Letters

Ed Surgan stated that our universities are sick and that their student demonstrators only want death to America after it pays off their student loans [“Make-Believe Radicals,” Letters, May 2]. Mr. Surgan was spewing all sorts of bile, but much of what he said in his letter is over-the-top exaggeration and not factual.

The New York Times reported that half of the people jailed at Columbia University and at The City University of New York were not students (many were professional external agitators). The Wall Street Journal reported that activist groups trained students for months before campus protests.

Our enemies (think Vladimir Putin) revel in any internal discord here in America. Perhaps they are fomenting much of the college campus discord in hopes of a repeat of the 1968 violence at the Democratic Convention in Chicago.

Many idealistic college students and many thoughtful adults are terribly upset by the death toll and the starvation of so many Palestinians. Most people abhor Hamas and its brutality. However, many people, including many Israelis, abhor Benjamin Netanyahu and the way he is conducting the war against the Palestinian people. His land grabs have long been a source of unrest in the region.

I was young a long time ago, and I remember college students who demonstrated against the Vietnam War. I remember the shooting of unarmed college students at Kent State University (four deaths, nine wounded) by National Guardsmen. I remember construction workers beating up student protesters outside the New York Stock Exchange.

Our oldest granddaughter is graduating from high school this month, and she is going off to a good college in the fall. I must admit I am happy that she didn’t choose Columbia University, although she was accepted based on her academic accomplishments. As her grandfather, I want her to be happy and I want her to be safe.

As to Columbia University, it has long been an exceptional institution. The renowned author Herman Wouk (“The Winds of War,” “War and Remembrance,” “The Caine Mutiny”) was a graduate of Columbia, and he believed that it was still a memorable place prior to his death in 2019.

No, I don’t believe that our universities are sick. I do believe that right-wing nut jobs like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz and so many other angry people are sick. And I am sick and tired of the daily drum roll of everything Donald Trump and his cheerleaders. I hope and pray that my grandchildren turn out to be nothing like Donald Trump and his acolytes.

Dick Sheehan

Manorville