Students held the upper hand yesterday in the first big protest of the school year at Columbia. Acting president Claire Shipman was forced to call the NYPD to clear a pro-Palestinian occupation of Butler Library, and at least two people were carried out on stretchers among 75 arrested. Hundreds of students then staged angry protests at both ends of 114th Street, cursing the officers who pushed them off the blocked streets and onto the sidewalk. Students on Amsterdam then made an end run down to 111th Street, turned right, and marched up the middle of Broadway with exhausted police bringing up the rear.
The scene was in sharp contrast to last year's bust at Hamilton Hall, carried out by an army of cops who blocked off the entire campus, clambered into Hamilton as if it were a medieval fortress under siege, and then occupied the university for the rest of the academic year.
This year, things are different.
Shipman makes no sense when she claims that non-Columbia people were among the occupiers of Butler Library: there's no way anyone gets onto the locked-down campus without a Columbia ID. The chief security guard at 116th Street last night described Shipman's claim as "false information."
The students clearly hold the moral high ground, alongside Mahmoud Khalil, Mohsen Mahdawi, and Kilmar Abrego Garcia, as they contend with illegal detentions by an increasingly unpopular Trump regime.
Columbia's crackdown on faculty and student speech looks cowardly in the light of Harvard's stand against government intrusion,
Israel's war crimes in Gaza justify the protests, and expose the Republican campaign against campus antisemitism as exactly what Claire Shipman originally called it: "Capitol Hill nonsense."
Shipman is out of options. With students on their high horse, another police occupation would be a bloodbath. It's too late to join Harvard's resistance. All she has left are lies --- the protesters aren't Columbians, the problem is antisemitism, ICE is nice, etc. As a former TV journalist who believes none of this nonsense, elected to make the medieval trustees look modern, Shipman's best course is to resign before they axe her. And then?
Listen up, Columbia, here is an idea that could save you:
Let the University Senate choose the next President. Let it be a president with academic stature, committed to academic freedom. Give the University back to its rightful stewards: faculty, staff, and students. Roar, Lions, Roar.
Student protesters were camped on a campus lawn again over the weekend, after taking over a big tent set up for Columbia University's Alumni Reunion.
"We're Back, Bitches!" read one sign. "While your're earning, Rafah is Burning!" said another. Students want Columbia to divest from companies aiding Israel's assault on Gaza.
Meanwhile, some faculty members and graduate teaching assistants are on a "grade strike" -- withholding grades to pressure the university to address the protesters' demands.
The campus remains on lockdown, closed to the public.
The People's Graduation: Cathedral of St. John the Divine
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Hundreds of students, faculty, parents and guests gathered at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on May 16 for a "People’s Graduation,"after Columbia University cancelled its on-campus commencement. They heard 93-year-old Reverend Herbert Daughtry urge young people to commit their lives to a great cause, and expect to sacrifice for it. Offering prayers along with Jewish and Muslim clergy, Daughtry quoted Dr, Martin Luther King Jr. ---"if you haven't found a cause for which to die, you haven't found a cause for which to live." Daughtry added, “they will call you names, but the idea of
freedom cannot be destroyed.”
Rev Herbert Daughtry Sr.
The Cathedral made
its sanctuary available to all — including students who had been arrested,
suspended, and evicted for protesting Israel’s war in Gaza. Some came to continue their protest, others
just to experience something like a college graduation. The mood was celebratory. Cathedral Dean
Patrick Malloy greeted the gathering, saying the church wanted to welcome a
full range of people and opinions. A
parade of speakers then lambasted the university for misrepresenting and
punishing the protesters — and praised the students for starting a movement
that spread around the world.
Lacking the power to hand out degrees or diplomas, the ceremony ended with a song, adapted from the biblical Book of Ruth:
“Where you go I will go
my friend,
Where you go I will go ---
Columbia University’s Nanny Police State -- cracking down on some students in order to comfort others -- collapsed and died last week. The cause was contradictions.
When Columbia president Minouche Shafik called in the NYPD to arrest more than 100 peaceful protesters because opponents said they felt "unsafe," it galvanized the university in support of the protest. The occupation mushroomed in size, doubled down on its demands, and spread to Yale, NYU and campuses across the country.
No violence or injuries have been reported, but Shafik said “students across an array of communities have conveyed fears for their safety“ amid “too many examples of intimidating and harassing behavior.” Meanwhile Shafik is being harassed and intimidated by members of Congress demanding a crackdown on campus protests. Behind it all: Big-money donors to politicians and schools.
Students, faculty and staff are protesting US and university support for Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. As of Monday their demands were for Columbia to divest from companies with ties to Israel, bar police from campus, grant amnesty to all protesters, and end seizures of land and displacement of people, “whether in Harlem, Lenapehoking or Palestine.”
Just a walk through or past the occupied lawn would let anyone know there is little to fear. It’s a different demo from 1968, when Vietnam war protests were led by fiery activists like Mark Rudd and Stokely Carmichael. This occupation is mostly female and/or non-binary, and organized co-operatively, with no hierarchy of leaders. This afternoon, in the area set aside for press interviews, all the media-trained representatives were women and most were women of color. Many were from Barnard, the Columbia women’s college which has suspended and evicted students for protesting. I interviewed a Barnard student, a third-year Psychology major, of Asian ancestry. She called Palestine a “compass” — pointing the way for all kinds of intersecting liberation movements, including feminism. The struggle, she said, is against the “violence of the patriarchy.”
Monday night, as observant Jews marked Passover in homes and dorms. about 100 students and faculty gathered on the occupied lawn for an improvised seder. Earlier I asked a group of Jewish students gathered in front of their tent if they’d seen any evidence of anti-Semitism among their fellow student protesters. They all said no.
Meanwhile, the protests were spilling over into the street outside Columbia’s gates at 115th and Broadway. Students with bullhorns inside the gates led supporters on the sidewalk in chants which inluded: “One two three four, Apartheid no more!” and “Genocide no more; “ And then — “five, six , seven, eight, Israel is a racist state.” A few feet away, separated by police barriers and cops in riot gear, a much smaller pro-Israel group called the protesters “terrorists” and “Hamas lovers,” and one woman yelled, “Go home! Go to Hell!” Police surrounded the entire campus and a police helicopter hovered noisily above.
Most of the nastiness is on the street, outside the closed campus. Recently I was walking up Broadway with a friend when a large young man wearing a Nazi-style helmet came careening down the sidewalk on a motorized scooter. As he veered past, we both heard him say “Sieg Heil!” Then there was a guy outside Columbia’s gates draped in Israeli colors, marching up and down before the pro-Palestinian crowd, with a sign advising them to behead their children.
So far, the only casualties have been the truth, twisted by both sides — the lawn, trampled by campers — and the public, which is indefinitely barred from the campus. I talked my way in as a member of the press.
The encampment covers one of Columbia’s many lawns. Across the path, workers were preparing another field for a graduation tent. Commencement comes in May, and protesters say they’ll stay put until Columbia divests. President Shafik is pleading for peace, dialogue and “respectful engagement.”
Columbia could re-arrange the seating and and let the students hold their ground. The students could agree not to disrupt the ceremonies. But can anyone hold their tongue?
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