A student leader at Columbia is under fire this week over a newly-resurfaced video declaring that “Zionists don’t deserve to live.” Khymani James has been one of the leaders at the anti-Israel encampment at Columbia and featured prominently by media outlets. He is reportedly the spokesperson for Columbia’s anti-Israel student group Apartheid Divest. While banned this week from campus, James embodies the type of radical chic culture that pervades higher education among both faculty and students.
James mocked university officials who called to inquire about such statements, including “Zionists don’t deserve to live comfortably, let alone Zionists don’t deserve to live…The same way we are very comfortable accepting Nazis don’t deserve to live, fascists don’t deserve to live, racists don’t deserve to live, Zionists, they shouldn’t live in this world.”
He added: “Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists. I’ve never hurt anyone in my life, and I hope to keep it that way.”
The conservative site, the Daily Wire, published an Instagram post in which James mocks officials from Columbia’s Center for Student Success and Intervention who said that they were doing a routine inquiry over the comments. The staffers asked such mild questions as “Do you see why that’s problematic in any way?” James did not react well.
When asked “Do you see why that’s problematic in any way?,” James said “No” and added “I feel very comfortable, very comfortable, calling for those people to die. And with that being said, Khymani is signed out.”
Despite mocking the inquiry to his followers on social media, James retracted the words after the video was published and caused a backlash. It is a familiar pattern on our campuses where faculty and students garner support for radical statements and then tack back when those comments become a liability.
James posted a statement on X:
“On Thursday, a video of me taken back in January began to circulate online. What I said was wrong. Every member of our community deserves to feel safe without qualification…I also want people to have more context for my words, which I regret. Far right agitators went through months of my social media feed until they found a clip that they edited without context. When I recorded it, I had been feeling unusually upset after an online mob targeted me because I am visibly queer and black.”
The original radical and hate-filled statements by James are hardly unique in higher education. Administrators, faculty and admissions committees have fostered this radicalized environment. It is not because radical views are expressed, but the intolerance for opposing views, the purging of faculties of conservatives and dissenting views, and the echo chamber created on campuses.
We recently discussed one of UCLA’s “activists in residence” spewing anti-Israeli and racist comments at a mandatory medical school class. Likewise, we have seen professors recently espousing the same violent rhetoric or sentiments.
We have seen a steady stream of professors shouting down speakers, committing property damage, participating in riots, verbally attacking students, or even taking violent action in protests.
Others, like Fresno State University public health professor Dr. Gregory Thatcher, recruited students to destroy pro-life messages.
At the University of California Santa Barbara, professors actually rallied around feminist studies associate professor Mireille Miller-Young, who physically assaulted pro-life advocates and tore down their display.
Despite pleading guilty to criminal assault, she was not fired and received overwhelming support from the students and faculty.
She was later honored as a model for women advocates.
Other faculty confine themselves to calling for or justifying the violence of others.
We saw professors advocating “detonating white people,” denouncing police, calling for Republicans to suffer, strangling police officers, celebrating the death of conservatives, calling for the killing of Trump supporters, supporting the murder of conservative protesters, and other outrageous statements.
University of Rhode Island professor Erik Loomis defended the murder of a conservative protester and said he saw “nothing wrong” with such acts of violence.
The university later elevated Loomis to director of graduate studies of history.
For many academics, this extremist rhetoric is reinforced on campuses and supported by colleagues. When they make it into the main press (often through conservative or alternative media outlets), they often take their social media posts private or issue the perfunctory mea culpa.
The extremist rhetoric of students like James is being fostered in this environment where universities now offer degrees in activism and professors support censorship and violence. This will continue until more donors demand greater diversity of viewpoints on our campuses and an end to the academic orthodoxy that has taken hold of many faculties.
Here he is at the ripe age of 17 demanding to hold adults running his school accountable. Not three years later he demanded the death of Jews.
Yes, and in addition to donors holding back money until these Marxist indoctrination centers change, I suggest that the heads of both large corporations and smaller businesses commit to never hiring any of these radical students.
Donors should DEMAND THEIR MONEY BE RETURNED. With interest.
I’m shocked that Khymani James is black!
Someone needs to take him aside and tell him that we now get ignorant white girls to spew that kind of venom.
Even so, he can still probably get a job in NY government.
Thanks for posting his picture.
