White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre dodged several questions during a press briefing on Monday, regarding the responses of many universities in the U.S. as anti-Israel protests, which sometimes turn violent, continue to flare up.

Colleges from coast to coast, including many Ivy League schools like Columbia, Yale, Harvard and Penn, have seen dayslong protests on campuses, with students demanding their schools completely divest from Israel as the death toll in Gaza continues to increase.

One reporter on Monday asked Jean-Pierre whether President Biden or anyone else in the White House had spoken with leadership at Columbia University, and if the president was happy with how school administrators are handling the situation.

“The president has always been clear that while Americans have the right to peacefully protest…he stands squarely, squarely against any rhetoric, violent rhetoric, any hate, hate threats and physical intimidation and hate speech,” she said, adding there is no place for antisemitism on college campuses or anywhere else. “It is a painful moment, we get that. But it is a painful moment that Americans are dealing with, and free expression has to be done within the law. And, you know, we’re going to continue to be very clear about that.”

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, ANTI-ISRAEL AGITATORS FAIL TO REACH DEAL, PRESIDENT ASKS CAMP TO ‘VOLUNTARILY DISPERSE’

The press secretary did not answer the question about whether Biden was satisfied with how universities are handling the situation. And that was not the only question she dodged.

Jean-Pierre was asked if the White House thought it was fair that protesters at Columbia or other schools were being threatened with probation or other disciplinary actions, and whether students should leave a protest before a deadline being given by university personnel at Columbia.

To both questions, Jean-Pierre said she would not comment.

VIRGINIA TECH POLICE PHYSICALLY CARRY AWAY ANTI-ISRAEL AGITATORS AMID EFFORT TO RESTORE PEACE ON CAMPUS

University of Texas police officers arrest a man at a pro-Palestinian protest at UT on Wednesday, April 24, 2024. (Jay Janner/American-Statesman)

“These are institutions. Some of them are private, some of them are public, and it is up to their leadership, university leadership and colleges, to make that decision,” she responded to the first question.

She nearly echoed her response to the second question.

“I’m just not going to comment on leadership at colleges and universities….that’s for them to decide,” Jean-Pierre said. “We’ve been very clear.”

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An anti-Israel protester in Cambridge on Monday shouted slurs at the pro-Israel counter-protesters, calling them “pigs” and “Nazis.”  (Kassy Dillon/Fox News Digital)

Other topics that were dodged included whether the White House was concerned about safety at graduations; the response of the Biden administration to the use of police force in some of the college protests; the Biden administration’s reaction to the repercussions of the protests and how they have impacted students on campuses in terms of the University of Southern California canceling graduation and George Washington University moving exams; and if the White House supported having antisemitism monitors on campus.

In nearly every response, Jean-Pierre stuck to the message that Biden is in favor of peaceful protests and condemns antisemitism and any form of hate.

But this is nothing new.

CALIFORNIA UNIVERSITY REVEALS ‘TRUE COST’ OF ANTI-ISRAEL MOB THAT TOOK OVER ACADEMIC BUILDINGS

President Biden said he expects Iran to attack Israel and tensions continue to flare between to the two nations.  (Photographer: Jacquelyn Martin/AP/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

On Sunday, the White House remained silent on if the administration plans to bar student protesters from eligibility for student loan forgiveness programs. One thing Biden campaigned on in 2020 was forgiving student loan debt, pledging to cancel at least $10,000 per borrower back in 2020.

While Biden denounced the protests, he came under criticism last week for also condemning those “who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.”

“I condemn the antisemitic protests. That’s why I have set up a program to deal with that. I also condemn those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians,” Biden told reporters this month. 

Critics have compared it to Trump’s remarks in 2017, following a two-day riot in Charlottesville, Virginia, when White nationalists descended on the city. Trump said at the time that the violence had “no place in America,” while adding there was “blame on both sides” and “very fine people, on both sides.”

Emma Colton of Fox News Digital contributed to this report.

The mention of mass graves is so deeply disturbing that it’s preferable to think of such wartime horrors as dark remnants of another era, chapters of history we’ll never repeat. The Armenian genocide, the Bolshevik revolution, Nazi Germany, El Salvador, Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The fairy tale that the human race has evolved beyond such barbarism was shattered (again) last week when reports surfaced that three mass burial sites had been unearthed in Gaza. The shocking development should have made headlines, but it barely made it onto most people’s radars.

The media are instead hyper-focused on how we protest atrocities rather than the atrocities themselves.

