Columbia University’s South Lawn, where students arrange two “Gaza solidarity camps,” is now empty after police armed with military weapons and riot gear carried out the biggest mass arrests of scholars on campus for the reason that school’s infamous protests in 1968.
More than 200 students were arrested during two police raids on April 18 and 30, the latter coincidentally same day 700 students were arrested for protesting the divisive Vietnam War and Colombia’s expansion into Harlem greater than 50 years ago.
After the protests in 1969 Columbia has restructured the trail Its administration makes decisions that impact students by establishing regulatory bodies which might be certain by the college’s co-governance policies. It created this University Senate— a panel of about 100 faculty, students, administrators and alumni — is meant to be a “policy-making body that can consider all matters of university-wide interest,” in line with the college’s website.
Before April 18, the University Senate voted unanimously vetoed an administration decision to send police to campus where students were demonstrating.
According to a Senate report, by allowing police to enter Columbia campuses, the university administration violated policies agreed to by the college itself Assets checked.
This decision “undermines shared governance rather than adhering to the university’s code of conduct that we have adopted.” University Senate and set out within the university’s statutes,” it says op ed written by the Columbia College Student Council, published by The guard. The University Senate’s separate report was reviewed by Assets found that using police on campus violated the very consultation framework established in response to the many student protests of 1968.
Roosevelt Montas, who has taught at Columbia for 30 years and has served within the University Senate previously, said Assets that to the perfect of his knowledge the consultation rules introduced in 1969 have never been broken before – until now.
The most serious violation of those rules, he described, “was the deployment of police on campus twice, despite the objections of the University Senate and without consultation with students and faculty members.”
Colombia was gripped by student dissent following the brutal Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7 over 1,200 people killedand Israel’s response, a catastrophic military campaign Now it is the seventh month. In addition to calls for divestment and financial transparency, the camp’s students also want to point out solidarity with tens of millions of Palestinian civilians facing catastrophic disasters famine, disease outbreaksand a toddler crisis wherein a minimum of a Thousands of kids have lost limbs and over 19,000 children became orphans due to indiscriminate bombing in war.
Now, within the aftershock, the university is facing one legal motion of scholars from two groups, Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine, who were suspended after the administration made ill-defined changes to the university’s protest rules without properly consulting with the university senate, it says within the report. There are other problems brewing too. These include a possible vote of no confidence by the university Senate against the college’s president, Minouche Shafik, and a “externally academically led” investigation into the administration, which could jeopardize Shafik’s future at the college.
When asked specifically concerning the violation of the 1969 pact, a Columbia spokesman didn’t answer several of the questions Fortune’s Request for comments.
For students, as described in The guard Among the federal government’s most serious violations of those institutional rules, they are saying, are what they consider to be the illegal suspension of the 2 Palestinian student groups last fall and the authorization of the police to mass arrest students who show peacefully.
The university Senate report states that in fall 2023, when the scholar groups Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine were suspended, the administration made policy changes without consulting the Senate. The changes resulted in student demonstrations being held under the university’s event guidelines, quite than the college’s rules for educational conduct, which include Standards comparable to “the right to demonstrate, assemble, picket” and “retain the freedom to express opinions on any subject.”
A spokesman for Columbia University said this Assets The two student groups were suspended after violating the university’s longstanding events policy, which requires student groups to notify administration prematurely of any special events a bunch wishes to carry.
You ride, too Professor of American Studies and Citizenship at Columbia University said the groups were suspended without traditional consultations with campus advisory boards. Meanwhile, the arrests in Columbia have resulted in what Montas calls the community’s “collapse.”
“There is a sense of alienation and violence among students that I have never experienced in my 30-plus years at Columbia University,” he said.
The university spokesman declined to comment on the pending litigation.
The camps, which first emerged at the celebrated Ivy League school, opened a wave of greater than 80 solidarity student camps across the country and in globe–Many of those were also answered by the police and More than 1,000 arrests.
Another professor, Archon Fung, who teaches Political Science and Citizenship at Harvard Kennedy School Assets It is significant to think about rigorously what the scholars did and what they demanded of their university in relation to the extent of aggressive violence they faced.
“We know a firearm was discharged,” Fung said Assets, in addition to several stun grenadesof which he said: “To be clear, this weapon was developed as Military equipment for hostage rescue.”
Civil disobedience, with which Colombia has a special history, “occupies an important place in democracy,” Fung said, adding: “Civil disobedience is, by definition, a violation of the rules.”
When it involves responding to acts of civil disobedience, Fung said it is useful to think about different levels of threat that an act of disobedience poses. The lowest threat level can be cases of passive resistance, he said, while the best threat level, which might also justify high levels of violence, would come with aggressive acts comparable to fighting or throwing objects. What’s notable, he said, is that the atmosphere at many college camps was largely peaceful.
For the protesters in Colombia, the scholars’ list of demands consisted of three parts: first, that the university divest from corporations that support Israel’s military campaign in Gaza; second, for public transparency of the university’s financial portfolio; and third, to demand amnesty for all Students facing disciplinary motion of activism on campus.
A spokesman for Columbia University said this Assets The school won’t divest from Israel, but has offered to publish a process for college kids to access a listing of Colombia’s direct investment holdings and to extend the frequency of updates to that list. It also offered to take a position in health and education in Gaza.
The speaker said Assets The school’s goal was to work with the demonstrators to seek out an answer that might break up the camp on the lawn, but their attempts to authorize the police to achieve this have since failed Criticism from politicians, Civil rights groups and other academics.
“To resort to this very high level of violence in a case of passive resistance seems to me to be unjustified,” Fung said.
According to the Columbia Spectators, NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey said he approved using “distraction devices” for the “first time in many years.”
The NYPD didn’t respond Assets‘S repeated requests for comment. In a letter to the NYPD, Shafik asked for police presence on campus until a minimum of May seventeenth.
What next?
The university senate, said Professor Montas, “as the only university-wide representative body, has great symbolic and moral power,” but it surely doesn’t have much of the manager power that lies with the president and board of trustees.
Nevertheless, he said, the Senate is currently weighing it up vote of no confidence, and if she receives significant staff support, the vote could “undermine the president’s ability to lead the university.”
According to a Columbia Student News reportOn May 3, the University Senate held a special plenary session to debate the creation of an investigative task force against the administration and a possible vote of no confidence within the president. Ultimately, nevertheless, only the Board of Trustees can remove a president.
On Monday, Columbia announced that this 12 months’s university-wide commencement ceremony is now canceled, but smaller ceremonies will still happen.
“If your goal was to minimize disruption to university operations, this appears to have had the opposite effect, and perhaps that is foreseeable,” Fung said.