@Anonymous: Re: “I’m shocked that Khymani James is black!” “Do not concern yourself, Officer Callahan!” Everything heard on radio of the utterings of this ‘three-pronoun entity’ had the tenor of a female voice. My personal take on complexion was non-white judging from the cultural ring of the first name. I am not aware of any AWFLCNTS from Martha’s Vineyard whose mother named them Khymani.
@Anonymous: “Here is at the ripe age of 17″.. Having done due diligence out of piqued curiosity, sources have revealed that ” the name Khymani is of French origin and means “A leader a king. a living legend”. Having been dubbed such, I trust he does his parents and his heritage proud. After the current debacle, much remains to be seen.
Jamaican and French origins sources reveal.
According to Wikipedia, just another hateful black with no father.
James spent most of his childhood in Dorchester. After his mother died when he was 12, he was raised by an aunt where he lived with two cousins. He identifies as “a first-generation African-Caribbean gay Black male.”
While a high school student, he said that “the ultimate destination is Congress”.
They use the word Zionist must die when they really mean all Jews must die. Do the Jews who protest with them think that they will be spared. Is anyone from the LGBTQ community think that Hamas will stop killing gay and trans people if they gain the land from the river to the sea? Hamas will openly display your hanging bodies and shout with glee about how much you suffered before you died. It’s written in their charter if you care to take the time to read it. The rocks and trees will say there is a Jew (and LGBTQ) person hiding behind me, come and kill him her they or Ze. Don’t be a useful idiot. You will be hung right along side the Jew.
“I’ll be damned if I let those yahoos get their hands on me again.” – J.C.
What is the purpose of having rights?
Jonathan: You say “the original radical and hate-filled statements by James are hardly unique in higher education. Administrators, faculty and admissions committees have fostered the environment”. I disagree.
The rhetoric of James does not reflect the views of the administrators or faculty at Columbia. James even retracted and apologized for his statement that “Zionists don’t deserve to live”. He has been banned from campus. Columbia has not endorsed or “fostered” violent rhetoric.
Some would like to equate opposition to the state of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians as anti-semitism. That’s simplistic and false equivalency. I can criticize the actions of Putin bit that doesn’t make me anti-Russian. I can criticize the policies of the Pope on abortion but that doesn’t me anti-Catholic. I can oppose the social policies of the leadership in Iran but that doesn’t mean I am anti-Muslim. Likewise, student protests over Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians doesn’t mean they are anti-semitic. This is not Germany of the 1930s and 40s when Jews were specifically targeted because of their religion.
What is remarkable is that many Jews in Israel and here oppose Netanyahu’s policies. But the pro-Israel groups in this country try to portray any opposition to Israel’s policies as either “self-hating Jews” or “anti-semites”. That propaganda campaign has worked to an extent. That view is reflected in your column where opposition to Israel’s policies is equated with “anti-Zionism”. Painting all protesters with the same brush is a convenient way to avoid discussing the real issues–the policies of the state of Israel that has resulted in the slaughter of over 34,000 innocent Palestinians–a policy of genocide.
Dennis, didn’t respond yesterday to your nonsense post about “peaceful” protests, because I knew the national news today would at least mention James and others, as well as the actual history of escalating rhetoric that warranted campus action. Again, no one is saying that Columbia “endorsed or ‘fostered’ violent rhetoric,” like you pretend the issue is. What JT is talking about is the RESPONSE to such STUDENT rhetoric like “death to Zionists,” etc.
Dennis / Gigi / Wally etc…
What is remarkable is that many Jews in Israel and here oppose Netanyahu’s policies
What is more remarkable is that many Hispanics, blacks, gays and lesbians oppose Democrats, Biden’s presidency, MSM, with the trend increasing!
it must suck to earn your wages by trolling with adolescent talking points
+1000000
@anonynous,
That’s an excellent rebuttal to Turley’s twisting of the issue.
Right-leaning media has been falsely portraying the protests as violent and as terrorists disrupting campuses to justify a violent response and punish what is essentially a constitutional expression of their free speech rights. The professor has been caught multiple times being hypocritical about criticizing students doing what he has always claimed as acceptable protests as their free speech rights. Nowhere in this article and previous articles critical of the protests has he mentioned free speech. The professor and most of the on the right want to dictate how those students should protest. They want to control how the protests should be carried out to protect their sensibilities and feelings of being offended.
