McConnell Remarks On Ongoing Campus Chaos

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered the following remarks today on the Senate floor regarding college campus protests:

"Yesterday, the world marked Holocaust Remembrance Day - an annual reminder of mankind's horrifying capacity for evil, and of our obligation to combat hatred towards Jews wherever it emerges.

"Today, of course, anti-Semitic hate is welling up amid the lawless radicalism on college campuses across our own country.

"In the physical blockades barring Jewish students from getting to class…

"In the ransacking and occupation of campus buildings…

"And of course, in the torrents of noxious slurs against the Jewish people and the Jewish state…

"Late last week, President Biden finally weighed in with a belated banality: 'order must prevail.'

"Unfortunately - and unsurprisingly - this glancing finger-wag hasn't exactly quelled the campus chaos or steeled the spines of college administrations.

"The President's words haven't yet prompted local leaders in Washington to send the MPD to clear out the anti-Semitic vandalism convention that continues to unfold half a mile from the White House on the campus of George Washington University.

"In the absence of firm, responsible campus leadership, radicals at UCLA have once again managed to bring collective punishment on their fellow students with the cancellation of in-person classes.

"Harvard and MIT are still struggling to muster the resolve to clear out and punish the squatters on their campuses.

"And at the epicenter of the chaos, Columbia has cancelled its main graduation ceremony.

"So, Mr. President, there's really only one way to interpret this outcome. It's an undeserved victory for the unhinged radicals who have been disrupting campus life - and forcing Jewish students to steer clear - for weeks.

"University administrators caving to the mob only validates the performative tactics of wannabe revolutionaries:

"Like the scofflaws whose first order of business upon breaking into a campus building last week was to post Maoist revolutionary slogans and make a list of their comrades with vegan dietary restrictions.

"And the doctoral student specializing in, 'theories of the imagination and poetry as interpreted through a Marxian lens,' who became their spokesperson and demanded that Columbia administrators provide violent trespassers with food and water so they could persist in lawlessness.

"What deluded nonsense!

"It's important to acknowledge that Columbia isn't even the only hotbed of retrograde 20th century communism on the island of Manhattan. While the meatless Marxists take over Morningside Heights, a brand of Juche jihadism has emerged further downtown at NYU.

"You heard that right: A 'teach-in' quite literally praised North Korea's solidarity with the Palestinian people, specifically enumerating the ways the Kim regime has helped train and equip Palestinian terrorist groups who wage war on Israel.

"Take heart, comrades - brutal totalitarians and savage terrorists have actually found common cause.

"The glorification of leftist revolutionaries at supposedly elite universities is not new. Berets emulating Che Guevara were on campus long before jihadist garb that signals solidarity with Hamas.

"And as addled as any generation's radical cries may be, the American people have usually been able to trust that eventually, the would-be Maoists would submit to the lessons of history… Read about how the Cultural Revolution really ends… And become contributing members of society.

"But today, the guardrails against professional radicalism have grown vanishingly thin.

"Unlike in the 1960s, today's Red Guards actually have academic tenure.

"And more than ever before, the brain trust of American universities sees the indoctrination of students in post-modern leftism not just as a privilege of tenure, but an obligation.

"From the comfortable, endowed sinecures where they count on foundation grants, these professors of the 'vanguard elite' urge their impressionable students to engage in unlawful acts with potentially lasting repercussions.

"Cannon fodder for the cause.

"Meanwhile, to an alarming degree, campus administrators have abdicated their responsibility to treat their charges as adults capable of bearing the consequences of their actions.

"And in the face of a mob that increasingly represents their political base, elected leaders have shrunk from their duty to ensure that the order President Biden referenced last week actually prevails.

"To borrow from one of the campus radicals' favorite fonts of wisdom, Karl Marx famously wrote that if history repeats itself, it comes, 'the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce'.

"It's hard not to worry that in 2024, it's arrived as a bit of both."

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