Free Press reporter Eli Lake argues that the crackdown on anti-Israel encampments is not a free speech issue, but rather an issue of discrimination and civil disobedience.
Free Press reporter Eli Lake has strongly criticized anti-Israel college activists who complain about their encampments being shut down, arguing that they have been the "enemy of free speech" for years.
"Setting up encampments in the middle of a quad or taking over a building and then not allowing Zionist students or Zionist professors to enter the quote, unquote ‘encampments,’ it’s not free speech," Lake told Fox News Digital in an interview. "It's discrimination. Maybe you could say it's civil disobedience. But it's not a question of free speech."
Lake, a former national security correspondent for several outlets, highlighted the one-sided indoctrination of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on college campuses. He attributed the anti-Israel sentiment to decades of indoctrination by professors who are activists and far-left activists in the tradition of the late Palestinian-American professor Edward Said.
"You have had two generations of professors teaching the history of this region that are activists and far-left activists in the tradition of [the late Palestinian-American professor] Edward Said," Lake said. "And I don't have a problem with teaching Edward Said on campus, but Edward Said's approach has been taught on these campuses at the exclusion of the school of historians they attack, namely [the late British-American professor] Bernard Lewis."
Lake emphasized that there has been a lack of balance in how the Middle East conflict is taught, with some professors encouraging radicalism and the delusion that the state of Israel can be eliminated.
When asked how university presidents should address on-campus radicalism, Lake suggested seeking out intellectual diversity. He urged them to hire people who disagree with the groupthink of their professors and not to tolerate attempts to get them fired.
Lake also proposed creating "super structures" outside corrupted departments to combat progressive groupthink. He drew an analogy to the United States' creation of a separate unit within the Pakistani ISI to avoid dealing with its tainted areas.
"I think we maybe have to start thinking about universities like the ISI, the Pakistani military intelligence," Lake said. "The main institutions at these top universities also have a lot of bad apples, which would need to be addressed by perhaps creating institutions within the institution."
Lake concluded by emphasizing that students deserve more ideological and intellectual diversity than they are currently receiving on college campuses.