Anything critical of Israel is deemed anti-Semitic. Those critical of Israel’s abuses against Palestinians are called Hamas supporters, an intentional smear used to dehumanize the protesters as terrorist supporters, and delegitimize their cause. They are not Hamas supporters. They are supporters of the Palestinians
who have no real defense against the Israelis. No real freedom. No control over their own borders.
Protesters are being arrested and charged for exercising their right to protest. Turley is very quiet about it even when it involves an issue supposedly very dear to his heart, free speech. He’s all for free speech as long as it’s practiced precisely as he demands it should be. As quietly and as least disruptive as possible so as not to bother others. Because disruptive and loud protests are not acceptable. Like the Jan 6 protests. Those were acceptable in Turley’s and most right-leaning critics views.
“in the slaughter of over 34,000 innocent Palestinians–a policy of genocide.”
Since the number of innocents slaughtered by Israel is so off the wall, demonstrating terminal ignorance, one must assume the comments of this anonymous person are equally off the wall. He lacks perspective and common sense, dwelling in the land of Brobdingnag.
@Anonymous Re: “the slaughter of over 34,000 innocent Palestinians–a policy of genocide.” Due diligence on your part should reveal that these so-called ‘innocents’ might have been hoisted by their own petards. https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2021/07/hamas-defends-its-military-summer-camps-for-children-and-teenagers.php https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/war-gaza-poll-shows-palestinian-support-hamas-still-high-despite-mounting-death-toll
This self-hating SHPOS, who has made ‘it’s’ lineage, heritage, sexual preference, gender orientation as well as pro-noun’ known and whom, carrying all that baggage, Adolf Hitler would have gleefully shipped off to Auschwitz in a flash along with all the other mental defectives Der Fuhrer’s Aryan madness deemed fit for destruction, projects ‘it’s’ own feelings of inferiority on history’s favorite scapegoat. This morning news advises that ‘it’ has been banned from the campus for ‘it’s’ pains. No further action has yet been reported. In prior interviews ‘it’ expressed the desire to work for AOC whom ‘it’ states is an inspiration. Given the history of the current administration’s hiring, there may be indeed be an opportunity there for ‘it’. Like so many others of ‘it’s’ ilk, ‘it’s’ aspirations are not to remain with the proletariat, whose causes ‘it’ joins the struggle for, but to rise within the bourgeoisie so as to be present on the reviewing stand, as opposed to standing in line for stale black bread. Hence, ‘I am HAMAS’ would suit ‘it’s’ style as opposed to “I am a Gazan’. In a related and relevant story, the University of Florida has banned demonstrations inside buildings, camping including tents, violence, weapons, and amplified sound. Confirmed violators face a 3 year suspension. ‘C’mon down!!”
Zionists are just a subset of all humans, all of whom have a dubious worthiness to live, anyway, so what he said was algebraically true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algebra_of_sets
@Anonymous: re: “Zionists are just a subset of all humans, all of whom have a dubious worthiness to live,” Judging from history and Jew Haters such as yourself in particular, that appears to be pretty much reflective of the entire human condition. “We have met the enemy and he is us!!”
Using a wokipedia reference? Rich. Didn’t they just get fully exposed for thorough corruption and full slant of their entire data set? I don’t even trust wikipedia for basic science and math anymore.
“Zionists don’t deserve to live.”
But they’re mostly non-genocidal protestors.
Other than the fact that this guy comes from the Dorchester section of Boston I can’t find much background. Also led some kind of students against standardised testing before Columbia.
It seems as if post Ferguson many black people were promoted to places based solely on their activism, and they had little more going for them. Ultimately they make inappropriate comments, on the record, and everything is on the record now with ubiquitous cell phones. In James’ case he recorded himself being proud of his hatefulness.
@Anonymous: Re: “I can’t find much background’…https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/who-is-khymani-james-columbia-protest-organizers-remarks-spark-fury/ar-AA1nHYp0
https://www.baystatebanner.com/2021/02/18/q-and-a-with-khymani-james-the-ultimate-destination-is-congress/
I fully support this man’s 1stA rights to say all the dumb, hateful things he wants.
Let me and everyone else know who he is, what he thinks and what he stands for.
When I recorded it, I had been feeling unusually upset after an online mob targeted me because I am visibly queer and black.”
No, Khymani, your supposedly being “visible queer and black” are the least of your problems, but your undeveloped brain at age 20 and hubris, should have gotten the attention of your parents and elders.
