Amidst the chaos in the Middle East following Hamas' evil attack on Israel on October 7, there's been growing unrest on college campuses here in the United States. RedState has brought you numerous stories of protests and dueling faculty and student body letters, a disappointingly significant portion of which have espoused support for Hamas and condemnation of Israel. It's clear that the mayhem wrought by the early October attacks has exposed major fault lines running through academia, particularly in the Ivy League. 

Cornell University hit the headlines in mid-October after one professor proudly declared his exhilaration over the Hamas attacks. 

Though Russell Rickford later apologized for his comments (sort of), tensions on the campus between pro-Hamas and pro-Israeli factions continued to roil, culminating in a warning issued Sunday afternoon to students to avoid the school's kosher dining hall after disturbing threats were made against both the hall and Jewish students on campus.

Thankfully, on Tuesday, 21-year-old Patrick Dai, the student alleged to be responsible for making the threats, was taken into custody and is now facing federal charges for them. 

The charges stem from messages that were posted last weekend to a Cornell message board in which a user, now named as Dai, posted messages threatening to "shoot up" the campus' kosher dining hall, located next to the Cornell Jewish Center, saying "jewish [sic] people need to be killed." 

It gets worse.

The U.S. Attorney's Office complaint included information on other posts allegedly made by Dai, which included threats to rape Jewish women and behead Jewish babies:

In another post, Dai allegedly threatened to “stab” and “slit the throat” of any Jewish males he sees on campus, to rape and throw off a cliff any Jewish females, and to behead any Jewish babies. In that same post, Dai threatened to “bring an assault rifle to campus and shoot all you pig jews.”

The university has now announced that classes are canceled on Friday "in recognition of the extraordinary stress of the past few weeks." 

Cornell University has canceled classes Friday to acknowledge the “extraordinary stress” its campus has been under as one of its students is accused of making violent antisemitic threats against Jewish people at the college, where unease over the Israel-Hamas war has been escalating for weeks.

...

Cornell will observe Friday as a community day “in recognition of the extraordinary stress of the past few weeks,” a university spokesperson told CNN.

But it isn't just the threats posted by Dai causing concerns. 

In addition to the online threats, the university also received a “concerning crime alert” on Wednesday, Cornell president Martha Pollack said in a statement. Though the alert was unsubstantiated, it “adds to the stress we are all feeling,” she wrote.

Pollack's statement continues: 

Let me say again clearly. We will not tolerate antisemitism at Cornell; indeed we will not tolerate hatred of any form, including racism or Islamophobia. What does this mean? It means, first and foremost, that when there are threats or incitement to violence, we will respond rapidly and forcefully, as we did in this case. It also means enhancing the prominence of our attention to antisemitism in our diversity and equity programing, both in online materials and in the programs that we require of and offer to our community. It means continuing to bring to campus speakers with expertise in antisemitism, its causes and strategies to intervene, as well as speakers with expertise in the history of the Jewish people. It means developing new policies that prohibit doxxing, and strengthening our support services to those who are doxxed. And it means creating a small group of trustees who will focus on these issues from a governance perspective, and a group of external advisors to suggest, with fresh eyes, additional steps that we should consider to counter antisemitism and all forms of hatred on our campus.

My initial instinct upon seeing this news was that the timing was odd — day late, dollar short — given the arrest and detention of Dai earlier in the week. But maybe a long weekend will help ratchet the tensions down a notch. Hopefully, the faculty members will take the time to reflect further on what sorts of things they find exhilarating.