As Columbia University’s most prominent alum, former president Barack Obama would seem to have a moral
obligation to speak about what is arguably the most visible outbreak of antisemitism on American soil in his lifetime.
I refer here to the occupation of Obama’s alma mater by Hamas-supporters who have been openly threatening Jewish students, chanting “Kill all Zionists,” and shouting racial slurs like “pig.” As I sat down to write this, five days into the protest, Obama had said not a word.
By contrast, Obama was tweeting about the August 2017 Antifa/white nationalist brouhaha in Charlottesville, Virginia before the day was through. “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion,” Obama tweeted in the evening of August 12. “People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
At the time, this was the most “liked” tweet in Twitter (now X) history. In the last five days, Obama tweeted about Earth Day twice, about a book on healthy lifestyles, and about the death of Florida politico Bob Graham. But not a word about Columbia, at least not until I started writing.
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