The Crisis on Columbia University's Campus
For the first time since 1968, police were called onto campus to break up a protest. It solved nothing.
For the past week plus, I have been thinking a lot about what is happening at Columbia University and what has happened to Columbia University.
I teach part-time in the spring term at the Graduate School of Journalism, where I went many years ago. The east-facing window of the Fred Friendly Room, where my class meets, provides an almost panoramic view of the campus from the imposing, domed Low Library on the left to Butler Library, with the names of Greek philosophers etched into its facade, on the right. We look straight down on the walkway that spans the campus and the dual lawns that are right in front of Butler.
For me, the Columbia campus has always felt like an oasis offering sanctuary against the tumult and intensity of New York City. I live ten blocks away and, even before I taught there, I would sometimes walk through campus just to relax. At its best, a college campus should be a haven. Columbia used to be a haven. It isn't anymore.
As I write this - and things could change quickly - the western lawn is filled with colorful tents and occupied by dozens of pro-Palestinian protestors. They've been there a week ever since they were removed from the east lawn by police.
On the day the Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson and several colleagues visited campus (Wednesday, April 24), I was on campus to see things for myself. It was quiet (Johnson hadn't appeared yet). I wandered from the steps of Low Library where a huge throng of media was assembled, awaiting Johnson, to the tent encampment. I stood there, just looking and wondering. A woman with a French accent asked me to move. I was blocking her camera which was aimed at the protestors. Attached to the top of her video camera was a microphone with the label of AFP - Agence France Presse. I was annoyed but so not much that it didn’t occur to me that once upon a time, I was one of the annoying journalists asking someone to get out of the way of my camera crew.
The current pro-Palestinian encampment
The protestors were mostly young people, presumably Columbia or Barnard students, though who knows? Draped on a fence that encloses the space is a banner that read Welcome To The People's University For Palestine. Three young women wearing masks and keffiyehs spoke to what appeared to be a reporter. An older woman in a black tee shirt with the slogan Anti-Zionism Is Not Antisemitism squatted nearby shuffling a deck of placards. One proclaimed Palestine Is Everywhere. Another read . Small Palestinian flags were stuck in the hedges that border the lawn.
Affixed to a wall nearby were flyers with photos of Israeli hostages taken by Hamas terrorists on 10/7.
Posters of Israeli hostages
Palestinian flag in the hedge beside the new encampment
Members of the media swarmed the campus. Many wore that giddy expression with which I was familiar, an expression that said, "This is fun." They had nothing personally invested in any of this. It was just a workday, for some with the delicious prospect of overtime.
I left before Johnson spoke. I read later he was shouted down as he called for Shafik's resignation unless she gets the situation under control.
"My message to the students inside the campus is go back to class and stop this nonsense," Johnson said, as if the protesters cared what he thought. But, of course, they were not who he was really speaking to.
Someone yelled, "You suck, Mike!"
"Enjoy your free speech," said Johnson.
A Columbia student on campus
That night, I received the "Campus Update" email from the administration with an announcement from President Shafik that there was progress being made in negotiations with representatives of the student protesters.
"Student protestors have taken steps to make the encampment welcome to all and have prohibited discriminatory or harassing language," the statement said. The latter was a reference to Jewish students who have been subjected to verbal abuse from protestors, including last weekend people shouting at them, "Go back to Poland!" (a reference to Auschwitz?) and worse.
I arrived early for my class the next day. Once again, I had to show my Columbia ID at the two entrances manned by security and NYPD officers. Once again, it was quiet. I watched a small group of students plant tiny Israeli flags in a patch of grass beside the walkway that bisects campus. One of them eyed me with what seemed like suspicion. I wasn't offended. Another student who was poking a flag into the grass, looked up at me, smiled and said, "Hi."
Student placing Israeli flags
I didn't watch Shafik's testimony before a House committee last week. I have only read news accounts and heard excerpts. It sounds like it did not go well. The Republicans were eager to score political points by grilling her in tones of righteous indignation. Shafik had prepared assiduously for this appearance to try to avoid suffering the same fate as her counterparts at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. They lost their jobs after their weirdly equivocal responses to the question whether a student calling for the genocide of Jews would violate school policy. Shafik was ready for that question. She said that would, in fact, be a violation. She acknowledged that there have been episodes of antisemitism on campus. She defended free speech but said the school "cannot and should not tolerate abuse of this privilege." Of course, none of this spared her the grilling from Republicans on the panel since whatever she said was not going to satisfy them.
