Thomas Sowell‘s latest column at Human Events focuses on the latest rash of high-profile college campus protests.

Storm trooper tactics by bands of college students making ideological demands across the country, and immediate preemptive surrender by college administrators — such as at the University of Missouri recently — bring back memories of the 1960s, for those of us old enough to remember what it was like being there, and seeing first-hand how painful events unfolded.

At Harvard, back in 1969, students seized control of the administration building and began releasing to the media information from confidential personnel files of professors. But, when university president Nathan Pusey called in the police to evict the students, the faculty turned against him, and he resigned.

At least equally disgraceful things happened at Cornell, at Columbia, and on other campuses across the country. But there was one major university that stood up to the campus storm troopers — the University of Chicago.

After student mobs seized control of a campus building, the University of Chicago expelled 42 students and suspended 81 other students. Seizing buildings was not nearly as much fun there, nor were outrageous demands met.

Clearly it was not inevitable that academic institutions would follow the path of least resistance. Most of the leading academic institutions have multiple applications for every place available in the student body. Students who are expelled for campus disruptions can easily be replaced by others on the waiting lists.

Why then do so many colleges and universities not only tolerate storm trooper tactics on campus but surrender immediately to them? That is just one of a number of questions that are hard to answer.

Why do parents pay big money, often at a considerable sacrifice, to send their children to places where small groups of other students can disrupt their education and poison the whole atmosphere with obligatory conformity to political correctness?

Why do donors continue to contribute millions of dollars to institutions that have become indoctrination centers, tearing down America, stifling dissent and turning group against group?