- 23 Apr 2024 00:45
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Good to see this spreading not only to other universities but also to the university staff.
A huge crowd of faculty members who teach at Columbia University in New York held a mass walk-out on Monday afternoon to protest the institution having called police to arrest students at a pro-Palestinian encampment protest last week.
Hundreds of members of the teaching cohort at Columbia walked out in solidarity with the students who were arrested by the New York police department last week and also suspended by the university.
The solidarity protest came as students put protest tents back up in the middle of campus on Monday after they were torn down last week when more than 100 arrests were made.
The university on Monday morning announced that classes would be held remotely after further days of unrest on the New York campus, following the arrest of pro-Palestinian protesters there last week.
With tensions rising further across many US university campuses, police officers also began arresting pro-Palestinian protesters at Yale University on Monday.
More than 45 protesters, including some students, were arrested, according to Yale Daily News, the university’s paper.
Students there have been on hunger strike and protesters are calling for universities to back a ceasefire in Gaza and for their institutions to divest from companies with ties to Israel.
Doug Emhoff, the husband of the vice-president, Kamala Harris, who is Jewish, weighed in on X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday evening, posting: “No student should live in fear on campus. The antisemitism and hate toward Jews, including threats of violence, that we are witnessing is unconscionable.”
On Monday, Columbia’s president, Nemat Minouche Shafik, said that school leaders would be convening to discuss the “crisis”, in addition to implementing virtual classes, NBC News reported.
As well as condemning student protests, Shafik claimed that antisemitic language and intimidating and harassing behavior towards Jewish students had taken place on campus recently.
“The decibel of our disagreements has only increased in recent days. These tensions have been exploited and amplified by individuals who are not affiliated with Columbia who have come to campus to pursue their own agendas,” Shafik said. “We need a reset.”
Student demonstrators have denied accusations that their protests are antisemitic, blaming “inflammatory individuals who do not represent us” and describing the protests as peaceful and inclusive.
“We firmly reject any form of hate or bigotry and stand vigilant against non-students attempting to disrupt the solidarity being forged amount students – Palestinian, Muslim, Arab, Jewish, Black, and pro-Palestinian classmates and colleagues who represent the full diversity of our country,” read a statement from student organizers posted to Instagram.
A delegation of three US lawmakers are traveling to Columbia’s campus on Monday, Axios reported.
The Democratic representatives Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, Dan Goldman of New York, and Jared Moskowitz of Florida will meet with Jewish students at Columbia and speak at the university.
Tensions are high at Columbia after more than 100 protesters were arrested on Thursday after Shafik instructed New York police to break up a student-led protest. Students had pitched tents to form a makeshift encampment as apart of a pro-Palestinian demonstration.
Scores of students were also suspended, including Isra Hirsi, the daughter of the Minnesota Democratic representative Ilhan Omar.
Shafik’s decision has been swiftly condemned by students, professors and politicians, who called the arrest and suspension of students unwarranted and a violation of free speech on campus.
The Columbia and Barnard chapters of the American Association of University Professors decried Shafik’s crackdowns on protests in a joint statement released on Friday.
“We are shocked at her failure to mount any defense of the free inquiry central to the educational mission of a university in a democratic society and at her willingness to appease legislators seeking to interfere in university affairs,” the chapters said, adding that Shafik invoked a “unilateral and wildly disproportionate punishment [for] peacefully protesting students”.
Political leaders of both parties condemned the leadership of Columbia University on Monday, as protests against Israel’s war on Gaza spread to campuses across the country.
“While every American has the right to peaceful protest, calls for violence and physical intimidation targeting Jewish students and the Jewish community are blatantly antisemitic, unconscionable, and dangerous,” said the statement from Andrew Bates, deputy White House press secretary.
In a separate statement for Passover, which starts on Monday, Joe Biden denounced “blatant antisemitism” on college campuses.
