MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN THAT GOES UP TONIGHT RECOMMENDS THAT JEWISH STUDENTS TRANSFER, BUT THIS GOES BEYOND THAT: Kids Are Giving Up on Elite Colleges—and Heading South.

Southern colleges also offer something Northerners rarely find at elite schools: an introduction to people who don’t think or behave exactly like them, but are welcoming nonetheless. When visiting her son Scott, a student at Elon University since 2022, Francine Katz’s interactions with students and teachers has changed her entire perspective on Southerners. “I might not agree with the politics in the South, but Northerners could really learn a lot from Southerners on how to treat people,” she says.

Archie Glazer feels the same. After visiting several elite colleges in the Northeast this spring, he is trying to keep an open mind about where he’ll apply next year, but can’t get past his first impressions.

“Everybody looked so miserable,” he says.

Yeah. Even when I was in law school, the Yale undergrads seemed unhappy and I felt sorry for them. Now it’s infinitely worse than it was then. And much more expensive!

Related: Go to a state school: The Ivy League and other elite private colleges are losing esteem — and they deserve it. “People have figured out that elite higher ed is cringe.”

SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Most working-age cancer survivors suffer financial hardship.

WELL, OF COURSE: “What I do know is that even the most peaceful of protests would be treated as outrages if they were interpreted as, say, anti-Black.”

Plus: “And besides, calling all this peaceful stretches the use of the word rather implausibly. It’s an odd kind of peace when a local rabbi urges Jewish students to go home as soon as possible, when an Arab-Israeli activist is roughed up on Broadway, when the angry chanting becomes so constant that you almost start not to hear it and it starts to feel normal to see posters and clothing portraying Hamas as heroes.”

COLLUSION: Yale cares more about China than its neighbors.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Twilight of the Wonks.

Impostor syndrome isn’t always a voice of unwarranted self-doubt that you should stifle. Sometimes, it is the voice of God telling you to stand down. If, for example, you are an academic with a track record of citation lapses, you might not be the right person to lead a famous university through a critical time. If you are a moral jellyfish whose life is founded on the “go along to get along” principle and who recognizes only the power of the almighty donor, you might not be the right person to serve on the board of an embattled college when the future of civilization is on the line. And if you are someone who believes that “misgenderment” is a serious offense that demands heavy punishment while calls for the murder of Jews fall into a gray zone, you will likely lead a happier and more useful life if you avoid the public sphere.

The spectacle of the presidents of three important American universities reduced to helpless gibbering in a 2023 congressional hearing may have passed from the news cycle, but it will resonate in American politics and culture for a long time. Admittedly, examination by a grandstanding member of Congress seeking to score political points at your expense is not the most favorable forum for self-expression. Even so, discussing the core mission of their institutions before a national audience is an event that ought to have brought out whatever mental clarity, moral earnestness, and rhetorical skills that three leaders of major American institutions had. My fear is it did exactly that.

The mix of ideas and perceptions swirling through the contemporary American academy is not, intellectually, an impressive product.

Nope.

I DON’T KNOW WHY IT’S UP TO COLUMBIA: Columbia has ‘made clear’ it ‘does not want NYPD’ on campus as pro-Hamas occupation takes over school.

Related: Columbia Jewish students told to flee campus as situation unravels.

STEPHEN KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Let the Protesters Stay Until Academia Burns to the Ground. “In yesterday’s Briefing, I was mostly referring to the student mobs who have been making all of the anti-Israel noise and trouble on campuses all over America. We can’t forget the adults in academia who are paid handsomely to indoctrinate the kids and saddle them with such crippling ignorance, however. What we’re seeing is the product of decades of pumping impressionable minds full of, to borrow a leftist word, misinformation. . . . We’re not seeing something that came from the deep recesses of the collective college student consciousness. This has been simmering just below the surface for a very long time. Academic leftists are the cancer, the anti-Israel protests are the symptom. What we’ve seen on American campuses since last October has proven what those of us who write about the rot in academia have been saying for years. That rot is pervasive and really does make it seem as if there is nothing redeemable in higher education.”