On the other hand, visibly Jewish and gays/lesbian Bari Weiss, Dave Rubin, Glenn Greenwald, etc. would likely have a few choice words for Khymani – “get over yourself, you infantile hypocrite”. Visibly Catholic and gay Andrew Sullivan might add: “join ‘Gays for Gaza’ and take photos from the tops of the buildings. They may come in useful if Gazans throw you from the rooftop”
If only there existed an evolutionary program that removed humans from the gene pool when they became insufferable, self-absorbed organisms.
I feel so safe because I know the FBI is on top of the Terrorism lurking inside the Catholic Church, while at the same time rounding up all the white nationalist that keep rioting across the nation.
We have never been safer.
Forgot to mention its hard work. The FBI does about 1 million 702 lookups on Americans without the bother of getting any warrants. But giving up my rights is a small price to pay for being protected from the murderous Catholics.
@iowan2
The ‘white nationalist’ thing is a tell, and it cracks me up. Anyone that uses that term without irony . . . sheesh. My brother is one, it’s become a catch-all for anyone that goes to church. Little do they know in their tiny bubbles that globally, most religious folks aren’t caucasian, not even the Christians. 🙄🙄 So dumb. So very, very dumb.
The public urging of illegal violence on the part of anonymous others does not deserve the protections of free speech, because it is a militant tactic of intimidation. Let’s hear from the great defender of free speech, JT, on this point. He seems to have carefully avoided it, even though he most often makes free speech his main theme.
What you don’t see in this article is Turley defending his free speech right to express his opinion. He’s not calling for his right to express himself regardless of how offensive it is. Turley is tacitly accepting calls for the removal of protesters and speakers like the one in the article because they are critical of Israel. That kind of hypocrisy withers his credibility as a champion of free speech. The professor seems to believe free speech is only protected if it is civil and benign. Nothing says free speech must be civil or non-disruptive or inoffensive. If that were true this country wouldn’t exist. The much celebrated Boston tea party would be deemed unacceptable in Turley’s view. The British would agree.
Substitute “Zionists” with “Trump supporters” and we’ve been hearing this for years and not just hearing it but also witnessing it. The DOJ’s ruthless persecution of Trump and supporters has destroyed countless lives and continues to do so. Professor Turley has always been a free speech absolutist. What changed?
FREE PETER NAVARRO
JT is far from a free speech absolutist. In these pages, JT has roped off areas of public speech he says are NOT protected, such as defamation (e.g., Nicholas Sandmann, Ruby Freeman, Sandy Hook parents, Dominion Voting Systems).
He also ropes off imminent law-breaking, or shouting “fire” in a theater.
He doesn’t admit it, but he also rejects any 1A exception on the lawbooks:
• perjury under oath
• fraudulent product claims (including medical devices and drugs)
• lying on your tax return
• making anonymous death threats
• making a false police report (e.g., Jussie Smollett)
• identity frauds and impersonation
• financial frauds
• security frauds
• gaming (wagering) frauds
Then, there are gray areas (“edge cases”) of free speech where JT refuses to take a position:
These concern public frauds pushed out for political advantage (Hunter laptop cover-up, WMDs in Iraq, Russiagate, Trump’s big lie. These are frauds meant to dupe the public on consequential decisions, but without defaming anyone.
Another area where he remains silent is doxxing, and other forms of online intimidation. I doubt he would allow that 1A protects public tracking of his children accompanied by veiled threats to harm them, unless JT backs down on a position. I wish JT could bring himself to address such obvious transgressions.
@pb
😂😂🙄🙄
“JT is far from a free speech absolutist.”
You are assuming the false premise that context is the enemy of absolutism.
In fact, the opposite is true: Context is the precondition of absolutism.
at least the protests in the 60′-70’s were PRO USA.
Democrats now HATE America…that is OBVIOUS!
guyventner: Maybe in retrospect the rhetoric of the protesters in the 60s and 70s was less violent but that’s not to say they were pro-USA or that some were not very violent, which indeed they were. Take the Weather Underground, for example. In January 1975, they exploded a huge bomb at the State Department, and earlier in NYC, a townhouse was leveled when explosives they were working on accidentally ignited. Police would recover almost 60 sticks of dynamite from that demolished building where several of the Weather Underground people were killed and/or injured. The group also bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, an NYPD police station and the California Attorney General’s Office. President Barack Obama was pals with some of these people and one of them who went on to be a professor in Chicago hosted Obama’s first presidential campaign kickoff celebration. Today’s protesters are guided through social media that was not available in the 60s and 70s and for this reason, today’s protesters are more organized and, incredulously, focused on colleges and universities, the very soil from which emanates their obnoxious and dangerously anti-USA rhetoric. School authorities that have been teaching this fascist hatred for many years are responsible for this Frankenstein movement that likely will perish because of its inner fatal contradictions and absence of logic.
