We have updated our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for Eurasia Group and its affiliates, including GZERO Media, to clarify the types of data we collect, how we collect it, how we use data and with whom we share data. By using our website you consent to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, including the transfer of your personal data to the United States from your country of residence, and our use of cookies described in our Cookie Policy.
{{ subpage.title }}
Crisis at Columbia: Protests and arrests bring chaos to campus
Blankets, tents, Palestinian flags, signs, and scores of tired students were strewn across the South Lawn of the university's Manhattan campus. The protesters were camped there to demand Columbia’s divestment from companies with ties to Israel – but they knew they were playing a game of chicken. The night before, university administrators had warned that remaining in their “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” would result in suspensions and possible arrests. Still, they decided to stay, and some 34 hours later, police in riot gear arrived. Organizers yelled “phones out” as NYPD officers reached for their zip ties.
“I remember the collective fear, like everyone was having the same thought: ‘We’re really on our own,’” says Izel Pineda, a Barnard senior who delivered supplies to the encampment minutes before police arrived.
_______
Chaos at Columbia University this past week started with the encampment being erected hours before President Nemat Shafik’s congressional testimony on antisemitism on Wednesday. Shafik told Congress about last autumn’s protests on campus following the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas militants and about the incidents of antisemitism that had left many Jewish students on campus afraid to leave their dorms or attend class. She explained that the school had made progress in disciplining students, enforcing stricter protest policies, and investigating some professors.
But as she spoke, that progress began to unravel, leading to the Thursday arrests of 108 students – all of whom have been suspended and kicked off campus – and subsequent protests by students and faculty across the ideological divide. Many of the young people, especially Jews, fear for their safety, while professors are wondering if their jobs are at risk. The growing demonstrations, and the threat of further arrests, have only worked to inflame tensions – so much so that the only thing all sides agree on is that the campus is unraveling into distrust, dysfunction, and fear.
Students hold hands and circle the lawns in solidarity with the pro-Palestine protesters.Will Hull
Breeding mistrust and anxiety
On Wednesday, Shafik faced three hours of questioning before the Republican-led Committee on Education and the Workforce. Questions focused on how administrators were protecting Jewish and pro-Israel students on campus amid frequent pro-Palestinian protests.
Shafik focused her testimony on disciplinary matters, noting the increased police presence, stricter policies, and the November suspension of the campus’s two main pro-Palestine student groups for not following the rules.
The committee honed in on individual Columbia professors like Joseph Massad, who described Hamas’ temporary takeover of Israeli settlements as a “stunning victory” in a highly controversial article after the Oct. 7 attack. Shafik told Congress that Massad was under internal investigation – something the professor himself had not known.
Shafik’s answers seemed to satisfy the committee. But on campus, students and faculty are far from satisfied – and the resulting demonstrations, some in solidarity with the arrested students, and some pro-Israeli versus pro-Palestinian protests, are again making campus feel more like a battleground than a safe space for learning.
“[Jewish students] appreciate all the concern about our safety, but the congressional hearing only further cleaves apart our campus and escalates tensions,” says Alina Kreynovich, a junior at Columbia’s School of General Studies.
Defying to voice dissent
After police cleared the encampment with their arrests on Thursday, other protesters reorganized on the adjacent lawn, and over 100 students began a sit-in and prepared for a second round of arrests. Organizers told them what to do if detained, wrote lawyers’ phone numbers on their arms, and voted to expand their demands beyond divestment, adding amnesty for the suspended students to their list.
Presidential candidate and progressive activist Cornel West witnessed Thursday’s arrests as he sat cross-legged among the students nearby. “Shame on the Columbia University administrators,” he said. “It's very important to protect every student.”
Many students joined the demonstrations because of the police action. “I think a lot of us came out here because of the arrests,” said a junior at Columbia College who requested anonymity. “Students shouldn’t be arrested and suspended for peacefully protesting on campus.”
Pro-Israel protesters carrying Israeli and American flags gathered together nearby holding pictures of hostages taken by Hamas and singing “God Bless America.”
Fears of violence rise
Yoseph Haddad, an Arab-Israeli journalist who was scheduled to speak at Columbia’s chapter of Students Supporting Israel, was assaulted by a protester while trying to enter campus. A man was attacked as he held a ripped, red-stained, Israeli flag. Multiple Jewish students said they were disturbed to see protesters defacing posters of hostages on the street.
