Is Columbia in crisis?
By Gabriella Gregor Splaver / Senior Staff Photographer
This staff editorial reflects the majority view of the editorial board at the Columbia Daily Spectator. The editorial board of the Columbia Daily Spectator operates independently of the newsroom and corporate board, including the editor in chief and managing editor; staff editorials are independent of Spectator’s news coverage and coverage by other Opinion columnists and writers.
The short answer? Yes, but not in the way the House Committee on Education and the Workforce would like you to believe.
On April 17, University President Minouche Shafik became the latest in a line of leaders in higher education to testify before Congress. As part of the House probe into antisemitism on college campuses, the hearing, titled “Columbia in Crisis,” was theoretically the fruit of a bipartisan effort to combat bigotry by holding administrations across the country accountable for their handling of it. However, as evidenced by Wednesday’s hearing, the committee is clearly more concerned with vanquishing the specters of “Soviet-style education” and “left-wing academia”—lest we “be cursed by God”—than protecting Jewish students. The uncannily McCarthyite interrogation to which the Columbia delegation was subjected was disingenuous, often hostile, and conducted in bad faith. Simultaneously, Shafik and her fellow administrators were all too willing to succumb to pressure from representatives, essentially conflating pro-Palestinian campus activism with antisemitism and repeatedly condemning the words and actions of both students and faculty to appease committee members.
Throughout the committee hearings, Shafik’s responses were interrupted or talked over when Congress members did not receive the answers they wanted to hear. Perhaps, then, Shafik gained at least a minimal understanding of how countless Columbia students have felt this school year—silenced and steamrolled by administration.
The administration has failed to genuinely engage with its students, faculty, and staff as we—the Columbia community—are forced to watch our beloved University slowly unravel into a space of distrust, suppression, and fear. Only one day after her hearing, Shafik has proven to her students yet again the administration’s commitment to silencing and marginalizing its own student body.
Shafik’s authorization of the New York Police Department to enter campus and forcibly remove peaceful protesters spotlights the emptiness and duplicity of the promises she made to Congress and the Columbia community. In her opening statement to the Committee, Shafik claimed that she has always “held on to four principles”: prioritizing safety as being paramount, demonstrating “care and compassion equally to everyone,” upholding freedom of nondiscriminatory and non-abusive speech, and affirming education as the ultimate answer to antisemitism and hate. Much like the “community values” that have been hypocritically implemented by administrators, not only have Shafik’s principles been void from the very beginning of her administration’s response to events after October 7, 2023, but her response to the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” only further cements her selectivity in enforcing her “principles.” When the NYPD Strategic Response Group—which the New York Civil Liberties Union has repeatedly characterized as “notoriously violent”—is welcomed onto campus with open arms, it is Shafik who “disrupts campus life” and infringes on her supposedly paramount principle of safety. How can students, especially those of color, feel safe when their campus is flooded by a police force infested with systemic racism and armed with riot gear? Clearly, “care and compassion” are not being extended equally to everyone.
Even Shafik’s commitment to a qualified form of freedom of speech is insincere. A nonviolent protest employing rhetoric that has “historically meant different things to different people” is not making anyone unsafe—feeling uncomfortable is not the same as being unsafe. Lastly, Shafik’s proclaimed belief in the enlightening power of education similarly holds no weight. With teach-ins organized by protesters being repeatedly targeted by the administration, it is apparent that Shafik holds a narrow vision for education, only approving of it when it furthers the ideologies the administration agrees with and supports. This characterization of education is fundamentally at odds with both Shafik’s principles and Columbia’s core mission at large. Unlike her predecessor’s steadfast commitment to free speech, Shafik has demonstrated a complete lack of consistency in enforcing her principles, failing to differentiate between speech she personally opposes and speech warranting suppression. With all four of her leadership principles serving as nothing more than mere platitudes, it becomes clear what Columbia’s true crisis is.
Columbia’s crisis is not as the committee has attempted to define it—a characterization stemming from the belief that the University has become a hotbed of antisemitic thought and behavior. Rather, the crisis is rooted in a lack of genuine community engagement on the part of the administration, as well as a failure to fulfill its duty of care to all affiliates. We have witnessed the creation of countless ineffectual task forces, listening forums with lottery participation, student suspensions, inconvenient and poorly communicated gate closures, disciplinary warnings and hearings, dorm door monitoring, interim policy introductions, proud NYPD and FBI collaborations, campus militarization, and most recently, the arrest of over 108 peaceful protestors at the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment.”
The administration has ignored our countless pleas to engage meaningfully with students, opting instead to continue down a path of surveillance, oppression, and authoritarian policies. Columbia should encourage free discourse on campus, not censor marginalized voices under the guise of “safety” and protection. Shafik could attend student meetings and make concrete commitments to protect their safety. She could invigorate the anti-doxxing resource group rather than let its ineffectuality further divide students and administration. Many of these initiatives have fallen flat because they appear to be focused on creating defenses to congressional questioning rather than genuinely attempting to reconcile a broken community.
Why does a university that flaunts its “storied history” of successful student activism seek to contain and suppress student mobilization? Why is the same university that capitalizes on the legacy of Edward Said and enshrines The Wretched of the Earth into its Core Curriculum so scared to speak about decolonization in practice? It’s not just the House committee watching the administration’s every move—it’s the students, faculty, staff, and alumni who contribute to the rich legacy the University continuously lauds. It is these very student demonstrations and demonstrators that will one day be touted as examples of Columbia’s history of activism. Instead of “saying the right things” to Congress, do the right things for students.
So admin, what are you going to do? Introduce more interim policies? Send out more threatening emails to anyone adjacent to campus activism? Suspend more students until your entire student population falls into line? Or, maybe, allow your students to become stakeholders in a community into which they invest hundreds of thousands of dollars and four years of their lives?
Your students are willingly risking suspension, arrests, harassment, and internal and external threats—why do you continue to isolate yourself from those whom you allegedly seek to serve? What is the role of the University if not to advocate for—and protect—its students? It is too late to pretend to walk the tightrope of bipartisanship. President Shafik, in your own words from your email announcing student arrests, when will you “show compassion and remember the values of empathy and respect,” for the students, staff, and faculty who call on you and your administration to represent their interests? It is you and your administration who pull us apart as a community instead of drawing us together. Your explicit declaration that you “complied with the requirements of Section 444 of the University Statutes” is similarly duplicitous. While only consultation with the University Senate is officially required, the University Senate’s executive committee did “not approve the presence of NYPD on campus at this time,” again demonstrating your willingness to use the student body as collateral to justify your actions and imbue them with a false sense of democratic support.
Hundreds of campus affiliates stood witness as the NYPD disgracefully arrested over 100 of our classmates, friends, and colleagues for peacefully protesting. Similar scenes unfolded when the NYPD was previously invited onto campus over 50 years ago during the anti-war protests of 1968. History has made clear who stood on the wrong side then, and it’s clear that this is the side you are aligning yourself with now. This will be your legacy. You must confront your failure to fulfill your duty of protecting and representing your students and their concerns. Otherwise, you will further marginalize, endanger, and distance your students, indefinitely trapping Columbia in its self-inflicted crisis.
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