I waited a few days before writing about this because I had to stop giggling to type.

I you watch Aaron Sorkin’s excellent if a bit too fawning movie, “The Trial of the Chicago Seven,” you will see that the anti-war campus protesters of the Sixties had, if nothing else, integrity and guts. Maybe they had inherited some from their parents, of “The Greatest Generation.” Today’s student protests in favor of Hamas, terrorism and Jew-killing (I know, I know: “Think of the children!”), in contrast, are marked by hypocrisy, ignorance and weenie-ism.

Princeton has certainly moved to the front of the line in the latter. After the protesting students announced a hunger strike in support of allegedly starving Gazans (Pro tip: if you don’t want to suffer from the predictable consequences of war, don’t elect terrorists as your government). Then they complained that they—the students, now, not the Gazans—were hungry. One female protester shouted into a megaphone, “This is absolutely unfair. My peers and I, we are starving. We are physically exhausted. I am quite literally shaking right now as you can see.” What, is the nearby McDonald’s closed?

Then the protesters persuaded some of the professors whose indoctrination made them the misguided weenies they are to make themselves look foolish by signing a letter of protest in the students’ support. It’s long and infuriating, but here are the best parts…

We, the undersigned faculty of Princeton University, write to you about a matter of deep and urgent concern. On Friday morning, May 3, eighteen Princeton students began a hunger strike, eating nothing and drinking water only sparingly. These students’ blood pressures had dropped and their bodies had begun to consume their own tissue. One of the students was rushed to the hospital on the evening of Wednesday, May 8. As of today, on day nine with no food, thirteen students have broken their hunger strike. Seven more students have begun a hunger strike…the University administration has a lot more work to do to facilitate meaningful, mutually respectful, and good-faith efforts toward seriously considering their demands. This includes the urgent need to divest from Israel until such time as it ceases its genocidal war against the Palestinian people of Gaza and until Israel comes into compliance with international law and ends its occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and other Palestinian lands…Despite the urgency of the hunger strikers’ situation, these administrators have yet to advance the talks toward a substantive discussion of the protesters’ demands.

This disregard for our students’ health and well-being would be appalling in any context. The fact that the Palestine Solidarity Encampment is now located on Cannon Green — visible from the offices of Nassau Hall — casts President Eisgruber’s decision not to acknowledge these students as especially callous.

The University has gone out of its way to make life difficult for these beleaguered, underslept, and already-hungry student protesters…We strenuously urge you to exercise your authority as University Trustees and intervene in this rapidly-deteriorating situation. Play your role in protecting our students, preserving and enshrining the rights of all of us to speak, protest, and organize freely and safely; and join us in standing up for the just and decent cause that our students demand we pay attention to and act in order to stop: Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people of Gaza. 

For such a long-winded and pompous letter—that was less than half of it—an appropriate and effective response would be remarkably brief: “Bite me.” Nobody has any obligation to provide aid or care to those who are inflicting hardship on themselves and can stop doing so any time they please. The letter is useful in explaining why so many Princeton students are such bone-headed assholes, however.

But wait! There’s more! Wait for iiiiiiiiit….

Rotary hunger strikes! Genuine hunger strike specialists like Gandhi and Dick Gregory are rolling in their graves—with laughter. I’d call this innovation for the woke and faint of heart tag-team hunger strikes if it were up to me. Right now I am trying to picture Abbie Hoffman being beaten by Mayor Daley’s cops outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention and saying, “OK, guys, just hold up a minute. Tom Hayden’s going to take my place now while I go get some ice for my head and a bandage. Tom? Tom! Come on over here and take over, will you? This is starting to hurt.”

And Tom comes over, and the cops start beating him.