A statement from AAUP president Irene Mulvey:
Wednesday,
before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, President
Shafik threw academic freedom and Columbia University faculty
under the bus instead of providing what higher education and democracy
require: a robust defense of academic freedom and its essential
protection of extramural speech. While one can sympathize with the fact
that the hearing was a set-up from the get-go and
intended to generate sound bites and clickbait to serve a political
agenda, any university president worth their salt (and salary) should
stand unequivocally for free and open inquiry, especially when topics
are controversial and polarizing, and debates are
heated and messy.
This
performance was extremely disappointing, but what followed was worse:
Shafik trampled on students’ associational and free speech rights
by declaring a peaceful, outdoor protest a “clear
and present danger to the substantial functioning of the University.”
She then invoked a Columbia statute that allows external
authorities to end campus disruptions. Her decision resulted in the
NYPD arresting over 100 students occupying an outdoor lawn. Notably, the
statute requires consultation involving the University Senate’s
Executive Committee which does not appear to have occurred,
according
to the executive committee’s chair.
President Shafik’s actions clearly fail to meet the standards announced
in the Joint
Statement on Rights and Freedoms of Students:
College
and university students are both citizens and members of the
academic community. As citizens, students should enjoy the same freedom
of speech, peaceful assembly, and right of petition that other citizens
enjoy and, as members of the academic community, they are subject to
the obligations that accrue to them by virtue
of this membership. Faculty members and administration officials should
ensure that institutional powers are not employed to inhibit such
intellectual and personal development of students as is often promoted
by their exercise of the rights of citizenship
both on and off campus.
Our
campuses should be places of learning and education. Our goal should
be dialogue and communication in service of understanding. Critically
evaluating different points of view and putting up to debate even the
most deeply held beliefs are what we should be promoting, modeling and
supporting. President Shafik’s silencing of peaceful
protesters and having them hauled off to jail does a grave disservice
to Columbia’s reputation and will be a permanent stain on her
presidential legacy.
II.
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP), which spoke up
on my behalf when Yale terminated me for my public speech, has released
a cogent joint statement through the Barnard and Columbia Chapters (I
reproduce it here in full, as it has received
too little publicity):
The American Association of University Professors has defined two
central pillars of higher education in America: academic freedom and
shared governance: the freedom to teach and do research without
interference from entities external to the profession;
and the “inescapable interdependence among governing board,
administration, faculty, students.” In the last three days, Columbia
University President Shafik and her administration have seriously
violated both. We are shocked at her failure to mount any defense
of the free inquiry central to the educational mission of a university
in a democratic society and at her willingness to appease legislators
seeking to interfere in university affairs. She has demonstrated
flagrant disregard of shared governance in her acceptance
of partisan charges that anti-war demonstrators are violent and
antisemitic and in her unilateral and wildly disproportionate punishment
of peacefully protesting students.
President
Shafik’s testimony before the House Education and Workforce Committee
on April 17 has profoundly
disturbed us. In the face of slanderous assaults on Columbia faculty
and students and of gross interference in academic practices by
Congressional inquisitors, President Shafik not only did not object—she
capitulated to their demands. Academic freedom was
formulated from its very beginning to safeguard faculty from political
or other non-academic sources of intrusion. President Shafik, the
co-chairs of the Board of Trustees, and the former Dean of the Law
School allowed this freedom for Columbia faculty to
be publicly shredded. They effectively pledged, on the Congressional
record, to end academic freedom at Columbia.
President
Shafik’s decision on April 18 to call upon the New York Police
Department to arrest over
one hundred students for engaging in a peaceful protest is a grotesque
violation of norms of shared governance. Section 444 of University
Statutes, put in place after the police attacks of 1968, requires
“consultation” with the University Senate executive
committee before anything so drastic as yesterday’s attack would be
permitted. President Shafik’s administration did not consult; they
informed the committee of its decision. “The Executive Committee did
not approve the presence of NYPD on campus,” said
the Executive Committee Chair, adding that the Committee came to their
decision “unequivocally.” President Shafik’s decision to invite the
NYPD to campus was thus undertaken unilaterally, disregarding the very
idea of shared governance.
In
Wednesday’s hearing, President Shafik repeatedly claimed that she was
inaugurating a new era at
Columbia. Her actions thus far suggest that this era will be one of
repressed speech, political restrictions on academic inquiry, and
punitive discipline against the University’s own students and faculty.
As the protesters’ chant rightly states, “Protest
is democracy; this is a travesty!” AAUP Barnard and Columbia pledge
continued support for our students’ right to protest and to speak
freely, and for our colleagues’ right to teach and to write freely
within their domains of expertise. We have lost confidence
in our president and administration, and we pledge to fight to reclaim
our university.