WELL, THEY HAVE TO SATISFY THE RADICAL MUSLIM VOTING BLOCS IN MICHIGAN AND MINNESOTA, WHILE NOT BEING TOO OBVIOUSLY ANTI-SEMITIC: White House bobs and weaves through questions on Gaza campus protests.

SOME PARTS OF AMERICA STILL WORK: SpaceX launches 23 Starlink satellites, aces 300th rocket landing (photos, video).

Also: Rocket Lab launches new NASA solar sail tech to orbit.

WELL, GOOD: Amazingly, Harvard Suspends Pro-Hamas Student Group.

OF COURSE THEY DO: ‘Squad’ Members Cozy Up to Anti-Semitic Fundraiser Who Promoted Holocaust Denial: Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush, Summer Lee, and Ilhan Omar pose for pictures with Maher Abdel-qader.

ED MORRISSEY: Once Again, With Feeling: Decolonize Academia Now! “I wish to offer this essay again to remind us that we could force these schools to recognize the damage they are doing by restoring proper market signals to the education industry. And until we do, American Academia will continue to operate as a toxic and destructive element in our society, imposing indoctrination rather than education and producing generations of moral failures and petty totalitarians. And as the past six months have demonstrated, other approaches simply aren’t working.”

SHOT: That 1938 Feeling: A scent of trouble in the air.

CHASER: This Isn’t the 1930s. It’s Worse.

I’M NOT EVEN SURE THIS IS SATIRE:

Columbia Admins Promise To Carefully Investigate Whether 'Let’s Kill Every Jew We See On Campus' Chant Violates School’s Conduct Policy https://t.co/zqkQGy2Nki pic.twitter.com/dl5EPzvFrH

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) April 23, 2024

I mean, this is straight news: 54 Columbia Law Faculty Condemn Administration For Disciplinary Action Against Anti-Israel Student Protesters.

I mean, most of these people were probably all in for the “punch a Nazi” fad, but now they’re all in for a “kill the Jews” protest. If these were right-leaning students, the faculty would be applauding.

WELL, THE FBI: DOJ announces $139M settlement with Larry Nassar’s victims over claims of FBI misconduct.

TOO TRUE TO BE REALLY FUNNY:

Columbia Switches To Online Classes So Jewish Students Can Participate From The Attics Where They Are Hiding https://t.co/AQsnFkaJ1S

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) April 24, 2024

SOME OF US AREN’T WORRIED, WE’RE CERTAIN: “Some of us are worried that politics infuses everything that the judge and the prosecutors do. I insist on hearing good faith arguments — and the truth — wherever possible. It seems to me, we are talking about gagging a presidential candidate, whose prosecution might be political persecution, and that’s inescapably political. It’s not something to be brushed off as some sort of ‘ethos’ of Trump’s that deserves ‘a complete onslaught.'”

GOOD IDEA:

We need to normalize commie shaming again. Communism is perhaps the worst thing to happen to modern humanity and people should feel bad and stupid for liking it.

— Wyatt (@austerrewyatt1) April 5, 2024

OPEN THREAD: Do your best.

FASTER, PLEASE: Boom’s XB-1 test plane gets FAA green light for supersonic flight.

NOT MUCH OBVIOUS EVIDENCE THAT PEOPLE ARE GETTING SMARTER, THOUGH: Are We Evolving? New Research Reveals That Human Brains Are Getting Larger.

PROF. STEVEN CALABRESI: The Narrowest Ground for Deciding Trump v. United States: Holding that Jack Smith lacks defendant’s standing lets the Supreme Court avoid the fraught question of presidential immunity for criminal actions.

IF TRUMP DID THIS THEY’D CALL HIM RACIST AND UNCIVILIZED: Britain’s Prime Minister Vows Migrant Deportation Flights to Rwanda Will Start Soon.

HE DOESN’T HAVE ANY MORE OF A CHANCE IN FRONT OF A RUSSIAN COURT THAN DONALD TRUMP DOES IN FRONT OF A NEW YORK COURT: Russian Court Denies Evan Gershkovich’s Latest Appeal.

PRETTY IMPRESSIVE TO BE ABLE TO REPAIR A SPACECRAFT THAT IS NEARLY 50 YEARS OLD AND HAS LEFT THE SOLAR SYSTEM: Voyager 1 resumes sending readable status updates after 5 months of repairs.