Anti-war demonstrations on college campuses dominate conversations and coverage about the Israel-Hamas war. Every imaginable news source — legacy print outlets, user-generated posts, broadcast and cable news — has its sight set on the encampments and rallies breaking out on campuses across the nation.

The protests are worthy in their own right for drawing attention to critical issues. They’ve raised awareness (and hackles) around the staggering Palestinian death toll, antisemitism, occupation, the oft-forgotten hostages and free speech. The largely peaceful demonstrations, dealt with ineptly at best by university heads and law enforcement, are rightfully the leading national story, and its stars are a generation that many older folks had written off as apathetic.

In SEO terms, the protests present the perfect setting for a media blitz. They’re taking place at colleges and they come with powerful images and ample social media content. As an example, protests at USC unfolded live on television across various local stations, with choppers capturing the action from every imaginable angle. They’re also an easier way into the war, bringing the Mideast conflict home to America without the horror of witnessing a real battle.

But blanket coverage of the uprising by students is so omnipresent, it’s overshadowed news from the very war they’re protesting.

There’s been a stunning lack of coverage and outrage following an announcement Friday by Palestinian authorities that they’d uncovered 390 bodies from mass grave sites around Gaza’s Nassar and Shifa hospitals, facilities that were raided and destroyed in Israeli strikes. The bodies were reportedly found in the pits, buried by bulldozed debris, after the Israeli Defense Forces ended operations in the region.

Women and children are among the deceased; the majority are still unidentified. Some of the dead were allegedly found stripped naked with their hands bound behind their backs. “It indicates serious violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, and these need to be subjected to further investigations,” said Ravina Shamdasani, a chief spokesperson for the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk.

The sheer barbarity of these scenes may explain why they haven’t garnered more attention. It’s simply too awful to process, so we turn away.

And if the discovery of mass graves is a hard story to watch, it’s an even harder one to cover. Israel continues to restrict international journalists’ access to Gaza, so there are fewer reporters there to bear witness. For those who are there, it’s one of the deadliest wars on record for media workers, and civilian casualties are more than 34,000. If reporters do survive, they’re faced with intense investigative digging to get to the truth. And when their stories are finally reported, they’ll be lambasted, trolled and harassed by one side — or both — for their perceived bias.

But we need answers, and short of an independent investigation (the Biden administration has left it up to Israel to investigate itself), we’re left to guess whether war crimes have or have not been committed.

The dearth of information is partly due to the contraction of American newsrooms. Journalism outlets big and small have lost the resources, access and the expertise to cover wars like they once did. It’s also up to elected officials to draw attention to potential war crimes, especially when the U.S. plays such a central role in the conflict.

Politicians like Mike Johnson have instead been busy raising their profiles by inserting themselves into the Palestinian-Israeli mire. Painting himself as a defender of student safety, the Republican House speaker instead put hundreds if not thousands of anti-war protesters in danger — Jewish students included — by conflating their pro-Palestinian stances with sympathy for Hamas. “The things that have happened at the hands of Hamas are horrific, and yet these protesters are out there waving flags for the very people who committed those crimes. This is not who we are in America,” Johnson posted Thursday on X, formerly Twitter.

It was refreshing to see that ABC News didn’t just quote him and move on, as many other news outlets did. The network reported that there had been no documented cases of demonstrators waving Hamas flags. Such details matter when the safety of students is at stake.

But critical questions remain around Gaza’s mass graves, and there’s the matter of accountability.

“The grave in question was dug — by Gazans — a few months ago,” tweeted Nadav Shoshani, a spokesman for the Israeli Defense Force. “This fact is corroborated by social media documentation uploaded by Gazans at the time of the burial. Any attempt to blame Israel for burying civilians in mass graves is categorically false and a mere example of a disinformation campaign aimed at delegitimizing Israel.”

Israeli officials said the corpses buried near Nasser Hospital had been exhumed to check whether they were those of Israeli hostages. An Israeli military official said that all remains were then “respectfully returned to their place.”

Gaza authorities affirm that graves were dug before the Israeli military’s arrival, but allege that the IDF added bodies to the site. Gaza Civil Defense said that only about 100 people were buried in graves before the IDF raid, and that 390 to 392 bodies (accounts vary) had since been recovered.

The widely reported slaughter of innocent Israelis and Palestinians, and the taking of hostages, prompted the protests in the first place. Now, the cries of demonstrators are the story. But we can certainly pay attention on both fronts, even if one of them requires a lot more work and emotional girding. It’s our moral imperative to pay attention or risk becoming bystanders as another dark chapter on wartime atrocities writes itself.

Democratic Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ political opponent debated with an empty podium after Willis skipped the county’s first Democratic Party debate, local reports show. 

