Journalist pans complaints of anti-Israel encampments being shut down: 'You've been an enemy of free speech'

NEW YORK CITY - The Free Press reporter Eli Lake blasted anti-Israel college activists complaining about their encampments being shut down, saying they've been the "enemy of free speech" for years. 

"Setting up encampments in the middle of a quad or taking over a building and then not allowing Zionist students or Zionist professors to enter the quote, unquote ‘encampments,’ it's not free speech," Lake told Fox News Digital in an interview. "It's discrimination. Maybe you could say it's civil disobedience. But it's not a question of free speech."

"And when you consider that the same people who are claiming that they have a free speech right to exclude certain groups from their encampment on a public space at a college or university also will claim that they've been microaggressed because a certain speaker was invited to campus. Or will, you know, create a major stir and if a comedian they don't like is about to perform," he continued. "That insults our intelligence to take the claims of these people as if they are fighting for free speech when they just discovered that principle five minutes ago." 

"Don't drag free speech into it. I wasn't born yesterday, and I've noticed that over the last 10 years, you have been an enemy of free speech. So don't then make free speech the last refuge of the antisemite," he added.  

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The Free Press reporter Eli Lake slammed the one-sided indoctrination of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on college campuses in an interview with Fox News Digital. (Fox News Photo/Joshua Comins)

Lake, formerly a national security correspondent for several outlets, spoke about the Israel-Hamas war at the Dissident Dialogues festival in New York City earlier this month. He acknowledged that the raw emotions of the activists may be sincere as they see the "brutal" images coming from Gaza. However, he largely blamed the anti-Israel sentiment on college campuses on decades-long indoctrination.

"You have had two generations of professors teaching the history of this region that are activists and far-left activists in the tradition of [the late Palestinian-American professor] Edward Said," Lake told Fox News Digital. "And I don't have a problem with teaching Edward Said on campus, but Edward Said's approach has been taught on these campuses at the exclusion of the school of historians they attack, namely [the late British-American professor] Bernard Lewis."

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"So I think that one of the problems is there hasn't really been a balance and how the Middle East and this conflict has taught and therefore, some of it is that the professors have encouraged this kind of insane radicalism and also this delusion that somehow you can eliminate the state of Israel, which is not going to happen." 

Hundreds gathered for the anti-Israel encampment at the University of Chicago. (Joseph A. Wulfsohn/Fox News Digital)

When asked what the presidents of these elite universities should do to combat on-campus radicalism, Lake said they should seek out "intellectual diversity."

"I would start trying to take a mission of intellectual diversity as seriously as they take their mission of gender and sexual and racial and ethnic diversity," Lake said. "Start hiring people who disagree with the group think of your professors … If they complain, say 'You know what, I wouldn't accept a minority group of people trying to get you fired. So I'm not going to listen to you.'"

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Lake was among panelists debating the Israel-Hamas war at the Dissident Dialogues festival in New York City on May 3, 2024. (Fox News Photo/Joshua Comins)

The reporter went on to suggest that these colleges need to create "super structures" outside what he described "corrupted" departments in order to combat the progressive group think. 

"To use an analogy, because I had been a national security journalist for so long, at a certain point, the United States could no longer work with a normal Pakistani ISI- that's their military intelligence. So they created a separate unit within the ISI that wouldn't be tainted by the rest of it," Lake said. "I think we maybe have to start thinking about universities like the ISI, the Pakistani military intelligence." 

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He added the main institutions at these top universities also have "a lot of bad apples," which would need to be addressed by perhaps "creating institutions within the institution." 

"Students deserve much more ideological and intellectual diversity than they're getting right now," Lake added.

Fox News' Joshua Comins contributed to this report.