Pro-Palestinian protesters at Columbia University have occupied a building on campus in an escalation of their months-long demonstration against Israel’s war in Gaza.
The takeover of Hamilton Hall – named after one of America’s founding fathers, Alexander Hamilton – followed the failure of talks with university authorities aimed at winning the protesters’ agreement to dismantle an encampment of about 120 tents.
The protesters’ move came after they had defied a 2pm Monday deadline to abandon the camp or face suspension. The university promptly began suspending participating students.
What were the students demanding?
Nothing less than Columbia’s divestment from companies they say profit from Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, echoing the 1980s campaign for economic boycotts against South Africa. That precedent resonates with the current occupation of Hamilton Hall, which in 1985 was padlocked and chained by protesters demanding that the university divest from companies doing business with the apartheid regime. Although that protest ended inconclusively, Columbia’s trustees board voted months later to sell its stock in US companies involved with South Africa.
This time, Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, has rejected divestment calls. But the university offered an accelerated timeline to review student divestment proposals by the institution’s Advisory Committee for Socially Responsible Investing, the body that considers such questions. In a febrile atmosphere, protesters dismissed it as insufficient.
What other factors are in play?
Pro-Israel Jewish students complain of feeling threatened and allege they have been subjected to antisemitic slurs. Similar complaints have been levelled at other protest-hit campuses.
Protesters – some of whom are Jewish – counter that instances of antisemitism are being exaggerated and conflated with condemnation of Israel, and leveraged in an effort to snuff out legitimate criticism of the state.
What are the consequences of the antisemitism allegations for Columbia and other universities?
It is inviting the scrutiny of the US Congress, putting the universities’ ruling bodies in an invidious position.
At a congressional committee meeting two weeks ago – provocatively titled “Columbia in Crisis: Columbia University’s Response to AntiSemitism” – Shafik was grilled relentlessly by members, particularly Republicans, who pressed her to get tough with students and faculty members deemed guilty of antisemitism. Visibly uncomfortable, Shafik strove to avoid the fate of two other university presidents, Elizabeth Magill of the University of Pennsylvania, and Claudine Gay of Harvard, who were forced to resign after giving what were condemned as weak responses to interrogations about speech judged antisemitic or “genocidal” in a previous hearing last December.
This week, the House is poised to vote on a bill that would codify a broad definition of antisemitism and could be used to crack down on anti-Israel protests.
Why is the issue complicated?
Because universities’ mission compels them to balance contentious language with a commitment to free speech. Additionally, what constitutes antisemitism can be hotly disputed. While blatant antisemitic slurs have been heard – and condemned – other statements are more contested. At the hearing, Shafik, who is Egyptian-born, hesitated when challenged on whether she considered calls for an intifada (uprising in Arabic) as antisemitic. Some deny that it is, while others point to the consequences of the second Palestinian intifada in the early 2000s, which saw large number of Israeli Jews killed in suicide bombings.
Why are university heads sensitive to congressional oversight?
Although Columbia and other universities at the heart of the protests are private institutions, their buildings are exempt from property tax, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars or more. This tax-exempt status could be reversed by hostile legislators. Likewise, the universities receive significant sums in federal government funding, which Congress has the power to rescind.
How did Shafik respond to congressional pressure?
On April 18, a day after her congressional appearance, Shafik asked New York police officers to enter the Columbia campus to disperse the encampment. About 100 protesters were arrested, although the protests subsequently resumed. Similar law-enforcement actions have since been mirrored elsewhere. Nearly 1,000 arrests have been recorded at campus protests nationwide in recent days.
Shafik’s moves earned the rebuke of her academic peers after the university’s senate passed a resolution saying her administration had undermined academic freedom and ignored privacy and due process.
How much does this resonate beyond the university campus?
The spectre of enduring protests, creating the impression of chaos and disorder on America’s university campuses, could undermine Joe Biden’s re-election chances.
Fox News has already sensed the potential for a campaign issue, running round-the-clock footage of the scenes from Columbia in a switch of focus from the US-Mexico border, previously seen as the Republicans’ biggest potential vote-winner.
Worse still for Biden, the Democratic party’s student organisation, College Democrats of America, has endorsed the protests, saying in a statement: “As representatives of youth across the country, we reserve the right to criticise our own party when it fails to represent youth voices.”
By contrast, the protests were denounced on Tuesday’s by Biden’s national security spokesperson, John Kirby, who called them “absolutely the wrong approach”.
The split could burst into the open when the Democrats gather in August for their national convention in Chicago – a venue that evokes a grim historical warning for the party. It was there that the party’s 1968 convention descended into pitched battles between police and students protesting against the Vietnam war. The Democratic candidate, Hubert Humphrey, lost the presidential election to the Republican Richard Nixon, less than three months later.
