My latest: got university hate? Follow the money

 
Follow the money.
 
That’s the best strategy when trying to get to the bottom of a political scandal.  Follow the money, and you’ll eventually find the bad guys.
 
But what about ethical and moral scandals? What about, say, when the presidents of some of the most prestigious universities on the continent – Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts Institute of Technology – appear before a U.S. congressional committee, and smirk their way through non-answers about Jew hatred on their campuses? What then?
 
The rule still applies: follow the money.
 
Some background, first.  The Harvard, UPenn and M.I.T. presidents deigned to appear before the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce on Tuesday.  They were there, mainly, to field questions about how they are dealing with an explosion in anti-Semitism at their universities.
 
To say that they did not do well is an understatement of epic proportions.  Harvard president Claudine Gay, Penn president Liz Magill and MIT president Sally Kornbluth smirked and smiled and sniggered when asked, repeatedly, whether “calling for genocide of Jews” was against their respective codes of conduct.
 
Every time they were asked that question – to which the answer, always, is “yes” – the university presidents dissembled and prevaricated.  
 
Said UPenn’s Magill, echoing the other two: “It is a context-dependent decision.”
 
No, it isn’t.  It’s not even a difficult question, either: calls to exterminate a people based on their faith is clearly against the rules at every place of higher learning in the world – and, in countries like Canada, a criminal act.
 
It’s also wildly-bad PR.  Donors and students are now boycotting universities where anti-Semitism is going unchecked, and politicians are talking about withdrawing funding.  So why don’t these university presidents do the right thing?
 
It’s about prejudice, of course.  But it’s also about money.
 
This writer’s first book was called Unholy Alliances.  In part, it detailed how outlaw Middle Eastern nations – Libya, Iraq, Syria, Iran and others – have been jamming “students” into Canadian, American and European universities for decades.  And, too often, some of those students aren’t here to study.
 
In Unholy Alliances, I revealed how the FBI uncovered a Libyan plot to use students as spies, terrorists and intelligence-gathering operatives. During a raid at the Virginia home of one Libyan “businessman,” Mousa Hawamda, the FBI found dozens of documents relating to the Canadian Bureau for International Education, World University Services Canada and similar organizations.
 
The CBIE, WUSC, and others work to find spaces for foreign students at Canadian universities and colleges.  The FBI did not make any specific allegations about these groups – but they alleged that some of the Libyan students were indeed involved in terrorist plots, including one to assassinate former White House aide Oliver North.
 
Arranging spots for the Middle Eastern students is big, big business.  Despite the 1986 pledge of former External Affairs Minister Joe Clark – to keep Canada from becoming “a backfill,” as he put it, for students who posed a security risk – Libya, to cite just one example, gave $35 million to place 900 students at educational institutions across Canada in that very same year.
 
Since then, the numbers have grown exponentially. In 2023, the federal government has conceded, Canada is expected to admit around 900,000 foreign students – and reach an astonishing 1.3 million by 2026.
 
And what is the dollar value of all those foreign students? Some $20 billion, Ottawa says.  And most of it is going into the coffers of those universities.  
 
To cite just one small-scale example, reported by The Hub: “[Cape Breton University] reported a haul of nearly $85 million in tuition fees [in Spring 2023], a 200 percent increase from just five years ago, driven mainly by an increase in international students.”  
 
The same thing is happening across Canada, the U.S. and Europe.  Foreign students, particularly from the Middle East, are fattening the coffers of universities big and small.  And, now, we are seeing those same universities look the other way when anti-Semitism is surging on their campuses.
 
It’s not a coincidence.  At Harvard – where, full disclosure, this writer studied law and business, and now wishes he hadn’t – anti-Semitic incidents and crime are epidemic.  And, at Canadian universities like Concordia, Jew hatred can now be seen everywhere, and is captured on nightly TV news broadcasts.
 
Asked about that, one Concordia professor told me: “I don’t know who those people are.  They don’t look like our students.” 
 
There’s a reason for that: they aren’t.  They’re not here to learn.  They’re here to cause trouble, and worse. And they’re doing just that, a lot, since October 7.
 
Like we say: follow the money.  
 
And do it before it’s too late.