Columbia’s confrontation with antisemitism escalates amid protests
April 19, 2024
Protests make things happen – this has been the call of the student activists for many years now. And they’re right too – but perhaps not in the manner they expect or desire.
Outside pressure seems to have forced Columbia administrators to respond to complaints of antisemitism on their campus and led to the removal of student and non-student pro-Hamas protesters.
The president of Columbia, Minouche Shafik, was called to Congress to defend her inaction against antisemitism on her campus. This follows the hearing in December, during which three Ivy League Presidents were asked to explain themselves. Two of them have now left their jobs and the third is keeping very quiet indeed. We even helped Claudine Gay, of Harvard, move as a result.
The problem is that Columbia loves Hamas. Or, perhaps, enough of the students do that it makes the campus unsafe for Jewish students – that’s antisemitism. And Shafik and the administration are not doing enough about it. Thus the Congressional hearing.
When people’s comfortable jobs are threatened, they react. Which Shafik has done.
More than 100 students have been arrested after police cleared a camp of pro-Palestinian protesters at Columbia University in New York.
The university’s president said that the “extraordinary step” came after multiple warnings and was necessary to provide a safe environment.
Among the participants in the protest was Minnesota politician Ilhan Omar’s daughter, who has been suspended.
Many of those arrested – like Hirsi, Omar’s daughter – were not even students at Columbia University. Imagine what it’s like to have non-student protestors from off-campus threatening your sense of security?
So, the arrests, the clearing of the campsite, and the demonstration, these are good things. This is also making the usual suspects very upset, which is also good:
The day before her administration asked the New York police department to storm their campus and arrest their students, Minouche Shafik, the Columbia University president, testified before Congress, saying that she wanted her university to be a safe and welcoming environment for everyone. But Shafik, who was called to testify after missing a hearing last year where the presidents of Penn and Harvard were each grilled on their insufficient hostility to pro-Palestinian students, appeared eager to please the Republican-controlled committee. The Penn and Harvard presidents who had testified each lost their jobs soon thereafter; Shafik clearly entered the hearing room determined to keep her own.
Exactly, Shafik wants to keep her job. That’s why she’s doing something about this. Because of the pressure that we – and others – are putting on her. It means she has to do something to keep her job, this is why pressure works. People with high-paid jobs would like to keep them, and the risk of losing that position and income forces them into action.
This isn’t enough of course:
Dr. Shafik’s message arrived as swarms of New York City police officers, clad in riot gear and bearing zip ties, marched on the encampment of about 50 tents that had sprung up earlier in the week. On Thursday, protesters clutched Palestinian flags, demonstrators sat huddled on the ground and a thicket of onlookers kept watch as officers bore down on tents in the zone that had styled itself as the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment.”
“Since you have refused to disperse, you will now be placed under arrest for trespassing,” a man repeatedly called through a loudspeaker.
The reason it’s not enough is that it shouldn’t be necessary for us, or anyone else, to work to force campus administrations to protect their own students. That should be their job, priority one, something they do naturally, without being forced into it.
So, while pressure has worked, partially at least, we’re not finished yet. Keep up the pressure and maybe, in time, we’ll get college Presidents who do their job unforced.