Democrats vs. the Enraged Left

Minouche Shafik is this week’s casualty of activist protesters, although her resignation as Columbia University’s president resurrects a pressing question for Democratic leaders: How long do they think they can duck their own confrontation with their angry left? The collision may now end up happening at a time the party least wants it—at next week’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

The Shafik resignation is a microcosm of the left’s broad refusal to confront its insurgents—a naive belief that this divide can be ignored, bridged or papered over. The University of Pennsylvania’s Liz Magill and Harvard’s Claudine Gay were the first to lose their jobs when they failed to condemn or police the anti-semitism rife on their campuses. They hid behind the “right to protest,” rather than provide leadership on rules and moral clarity.

Ms. Shafik tried to have it all ways. When anti-Israel agitators first set up their “Gaza Solidarity Camp,” she quickly called the police. So far, so good; the camp was unauthorized, the protesters mulishly refused to disperse. But when the clearing caused a backlash among students and left-wing faculty, and the camp was reestablished, Ms. Shafik sat by as masked agitators blocked areas of campus, harassed Jewish students, and disrupted academic activities. She dialogued and discussed, negotiated and sent missives carefully designed to offend no one.

Her thanks: The mob occupied and vandalized Hamilton Hall, requiring another call to the police, more arrests, more condemnation from the ivory towers, and more donors questioning a lack of leadership. Ms. Shafik limped along, leading the university to a canceled graduation and summer dispersal. She survived, but nothing was resolved. Eventually she or the university decided she wasn’t the right person to face the fight’s sure resumption this fall.

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