There were some strange happenings this past week, strongly suggesting that we, as a community, must step back and take stock.
The Snowball Confrontation
Once again Mayor Zohran Mamdani ventured beyond the pale. The mayor is now facing sharp criticism for his response to an incident in Washington Square Park, where a crowd targeted uniformed NYPD officers with snowballs, ice, and verbal taunts.
Yet despite several officers being hospitalized for facial lacerations and head injuries, Mamdani repeatedly downplayed the event as nothing more than a harmless “snowball fight.” And in this, he directly contradicted Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch – who labeled the behavior “disgraceful” and “criminal” – and likely anyone with a shred of common sense. And he followed up with a declaration that no one should be prosecuted. Predictably, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg also announced that he was not inclined to prosecute in any event.
This is a very big deal. It is an attack on those tasked with protecting the safety of all of us and civic order. Surely, if it had been civilians that had been pelted with rocks and ice, the administration would call it a violent crime. But because the targets were wearing NYPD blue, the mayor treats the violence as an acceptable occupational hazard.
This incident is emblematic of the broader Mamdani anti-police and anti-law-and-order governing philosophy. However, New York City cannot function if its chief executive tends to view the police department as largely a nuisance and violent mobs as little more than annoyances. The officers who were out there in a historic blizzard digging out ambulances and keeping the streets navigable deserve respect and a mayor who has their back. Instead, they have a mayor who would rather trivialize violent disrespect for police than admit his ideological compass is broken.
Can even greater lawlessness be far behind?
The CUNY Double Standard
Hunter College has quickly placed tenured assistant biology professor Allyson Friedman on leave pending a full investigation following “abhorrent” and “blatantly racist” remarks she made about Black students that were caught on a “hot mic” during the course of her participation at a virtual community meeting from home. Without getting into the particulars, the prompt suspension highlights the glaring and increasingly untenable double standard within the City University of New York system: a zero-tolerance policy for some form of bigotry contrasted with a hands-off approach toward others – specifically antisemitism.
Contrast CUNY’s treatment of Friedman, who thought she was speaking privately in her home, and the way it treats professors who focus on things Jewish.
Thus, consider what happens – as described in testimony in recent federal litigation – when professors stand at a lectern in a crowded classroom and justify the terrorism of October 7, traffic in age-old tropes about Jewish power, or cloak the demonization of Jewish students in the academic jargon of “anti-Zionism.” Then CUNY’s outrage suddenly vanishes.
Jewish students are routinely forced to sit in classrooms paying thousands of dollars in tuition while their identity and history are vilified by the person holding the grade book. Yet when these students complain, they are patronized and lectured about the “complexities” of the Middle East, the “nuances” of free expression, the dynamics of academic freedom, and the absolute, untouchable sanctity of tenure.
This is the hypocrisy of the modern academic bureaucracy. Hate speech is treated as a severe disciplinable infraction that demands immediate removal – unless the target is Jewish, in which case it is elevated to protected political discourse.
The swift suspension of the Hunter College professor proved that universities possess both the administrative mechanisms and the moral vocabulary to root out prejudice when they choose to do so. Plainly, though, their persistent failure to apply those same mechanisms to the rampant antisemitism in their classrooms is not a defense of the First Amendment; it is a calculated choice.
It is time for universities to decide whether their zero-tolerance policies actually mean zero tolerance, or whether Jewish students are simply the institutional exception to the rule.
The Dems and the State of the Union Address
It was dismaying to witness the congressional Democrat “boycott” of President Trump’s State of the Union speech last week, despite their physical attendance.
For weeks prior to the speech, Democratic leadership under Hakeem Jeffries had telegraphed their strategy for the 2026 address: “silent defiance.” They would not disrupt, they would not cheer, and they would refuse to give the president the visual satisfaction of bipartisan applause. It was a strategy designed to play to their progressive base while avoiding the spectacle of partisan disruptions.
So what we got was Democratic indifference when American heroes – who would ordinarily be deemed to transcend politics – were introduced by the president.
Thus, he brought out the U.S. Men’s Olympic Hockey team still wearing their gold medals, and announced the Presidential Medal of Freedom for goaltender Connor Hellebuyck. He awarded the Medal of Honor to Royce Williams, a 100-year-old Korean War legend. And he bestowed a Purple Heart on National Guard Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, who survived a brutal shooting attack while protecting the streets of Washington, DC.
The stony silence was so impactful that commentators soon began suggesting that the roster was designed by President Trump to lure the Democrats into a trap. In fact, the media-savvy Mr. Trump likely knew exactly what the split-screen would look like.
So, while Republicans roared with applause for a 100-year-old war hero and a wounded guardsman, dozens of Democrats remained glued to their seats, stone-faced and scowling. When Trump explicitly called on the chamber to stand if they believed the government’s first duty was to protect American citizens, the Democratic side of the aisle remained stubbornly seated.
But when all is said and done, despite the remarkable theater, we were wistfully hoping that we would once again all come together and recognize that when one side of the political divide succeeds while in office, all of us succeed.