“Even in recent days, we’ve seen harassment and calls for violence against Jews,” Biden said in a lengthy message released on Sunday. “This blatant antisemitism is reprehensible and dangerous – and it has absolutely no place on college campuses, or anywhere in our country.”
“I condemn the antisemitic protests,” Biden told reporters on Monday, after an event marking Earth Day at the Prince William forest park in Triangle, Virginia. “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.”
Speaking before Biden at the Virginia event, the progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, a Democrat of New York, appeared to reference the campus demonstrations in her remarks.
“It is especially important that we remember the power of young people shaping this country today of all days,” she said.
Fellow progressive US representatives Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan also called out punishments against Hirsi and other student protesters, the Hill reported.
Omar said in a post to X that university protests were being “co-opted and made to look bad so police and public leaders would shut them down”, similar to other movements in the past.
“The Columbia protesters have made clear their demands and want their school not to be complacent in the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Public officials and media making this about anything else are inflaming the situation and need to bring calmness and sanity back,” she added.
In separate post, Omar called on attention to remain on the “genocide in Gaza” as tensions remain high on Columbia’s campus.
“Every student deserves to be safe,” the New York governor Kathy Hochul said, after convening a meeting with university administrators, city officials and law enforcement at Columbia on Monday morning. Later on Monday, a group of Jewish House Democrats met with Jewish students at Columbia.
“While the leadership of Columbia may be failing you, we will not,” Josh Gottheimer, a Democratic congressman of New Jersey, said during a press conference from the campus. If Columbia fails to keep Jewish students safe, Gottheimer warned that the university’s leadership would “pay the price”.
Congressman Dan Goldman, a New York Democrat, said what Jewish students told him they had witnessed was “unacceptable at an academic institution of learning”.
Other US colleges and universities have announced extreme measures to punish students who participate in peaceful protests supporting Palestine.
The University of Michigan announced that it would draft new rules that will punish disruptive behavior after students held a protest during the university’s convocation ceremony on Sunday, the New York Times reported.
Students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Emerson College, both in the Boston area, have started encampment protests inspired by the demonstration at Columbia, CBS News reported. Videos on X showed students at New York University (NYU) in Manhattan erecting a new encampment on their campus, and at the University of North Carolina.
NYU’s office of Global Campus Safety ordered students to clear their encampments by 4.00pm on Monday after officials allegedly witnessed “disorderly, disruptive and antagonizing behavior” as additional protesters attempted to participate in the demonstrations.
“You will need to clear the plaza by 4.00pm. If you leave now, no one will face any consequences for today’s actions – no discipline, no police,” according to a post to X from the university.
Prahlad Iyengar, an MIT graduate student studying electrical engineering, was among about two dozen students who set up an encampment of more than a dozen tents on campus on Sunday evening to call for a ceasefire and to protest what they describe as MIT’s “complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.”
“MIT has not even called for a ceasefire, and that’s a demand we have for sure,” he said.
Back at Columbia, Nicholas Baum, a 19-year-old Jewish freshman who lives in a Jewish theological seminary building two blocks from Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus, told the Associated Press that protesters over the weekend were “calling for Hamas to blow away Tel Aviv and Israel”. He said some of the protesters shouting antisemitic slurs were not students but that Jewish students were scared.
“There’s been so much vilification of Zionism, and it has spilled over into the vilification of Judaism,” he said.
However, many Jewish students have joined the very diverse protests on Columbia’s campus.
Graduations in the coming weeks are likely to be disrupted and colleges are rethinking how they will hold ceremonies and who can speak at them.
In her statement on Monday, Shafik said the Middle East conflict was terrible and that she understood that many are experiencing deep moral distress.
“But we cannot have one group dictate terms and attempt to disrupt important milestones like graduation to advance their point of view,” Shafik wrote.
The developments came hours before the Monday evening start of the Jewish holiday of Passover.
Good to see this spreading not only to other universities but also to the university staff.
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