Americans knew previously they were intolerant, leftwing, and increasingly non-meritocratic.
But immediately after October 7 -- and even before the response of the Israeli Defense Forces -- the sheer student delight on news of the mass murdering of Israeli victims seemed akin more to 1930s Germany than contemporary America.
Indeed, not a day goes by when a university professor or student group has not spouted antisemitic hatred. Often, they threaten and attack Jewish students, or engage in mass demonstrations calling for the extinction of Israel.
Why and how did purportedly enlightened universities become incubators of such primordial hatred?
After the George Floyd riots in 2020, reparatory admissions -- the effort to admit diverse students beyond their numbers in the general population -- increased.
Elite universities like Stanford and Yale boasted that their so-called "white" incoming student numbers had plunged to between 20 and 40 percent, despite whites making up 68-70% of the general population.
The abolition of the SAT requirement, and often the comparative ranking of high school grade point averages, have ended the ancient and time-proven idea of meritocracy. Brilliant high school transcripts and test scores no longer warrant admissions to so-called elite schools.
One result was that the number of Jews has nosedived from 20-30% of Ivy League student bodies during the 1970s and 1980s to 10-15%.
Jewish students are also currently stereotyped as "white" and "privileged" -- and thus considered as fair game on campus.