There is a simple solution to the student protests at Columbia University and a growing number of other campuses over the Israel-Hamas war: universities should enforce their own student conduct codes and only ask for police help when a crime has been committed.

The botched response that saw Columbia simultaneously seeking the arrest of students as well as imposing suspensions and expulsions without going through their normal disciplinary process reflects an abandonment of principles, as well as common sense.

The situation started with the pressure applied by loudmouth billionaires like Bill Ackman, whose selective outrage over students expressing their First Amendment rights ignored his own expressions of support for a the vigilante shooter Kyle Rittenhouse, who killed two unarmed people and maimed a third at a 2020 Black Lives Matter protest in Wisconsin.

Ackman allowed a peek into his real core beliefs when his support for the eventual ouster of Harvard President Claudine Gay–Harvard’s first black president–morphed into a vocal opposition to DEI policies.

Rather than standing behind their students’ right to peaceful protest and supporting the educational principles of encouraging First Amendment protected discourse, both Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania caved to pressure from wealthy donors and members of Congress in accepting resignations from Gay and Elizbeth Magill over their handling of student expressions of speech.

Large protests on college campuses over social issues are nothing new in America. In 1968 Columbia University students protesting the Vietnam War and the construction........

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