The next day, Shafik declared that the newly erected encampment of pro-Palestinian protestors "and related disruptions pose a clear and present danger." It was not clear to me what that danger was. After what she had told the congressional committee, she may have figured she had to get tough. That would necessarily mean calling in the police.
When I arrived that morning for class that day - April 18 - New York City police officers were stationed around the perimeter of the main campus. Early that afternoon, I walked past the encampment, leaving campus via the east gate to get a smoothie at a nearby deli. At 114th Street and Amsterdam, I noticed a large number of police officers in riot gear. They were pulling on helmets and adjusting their chin straps and faceguards. It didn't look like a drill.
Original encampment before arrests
I texted my co-teacher and students: “keep an eye out the window. I passed a lot of people looking like they might be preparing to move onto campus. Seems unlikely but you never know.”
I didn’t really believe that the university would authorize such a thing. Police hadn’t been called onto Columbia’s campus since the 1968 student protests over the Vietnam War and the planned construction of a gym in Morningside Park in Harlem. That had not gone well. Hundreds were arrested in violent clashes with police and were suspended from school. One police officer was permanently disabled in the melee. Would the Columbia administration really risk something like that again? I didn't believe so. Unlike in 1968, no school buildings have been occupied. Classes are continuing, although students were given the option of joining remotely. The encampment had been up only a couple of days and, as far as I knew, there had been no effort by the administration to engage with the protestors to negotiate its removal.
I was almost back to the Journalism Building when I heard the first announcements coming from loudspeakers warning that the police would begin making arrests if the encampment wasn't dismantled and the crowd dispersed. Obviously, that wasn't going to happen.
Police making arrests on April 18
The police began arresting protestors, more than 100, in all. It all happened relatively calmly, or at least without violence. University employees dismantled the tents. The next day, the tents were back in the adjacent lawn.
"[Universities] make good targets because of their abiding vulnerability: They can't deal with coercion, including nonviolent disobedience. Either they overreact, giving protestors a new cause and more allies (this happened in 1968, and again last week at Columbia), or they yield, giving the protestors a victory and inviting the next round of disruption ," George Packer wrote in The Atlantic. "This is why Columbia's president, Minouche Shafik, no matter what she does, finds herself hammered from the right by Republican politicians and from the left by her own faculty and students, unable to move without losing more ground. Her detractors know that they have her trapped...."
List of protestor demands
Earlier this week, Shafik threatened to act again if the tents weren't gone within 48 hours, presumably meaning she would call in police again. But yesterday, university administration officials announced that "to bring back the NYPD at this time would be counterproductive, further inflaming what is happening on campus. and drawing thousands to our doorstep who would threaten our community." Which was exactly what happened after the arrests last week.
I recalled what a friend who was a New York City police officer in the 1970s once told me. He said when he was a rookie cop, a veteran at his precinct once told him, "The greatest power you have as a cop is the power to decide not to arrest someone."
On Friday, the university announced that it has banned from campus a student activist who posted on social media that "Zionists don't deserve to live." At a university disciplinary hearing, he said, "Be grateful that I'm not just going out and murdering Zionists." The student apologized Friday in a social media post. I don't know whether being banned from campus is the same as being suspended. It doesn't sound like it. I find it hard to believe that if, say, a white student said such a thing about Black people he would not immediately face harsher punishment than not being allowed to come to school.
Campus security and NYPD posted at entry to campus. Only faculty and students are allowed in.
I have no idea how or when this crisis will be resolved. Even if the tents come down, graduation on May 15 - if it is held; USC just called off its commencement - would be a tempting target for renewed protests. There are no easy answers. There may not be any difficult answers, either.
[All photos by Ron Claiborne]
“I was one of the annoying journalists asking someone to get out of the way of my camera crew.”
This was never my experience, Shipmate!!
I like what you write. Makes sense.