Niall Ferguson writes for DailyMail.com about one positive result from the otherwise disturbing response to the Hamas-Israel war on American college campuses.
Has wokeism jumped the shark? In other words, have the radical Leftists who for years have exercised increasing power in our universities finally gone too far?
I dare to hope so. The recent disgraceful responses to the attacks on Israel that we have seen — from American university campuses to the streets of London and Sydney — have dramatically increased awareness that something is rotten in the state of higher education in the English-speaking world.
Some of us have been battling against the ideological takeover of academia for close to a decade. Each year, we have been getting better organised. But we have struggled to convince people in the real world just how bad things are.
The past three weeks may finally have changed that.
The expression ‘jump the shark’ was coined in 1977 when the scriptwriters of long-running comedy series Happy Days — into their fifth series and getting short of ideas — tried to pep up the storyline by having the main character, Fonzie, preposterously jump over a shark while on water-skis.
The campus Left’s response to the attacks of October 7 was equally far-fetched and over-the-top — but immeasurably more offensive.
Let’s remind ourselves what happened three weeks ago. Two Gaza-based terrorist groups inspired by Islamist ideology, committed to the destruction of the state of Israel and backed by at least one government, staged a trailer for a second Holocaust. In their savagery, they exceeded even the horrors perpetrated by the Russian butchers of Bucha in Ukraine.
More than 1,400 Israelis were killed, including children and even babies. More than 200 were kidnapped.
The idea Israel should do nothing in response to this outrage — other than ensure the flow of aid into Gaza — defies both human emotion and strategic sense. Only those wearing ideological blindfolds cannot see that.