of hate that starts in the classroom and ends at a killing scene. This hatred is cultivated, permitted, and even sanctioned, masked under the guise of academic freedom.
The killing of Lischinsky and Milgrim personifies when theory kills, and 'academic freedom' incites. It is the deadly price of moral relativism — and of university leaders choosing neutrality and cowardice, of institutions that protect hate speech until it ends in bloodshed.
Today's antisemitism is not merely a hatred of Jews. It has evolved into a broader, more insidious ideology and terror — one that disguises itself as human rights advocacy while glorifying violence and demonizing the Jewish state. American institutions have long been dangerously naive about its reach and power.
The words of two former university presidents during the most widely viewed congressional hearing in American history echo with new, painful meaning today:
Then-Harvard President Claudine Gay declared, 'We encourage the vigorous exchange of ideas, but we will not … permit speech that incites violence…. Antisemitic rhetoric, when it crosses into conduct that amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation — that is actionable conduct, and we do take action.'
When Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) asked then-University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill whether calling for a genocide of Jews violated the university's code of conduct, she responded that it was a 'context-dependent decision.'
The rhetoric has crossed into conduct; the context has become terribly and most tragically clear, written in blood that stained the streets of the capital of the free world.
The hateful anti-Israel tirades with the same calls for 'free Palestine' aired by students at graduation ceremonies — Logan Rozos at New York University and Cecilia Culver at George Washington University — certainly have origins. Their context is found within a societal culture that has been plagued by perverse notions of social justice that have masked themselves under academic freedom, free expression and context-dependence.
It is when calls for 'Global Intifada' are dismissed as student activism; when 'Free Palestine' veils antisemitic hatred; when anti-Zionism is legitimized as academic discourse; and when anti-Israel dogma is turned into moral virtue.
What will the faculty who defended these students in the name of Palestine say to the shooter of the two precious souls killed in our nation's capital? Will they plead innocence?
They cannot. The words that George Washington University professor William Youmans spoke at last year's anti-Israel encampment take on new weight: 'Students enact what we teach.' His words were extended by an entire group of Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine at George Washington University. They praised Culver, who wielded antisemitic rhetoric for four minutes unchecked at this year's commencement ceremony, calling her 'a stellar example of the type of student GW should seek to cultivate.'
Indeed, these faculty have taught their students to conflate the anchor of Jewish identity, Zionism and Israel, with colonialism. They have taught them to see Israel as a moral failing worthy of violent opposition. They have taught that resistance is necessary, and that 'globalizing the intifada' is indeed a call for liberation. Just last week, that ideology pulled the trigger.
Thus, it should come as no surprise when some of those radicalized and indoctrinated turn their mission into Jew-hunting on the streets of America. It is too late to bring Lischinsky and Milgrim back, but the reckoning is here. Every university leader still clinging to hesitation must finally decide: Will you defend civilization, or will you excuse the ideologies that lead to its destruction?
Please act now, before more lives are lost.
Sabrina Soffer is a recent graduate of the George Washington University.