TODAY IN SOCIALIST WISHFUL THINKING, MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS EDITION.

Last night, the New York Police Department ended the occupation of Hamilton Hall at Columbia with enough forces in reserve to end another insurrection at City University of New York.  I really don't want to relive the Sixties and Seventies in my sixties and seventies, but there it is.  Complete with the Spockian adolescents.

Students reported that police used tear gas, which is banned in war, on demonstrators.

"Tonight, my university called in a militarized police force—armed in riot gear, with guns drawn, deploying weapons banned under international law—to attack teenagers," Lea Salim, a student member of Jewish Voice for Peace-Columbia/Barnard, said in a statement. "All because Columbia refuses to divest from the Israeli military and its genocidal campaign on the people of Gaza."

Never mind that Hamas could have avoided all the trouble by, oh, not attacking that music festival in the first place, or, once they figured out the Israelis were serious, returning all the prisoners, surrendering the ringleaders, disbanding their government, and inviting the Kuwaitis, who have some experience with beachfront property, to be trustees for Gaza.

It's possible to excuse Spockian adolescents for being, well, teenagers.  On the other hand, Squad-adjacent Members of Congress are pathetic.

Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) said he was "outraged" by the police presence at both Columbia and the City College of New York, writing on social media that the "militarization of college campuses, extensive police presence, and arrest of hundreds of students are in direct opposition to the role of education as a cornerstone of our democracy."

"I call upon the Columbia administration to stop this dangerous escalation before it leads to further harm," Bowman added, "and allow the faculty back onto campus so that all parties can collectively come to a solution that centers humanity over hate."

The representative is sounding a false alarm, as higher education has been in the business of deconstructing all the cornerstones for a long time.

Yes, if your experts suck, they ought be figures of fun.  And when competence is another social construction, and the intellectual stars have had sixty years or so to contend that constructions are arbitrary, does it come as any surprise that competence gets deconstructed?  "In practice, though, scholarly inquiry builds on previous inquiry, and there is at any time a box to be respected rather than mindlessly thought outside of.  Implicitly, there ought be limitations on what an academician is as a public intellectual."  That is, academic freedom comes with obligations.

It's so much more fun, though, to scream about genocide or threats to Our Democracy^(TM) than it is to work the problem.  The representative's closing sentence, "collectively comes to a solution that centers humanity over hate," is the tell.  Standard my-way-or-the-highway socialist stuff, isn't it?  Weren't Columbia's Jewish students seeking refuge in attics, or advised not to come to campus, not long ago.  That socialist spouting rarely survives its first encounter with implementation.

Then come the laughable attempts to build some kind of international united front.

The police crackdown on Columbia students is part of a broader wave of repression against campus protests that have emerged across the country in recent weeks as Israel's assault on and forced starvation of Gaza civilians continues with no end in sight.

Police actions, approved by the leaders of some universities and cheered on by right-wing government officials, have drawn international rebukes. In a statement Tuesday, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said he is "concerned that some of law enforcement actions across a series of universities appear disproportionate in their impacts."

"U.S. universities have a strong, historic tradition of student activism, strident debate and freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, "Türk said. "It must be clear that legitimate exercises of the freedom of expression cannot be conflated with incitement to violence and hatred."

Isn't that "incitement to violence and hatred" precious?  Didn't the current squandering of higher education's standing by its own senior administrators include those diversity hires from the Ivies engaging in all sorts of verbal gymnastics to avoid having to conclude that "from the river to the sea" could be subsumed under the rubric of hate speech under the codes of conduct that anyone with a computer and a modem could locate in a short visit to the Harvard, MIT, or Penn web sites.

Then, there's that incitement.  There was an allusion in Civil War to an "antifa massacre," and I speculated,  "Could the cause of that 'antifa massacre' be as simple, for instance, of one of those ongoing campus campouts getting out of hand?"

Overnight, some Militant Normals brought the war home to the Hamas cheering section in Westwood.  "On Tuesday evening, pro-Israeli counter-protesters started playing music outside the encampment, then professional agitators streamed onto campus and shot off fireworks toward the encampment and violence ensued."

Buckle in.