To understand broad trends, it can often be helpful to dig into a particular case. With respect to the tumult over the encampments protesting the US-backed Israeli offensive in Gaza, it would be hard to find a more illuminating example than Columbia University. Here, we may observe students’ sincere concern for the least among us, on one hand, and their ambitious social climbing, on the other. Here, we can clearly recognize elite institutions’ deep commitment to sterile forms of activism—and we can readily see how identitarian and safetyist approaches to “social justice” are weaponized in the service of the status quo. At Columbia, we can most readily perceive the jarring dissonance between the spectacle of unrest over Gaza and the realities of the conflict that has been overshadowed by the spectacle.
But let’s start with some basic facts.
On April 17, Columbia’s president, Nemat “Minouche” Shafik, appeared before the US House of Representatives to testify about the prevalence and nature of anti-Semitism on campus. Eager to avoid the fate of her peers at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, Shafik kept her head down and assented to assertions that Columbia, and universities writ large, are awash in Jew-hatred, and that Columbia wasn’t doing enough to fight it. Over the course of the three-hour hearing, she paid comparatively little attention to pro-Palestine students who have faced assaults, doxxing, and alleged harassment—including by professors—under her watch. She also didn’t voice any objection when the term “intifada” was equated with hate speech, despite knowing well—as a native Arabic speaker born in Egypt—that the term is used broadly for mass uprisings in many contexts; it’s how the Warsaw Uprising is described in Arabic.
Unlike her peers at MIT, Harvard, and the University of Pennsylvania, Shafik offered few appeals to academic freedom and made little mention of the role of universities as places where people must confront difficult ideas and disagreeable views. Instead, she proudly touted her suspension of Jewish Voice for Peace and other campus groups and her wider crackdown against unsanctioned speech. At one point in the hearing, she even vowed to remove Joseph Massad, a tenured professor who had made controversial statements, from a leadership post, without regard for due process.
As the president was debasing herself in Washington, Columbia students set up an encampment to host demonstrations against the war. Although the NYPD asserted on April 18 that the protests were nonviolent and non-harassing, and that the students complied with all instructions, Shafik upon returning to New York called the cops, who showed up in riot gear to break up the encampment immediately, leading to the arrest of more than 100 students.
Despite Shafik’s servile testimony and the immediate crackdown, Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York and other GOP leaders called for her resignation. After all, the president had testified that under her leadership, Columbia had become an anti-Semitic hellscape. The encampments and heavy-handed response were all the proof lawmakers needed that the situation wasn’t under control. And indeed, rather than ending the protests, the clampdown at Columbia spurred a wave of solidarity encampments at other elite universities in the United State and abroad—an “Ivy League Intifada.”
It wasn’t just peer institutions that got in on the action: A new, even larger, encampment quickly returned to Columbia as well. Given how badly her previous response had backfired, Shafik vowed not to involve the NYPD with dismantling this encampment, pledging to negotiate with the protesters for an amicable resolution instead.
However, amid concerns about the university putting its best face forward with graduation fast approaching, the negotiations collapsed, and Shafik announced unequivocally that the university “will not divest from Israel.” Her administration then began trying to identify and suspend participants in the encampments; many students abandoned the protest at this point.
Others responded to this escalation by taking their civil disobedience to the next level. A contingent of students broke into and occupied Hamilton Hall in an overt attempt to evoke the 1968 anti-Vietnam protests—a history that Columbia’s leadership often celebrates. The occupiers received the same type of reception as their predecessors. Shafik immediately called upon the NYPD to clear out all vestiges of the encampment and to retain a strong presence on campus through graduation. The police showed up in force, again in full riot gear, guns drawn. Professional journalists were largely prohibited from covering the raid, on penalty of arrest, and student journalists were likewise threatened if they left Pulitzer Hall (although they still did one hell of a job reporting on the clampdown, all the same). Despite the communication blackout, surfaced videos show that although the police weren’t met with violence, they meted out plenty of it; one officer even discharged his weapon (fortunately, failing to hit anyone).
This authoritarian response likewise failed to break the will of demonstrators. If anything, it only boosted the students’ commitment to resisting Columbia’s administration. For instance, many students, barred from protesting on campus, have carried out demonstrations in front of trustees’ homes, even as Shafik herself has been publicly shamed when spotted by outraged students.
In recognition of the reality that erstwhile demonstrators remain highly committed to exerting pressure on Columbia, the university remains locked down, and all classes have been moved online. The commencement ceremony Shafik was so eager to protect has been canceled, because it’s clear that attending students would almost certainly use the event to engage in further activism—disruptions she is unwilling, and perhaps unable, to countenance.
posted by f. sheikh