Willis is the Georgia district attorney who brought forth the election inference case against former President Trump, charging him and 18 co-defendants with racketeering over allegations they tried to overthrow the 2020 election. Willis became embroiled in controversy when she was accused of having an “improper” relationship with the special counsel she hired, Nathan Wade. 

A judge ordered Willis last month to either remove herself from the case or fire Wade, with Wade ultimately resigning. 

The Fulton County Democratic Party held its first primary debate on Sunday, but Willis was a no-show, leaving her political opponent to take the stage alone, where he criticized his fellow Democrat for hiring a romantic partner for the high-level case. 

ERIC TRUMP WARNS BRAGG, WILLIS ‘WANT TO TORTURE MY FATHER’ BUT NO ONE ‘IS BELIEVING IT’

“That issue is important to us in Fulton County and a lot of people across the country,” Smith said on the stage, Fox 5 reported. 

​​”When you pay one attorney nearly $1 million to handle one case, that leaves the rest of us vulnerable. That hurts everyone in Fulton County,” he said.

FANI WILLIS SHOULD FACE GAG ORDER IN TRUMP ELECTION CASE, SAYS LEGAL ANALYST

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis testifies during a hearing in the case of the State of Georgia v. Donald John Trump at the Fulton County Courthouse on Feb. 15, 2024 in Atlanta. (Alyssa Pointer/Getty Images)

Smith did not take issue with Willis prosecuting Trump or the case itself, instead saying Willis has “to do things differently.”

Willis did not attend the debate event, which was sponsored by the Atlanta Press Club, to co-host the second annual “Self Care Fair” with an Atlanta city councilwoman in honor of Crime Victims’ Rights Week. Willis is also focusing on the continued prosecution of Trump, Fox 5 also cited as to why she was not present for the debate. 

AFTER JUDGE’S SCOLDING FOR PLAYING ‘RACE CARD,’ FANI WILLIS SAYS SHE’LL ‘TALK ABOUT IT ANYWAY’

Fox News Digital reached out to Willis’ media team for additional comment on the matter but did not immediately receive a response. 

Willis and Smith will face off in the Democratic primary on May 28. Despite the controversy surrounding the Trump case, local polling shows Willis with strong leads over Smith, Fox 5 reported.  

Special prosecutor Nathan Wade sits in court during a hearing in the case of the State of Georgia v. Donald John Trump at the Fulton County Courthouse on March 1, 2024 in Atlanta. (Alex Slitz-Pool/Getty Images)

The Democratic champion of the primary will compete against a Republican challenger on Nov. 5. 

JUDGE IN GEORGIA SLAMS FANI WILLIS’ ‘IMPROPER’ CHURCH SPEECH, ‘PLAYING THE RACE CARD’

Willis and Wade both admitted to the affair amid testimony on the matter, but said they only made their relationship official in 2022, after charges were brought against defendants in the Trump case. Witnesses in the case, however, alleged the pair began their relationship before 2022. 

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis brought forth the election inference case against former President Trump. (SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee said last month that there was a “significant appearance of impropriety that infects the current structure of the prosecution team,” but did not find an “actual conflict of interest in this case through her personal relationship and recurring travels with her lead prosecutor.” McAfee ruled that either Willis step aside from the case or Wade be fired. Wade resigned last month. 

JUDGE RULES FANI WILLIS MUST STEP ASIDE FROM TRUMP CASE OR FIRE SPECIAL PROSECUTOR NATHAN WADE

Scott McAfee, Fulton County superior court judge, at the Fulton County Courthouse in Atlanta on Thursday, Feb. 15, 2024. (Photographer: Alyssa Pointer/Reuters/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Willis has brushed off criticisms of her affair with Wade, touting herself late last month as the only district attorney with the “courage” to prosecute Trump. 

TRUMP BLASTS FULTON COUNTY PROSECUTOR FANI WILLIS AFTER ROMANTIC PARTNER ALLEGATIONS: ‘TOTALLY COMPROMISED’

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis looks on during a hearing in the case of the State of Georgia v. Donald John Trump at the Fulton County Courthouse on March 1, 2024, in Atlanta. (Alex Slitz-Pool/Getty Images)

“There’s one district attorney in the state – and really around the country – that has had the courage to do this, and she continues to do it,” Willis told FOX 5 Atlanta last month. “The case landed in Fulton County, not by anything that I did, but by the actions of others, and when a case lands in my jurisdiction, I’m going to prosecute it, and that’s the end of that.” 

Trump, meanwhile, has slammed the case as a “witch hunt” that is led by a “totally compromised” district attorney.