What irks me about Turley is he often suggests, and seems to sincerely believe, that all of this is fairly recent. Surely he knows better. There were literally, without exaggeration, hundreds of Soviet communist spies in the FDR and Truman administrations. Nearly all were college educated. Many of the most high profile ones: including Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, Lauchlin Currie, Noel Field, etc. were Ivy League graduates.
Then a couple of decades later academia became infected when Herbert Marcuse and other Frankfort School Jewish immigrants such as Adorno and Horkheimer brought their hideous ideology to America and inspired the New Left academic radicals.
Billy Ayers, Bernadine Dhorn, and other Weather Underground ’60s radicals were given tenure track professorships at elite colleges despite hiring committees knowing the WU were radical revolutionaries who had bombed several buildings. One of Ayers WU associates, Cathy Boudin, went to prison for her role in driving the getaway car in an armored car heist in which a security guard was killed (Ayers raised her son while she was in prison, and he recently became a radical prosecutor in San Francisco before being losing his job in a recall election). After Boudin served her prison sentence, Columbia and New York University decided that out of 330 million Americans, a woman with a felony murder conviction was exactly the kind of person they wanted to lecture to students.
Angela Davis was once on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List and a fugitive from justice for several years because a firearm she bought was used by her radical compatriot associates in the brazen kidnapping of a judge during a courthouse trial. The kidnappers opened fire at security guards, who returned fire, and the judge was killed in the chaos. Academia loves her.
The ONLY rational conclusion one can draw from the fact that university trustees and administrators hire these radicals is that these are the kinds of people they WANT as models for students. It’s not like the violent history, associations and ideologies were kept secret during the interview hiring process. No, these are/were well known radicals with violent histories who proudly espoused what can be fairly called a “Hate America First” ideology. The trustees and administrators knowingly sought them out and hired them. The donors and alums allowed it.
Somehow, academia managed to maintain its prestige and high status despite deliberately allowing itself to become infected with these radical revolutionaries for the past century. That seems to be ending. Hopefully permanently, but at least temporarily.
Defund Democrats
End Federal Aid to cities, states, colleges and non-profits!
sounds like Soros is paying Terrorists? hmmm…why no prosecution?
Bring in the unqualified by performance and character and get the results depicted here. Ain’t inclusion grand? Bye Fale. We hardly knew ye.
The media are missing the significance of the end-of-semester blues that many college students have. Rather than just go to Ft. Lauderdale or Miami and drink beer and act stupid on the beach while getting sunburned, they are trying to relive the halcyon days of their predecessors who rallied against the Vietnam War, marched for civil rights, or engaged in some other noble adventure. The Israeli/Hamas dispute provides just such an opportunity for them to protest without really having any skin in the game. Dressing up to look like Hamas is fun, after all, and they like being able to tell police officers and school administrators what to do and, unbelievably, they actually do it. The protesters who break the law and get arrested should have to pay fines and make restitution for any damage they cause to school property. If they are here on student visas, they should have those visas terminated and told to leave the U.S. within 48 hours or face prison, deportation, and permanent exclusion. If you are a guest in this country, you have an obligation to act as a guest and not wish “death” upon your host. This would end the chaos pretty quickly.
@JJC
That’s my sentiment toward this sort of thing in general (which became obvious in 2020, particularly with CHAZ): these kids are cosplaying, it is a game to most of them. They go home to mom and dad afterward. As in 2020, it could be shut down in a day if police were allowed to do their jobs.
This cohort is not the hippies; no, these kids are privileged, ignorant, bored, and most importantly, fragile and cowardly – they would absolutely scurry like roaches if anyone were allowed to fumigate. Some of us have said for a long time if it goes unchecked, the temper tantrums would eventually turn violent, and here we are.
Peaceful assembly is fine; these destructive babies are anything but peaceful or fine.
Colleges and universities need to decide: is all extremist rhetoric allowed or is none allowed? The current position appears to be that extremist rhetoric in support of causes deemed progressive is allowed but other extremist rhetoric is not. That is an untenable position.