President Shafik, one week ago, you authorized
the New York Police Department to clear Columbia’s South Lawn of
student protesters. We watched police officers zip-tie and arrest 108 of
our friends, classmates, and coworkers. In response, students have
mobilized in the hundreds at Columbia and campuses across the country,
defending their right to peaceful protest for divestment from Israel.
Now, police battalions surround campus, students enter and exit through
security checkpoints, NYPD correctional buses circle the block,
helicopters drone overhead, reporters probe students for front-page
quotes, and communication from the administration has all but
disappeared—with the exception, of course, of ominous late-night emails.
Columbia
has become a national spectacle. Instead of defending your students’
right to free expression or engaging publicly with activist
organizations, you and other administrators are scrambling to save
face—granting campus access to select media outlets, the founder of a hate group that is as rabidly Islamophobic as it is antisemitic,
and the occasional opportunistic politician—while abandoning the rest
of campus. As tensions escalate here and elsewhere—Yale University,
Harvard University, New York University, University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill, University of Michigan, and Brown University, to name a
few—we question whether you understand the impact of what you have done.
President Shafik, this is your legacy: a president more focused on the
brand of your University than the safety of your students and their
demands for justice.
In our April 18 staff editorial,
we asked, “What is the role of the University if not to advocate
for—and protect—its students?” Now, we ask, “Columbia administration,
what is your end goal?” President Shafik, you have made it abundantly
clear that your priorities lie with Columbia’s image and assets, not
with its students. We have witnessed the total annihilation of Columbia
as the advertised collegiate beacon of free speech, expression, and the
right to protest. We have witnessed your capitulation to harmful media
representation and opportunistic Republicans whose aim, it seems, is to
put the values of a liberal education on trial. We have witnessed House
Speaker Mike Johnson threatening intervention from the National Guard from the steps of Low Library and a congressman call for withholding financial aid
from protesters in a press conference outside Columbia’s gates. Your
misguided allegiances and failure to negotiate effectively have
encouraged an environment where individuals are emboldened to climb the
116th Street gates, wave the flag of self-proclaimed terrorist group
Lehi, and verbally harass students—how did we get here?
While
you remain selective in your care for your students’ safety, they
remain steadfast in their commitment to their community. In response to
your identification of student protesters as a “clear and present
danger”—an assessment NYPD Chief John Chell distinguished
from the NYPD’s perspective—thousands of us, along with faculty and
guests from diverse cultural and religious backgrounds, have organized
to uplift the spirit of the encampment. When the University fails to
provide consistent community values,
it is the true community of students who come together to fill that
gap. Protesters have led teach-ins and assembly meetings, introduced and
reinforced community guidelines, and manifested their own vision of
meaningful University life. The students, not the administrators, have
stepped up to protect one another from the media’s eagerness to “expose”
the demonstration as antisemitic, anti-American, or something else
entirely irrelevant to Columbia University Apartheid Divest’s clear demands.
-- editorial board, "President Shafik, this is your legacy" (THE COLUMBIA SPECTATOR).