These anti-Israel protesters thought they owned the Columbia campus, and no one was correcting them, in effect, making their belief true. In fact, too many of Columbia's faculty were leading the charge.

And then Donald Trump was elected for a second time.

The hammer came down on Columbia hard and swift. A whopping $400 million in grants was suddenly stripped from Columbia by the Trump administration. Suddenly, layoffs were eminent, and the anti-Israel faculty members were being led to the chopping block. The University also instituted mask bans and a promise to come down harder on antisemitic protesters. 

Then the rioters attempted to storm and occupy Columbia's Butler Library. Indeed, they occupied it, but then police turned the tide and made it into a temporary detention facility where students were only allowed to leave if they presented ID or face arrest. Many arrests were made, and Marco Rubio began working on deporting students with visas who participated in pro-terrorist criminal behavior. 

With consequences now hitting these students for their ridiculous actions, Columbia has become a lot more peaceful, and these protesters aren't feeling like protesting much anymore. 

According to Fox News, pro-Hamas students are a lot less brave:

There was a somber and uneasy mood outside the university the day after the protest, with the vast majority of students tight-lipped on the matter as they hurriedly shuffled through a security checkpoint outside the main gate on their way to class. There were no political signs, no Palestinian flags, and only a handful of people over the course of several hours were spotted wearing keffiyehs, the traditional Middle Eastern scarf often worn by protesters to signify their support of Palestinians.

[...]

"It was very scary. I think the energy after last night, the dynamic has shifted," a dejected Harmony Cruz Bustamante told Fox News Digital outside the university on Thursday afternoon. 

"There's just a collective understanding now on campus that we don't talk about certain things because of fears of getting detained or questioned by the authorities. So it was very scary last night because the university really revealed themselves in that they… really don't have our interests at heart. And I think that was seen through the viciousness that a lot of the public safety officers and NYPD had."

Well, if it isn't the consequences of their own actions. 

The state of the natural world is to drift toward entropy, and without proper actions and monitoring, a sort of anti-civilization mentality will seep in and begin destroying society. What we establish is always under threat from those who would destroy it either out of malice, ignorance, or capitulation. 

These protesters think it's brave to support terrorists because they were conditioned to believe that civilization can only exist if great evil is done to oppressed peoples. They've been told America is a parasite and in order for the rest of the world to thrive, it has to be opposed and weakened where possible. 

This is entropy doing its work, and I would say that resisting that natural impulse of the universe is far braver. 

But it takes strong leaders to do that. Biden was a weak leader, Trump is not. Now that you see a strong leader actually fighting back against anti-civilization, civilization is returning to even the most infected places. You're seeing just how enthusiastic these people are to be lawless and hateful now that consequences are back on the table. 

In short, they don't actually believe it that much. They're not willing to risk it all for the things they were willing to assault people over before. You're now watching people regulate themselves in the face of good leadership. 

Trump makes the joke that all it took to fix a lot of our problems was good leadership. He wasn't wrong.