This year has witnessed an upsurge in intense and often violent protests on university campuses. Their immediate pretext is the war in Gaza, which commenced with Hamas’s savage and unprovoked attack on Israel on Oct. 7. But everyone can see that these protests reflect a broader problem: the failure of our most eminent universities to insist that their students show fundamental respect for their fellow students and our nation’s laws and civic institutions.

On campus after campus, the reasonable expectations of ordinary nonprotesting students have been pushed aside in favor of the loud and unruly minority (many of whom are not even students). Classes have been disrupted, and even commencement exercises have been canceled. Worse yet, the ugly strains of undiluted anti-Jewish hatred, urged on by Hamas’s savagery, have been allowed to fester almost unhindered, with only the most feeble and perfunctory responses from university presidents and other administrators. It has been an appalling spectacle.