Danny Gold, a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia’s Jewish Theological Seminary, said he doesn’t feel like protesters recognize how many students at Columbia – where 22.5% of undergraduates and 15.5% of graduate students are Jewish – have connections to people who were killed or kidnapped by Hamas. “One of my students has two cousins who were hostages. How does that make him feel seeing these protests where people deface hostage posters?”
Another student told me he felt like many of the protest chants were intimidating for Jewish students. “A lot of us have family in Israel, and hearing a chant like ‘from the river to the sea’ – that doesn’t call for a regime change, which would be an acceptable criticism of Israel, but for the total annihilation of the state – is frankly terrifying to many students who feel like it is a safe place for them.”
Students on both sides say they are afraid — of the university, which they believe has done too much or too little to crack down on the protests, and above all, of each other.
“It was crazy how quickly the community just turned upside down in terms of how we treat each other,” said Noa Fey, who has been a victim of bullying, online and on campus, after sharing her thoughts about the right to self-determination of both Israel and Palestine. “I’ve lost friends,” she said. “I barely made it out of the semester academically and emotionally.”
Faculty members join the fray
Many professors fear that free speech and academic freedom are under attack on campus. They are also concerned about being investigated by the university without their knowledge.
On Thursday evening, faculty members held a press conference outside of the President’s House. “The attack on students today violates fundamentally a core component of academic life,” said Joseph Howley, a classics professor. “This has not happened since 1968. And in the last 50 years, Columbia has been extremely careful about these extreme measures, and that care was violated today.”
As of the weekend, the protests have only grown, faculty members are boycotting graduation, and Jewish students increasingly still feel unsafe on campus.
“This national attention has only fueled the fringes of Columbia’s community and invites the entire country into our emotionally exhausted campus. If anything, the campus is less safe than ever,” says Kreynovich.
Hard Numbers: Colombia ceasefire, Barbie ban, Libyan crude concerns, Holland vs. Smartphones
9: Ken, do something! Barbie has managed to wade into the choppy waters of geopolitics, as Vietnam has banned the new Warner Bros’s film because a scene shows a map reflecting China’s side of a territorial dispute with Vietnam. At issue is the infamous “nine-dash line,” which Beijing uses on maps of the South China Sea and which takes in islands and waters that at least half a dozen other countries dispute. International arbitration deemed the nine-dasher illegitimate in 2016 — but Beijing is unmoved.
1.2 million: Libya’s output of 1.2 million barrels of oil per day is in peril amid escalating disputes over revenue-sharing between the divided country’s rival power centers. Most production is located in the East, controlled by General Khalifa Haftar, a warlord backed by Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Russia. But revenues are clocked and distributed by the UN-recognized government in Tripoli. Haftar says a fair agreement has to be reached within two months or he’ll launch a fresh offensive.
0: Under a new Dutch government rule that takes effect next year, schools will allow zero smartphones, tablets, or similar devices in classrooms. “Mobile phones are intertwined with our lives,” said the education ministry, “[but] they do not belong in the classroom.” Fair enough, Dutch students probably shouldn’t be reading GZERO Daily during class anyway. See you at lunchtime!
What We're Watching: Colombian presidential frontrunner, trouble in Corsica
Left-winger Petro is Colombia’s man to beat
Gustavo Petro ran the table in Sunday’s presidential primaries, drawing more votes from his Historic Pact Party’s voters alone than the winning candidates of the other two party primaries combined. In the May 29 first-round general vote Petro, a one-time guerrilla and former mayor of Bogotá, will face off against a bevy of at least five candidates, the strongest of whom include two former mayors of Medellín, the centrist Sergio Fajardo and right-winger Federico Gutierrez. But having surpassed 40 percent in recent polls, Petro could be on track to win outright in the first round. If he did, it would be a political earthquake in a country where decades of war with Marxist guerrillas had long kept national politics firmly on the center right. Petro has called for higher taxes on the wealthiest Colombians, ambitious land reform to help peasant farmers, and wants to shutter the country’s oil industry, which accounts for half of all export revenue. The country’s traditional political and business interests are naturally alarmed — so buckle up for what will be an exceedingly nasty campaign homestretch in South America’s third-largest economy and a major US ally.