A New World Order: The Future of Academic Freedom in the Balance
The Hamas invasion of Israel killed more than 1100, unleashing an Israeli retaliation that has so far killed more than 34,000, a war that has driven America's college students to the barricades.
SPECIAL ISSUE
“Protests over the war in Gaza on college campuses have stretched across the nation, and tensions are high at many schools. Students at Columbia, Yale and New York University have been arrested in recent days. Columbia announced yesterday that all classes would meet remotely to attempt to `deescalate the rancor.’ Students at UC Berkeley and the University of Michigan set up Gaza solidarity encampments yesterday.” –NPR Up First News April 23, 2024
Breaking News
Columbia, in New York, and Portland State University, in Oregon, closed their campuses after pro-Palestinian demonstrators took over buildings --Live Updates April 30, 2023
Bright Lines in The Fog of War
Lydia Polgreen, a columnist for the New York Times and a Columbia University alumnus, was on a corner across a busy street from Columbia’s campus in upper Manhattan last week when “a man dressed in black, a huge gold cross around his neck,” she reported, “ brandished a sign that featured a bloodstained Israeli flag and the word `genocide’ in capital letters. He was also shouting at the top of his lungs, `The Jews control the world! Jews are murderers!’”
“I watched,” continues Polgreen, “as a pro-Palestine protester approached the man. “That is horribly antisemitic,” she said. “You are hurting the movement and you are not a part of us. Go away.”
To those of us of a certain age, it’s déjà vu all over again; the war over there and the war at home. And the famous fog of war applies to both, then as now, as the Polgreen report makes clear. Berkeley and USC going a bit nuts, Columbia loud – over 200 arrests and counting-–and pictorially staid under tents in front of Charles McKim classicism and the famous assemblage steps of Low Library—until yesterday. Plenty of working journalists working in and around these fired-up campuses, many with memories and opinions from different eras; all with memories of places where they learned about freedom of thought and speech.
Joe Klein, a University of Pennsylvania student when Vietnam and civil rights raged and he “learned what tear gas smelled like,” today says, “I look at the kids on the college campuses and think: That was us. Or was it?” He then offers up one of the better essays about the country’s current campus strife, sympathetic towards the “kids on the quads” today, but believing that too many are crossing “bright lines” of principle by “glorifying Hamas and Iran”, comparing it to “supporting Weatherman or the Panthers in my day, an act of nitwit immorality. The spectacle of secular humanist, leftist children throwing in their lot with violent, anti-democratic religious fanatics is the height of puerility.” Klein’s advice to this generation of protestors: “Be very, very careful. You’re playing with matches.”
David French, not as old as Klein, graduated from a conservative southern college and then trekked up to Harvard Law, where, he writes, “I had my head in a law book when I heard the drums… the sound of the first campus protest I’d ever experienced.” At his Nashville college, says French, his classmates “had passionate religious and political commitments, but street protest was utterly alien to the Christian culture of the school. We were rule followers, and public protest looked a bit too much like anarchy for our tastes.” He then offers up a description of his Ivy League law school that might have helped Claudine Gay understand more clearly what she was up against on Capitol Hill. “Harvard was different. The law school was every bit as progressive as my college was conservative, and protest was part of the fabric of student life, especially then. This is the era when a writer for GQ magazine, John Sedgwick, called the law school “Beirut on the Charles” because it was torn apart by disputes over race and sex. There were days when campus protests were festive, almost celebratory. There were other days when the campus was seething with rage and fury.” French goes on to offer advice for today’s college administrations (see below, “It’s a Governance Problem, Stupid”).
One thing is true: the coverage has been something just short of smothering (which may have spared us 24/7 Trump trials). In fact, one morning last week the Times ran nearly a dozen news stories and editorials on what has become one of the loudest anti-war movements to test the resilience of college free speech patience since Vietnam and the Civil Rights movements: the Israeli-Hamas war, which has divided university students, faculty and administrators along Jewish-Muslim and Israeli-Palestinian lines, some bright, some vague, but most being drawn on college campuses. We now have a color-coded map showing where the college protest and arrests are: more than 200 arrested at Northeastern University, Arizona State University, Indiana University and Washington University in St. Louis, and more than 800 arrests of protesters on U.S. campuses since April 18 (as of today).
There is no dearth of stories, including the Chronicle of Higher Education offering a “daily briefing” on a multitude of protest topics, including why “tents force tough choices” and the Times reporting on students being summarily expelled, including the daughter of Representative Ilhan Omar.
Sources
Up First (NPR)
Live Updates: Protesters Take Over Building on Columbia Campus (New York Times)
Columbia, Free Speech and the Coddling of the American Right (New York Times)
Death Squad University Presidents are not the only idiots in the Democratic Party (Sanity Clause, Substack)
Colleges Have Gone Off the Deep End. There Is a Way Out (New York Times)
Crackdowns at 4 College Protests Lead to More Than 200 Arrests (New York Times)
Daily Briefing: Tents force tough choices (Chronicle of Higher Education)
Columbia Students Arrested Over Campus Rally May Face Other Consequences (New York Times)
Further Reading
The Eye of the Beholder (New York Review of Books)
Gaza Grilling Felled Two Ivy Presidents. Columbia Hopes to Avoid the Same Fate (Wall Street Journal)
A Tenured Professor Was Removed From the Classroom Over a Pro-Palestine Essay (Chronicle of Higher Education)
Ms. Shafik Goes to Washington
In fact, it may have been Columbia’s president, Egyptian-born Nemat “Minouche” Shafik, who was testifying before Congress’ Committee on Education and the Workforce on April 17, who inadvertently fanned the protest flames – and the crackdowns. A distinguished economist, Shafik had only taken up Columbia’s reins last summer She was supposed to be at the December hearings (but was traveling), but had clearly learned from that head-rolling event, as three of her Ivy League colleagues tried to tip-toe through the hot-button issues with lawyerly evasions (two later lost their jobs) – per Harvard’s Claudine Gay’s infamous and evasive answer to Rep. Elise Stefanik’s dare to condemn the phrase “from the River to the Sea” as antisemitic and discipline the students and faculty who say it -- though “abhorrent,” said Gay, Harvard embraced “a commitment to free expression even of views that are objectionable, offensive, hateful.” It was Stefanik, a Harvard grad, who had predicted “a watershed moment” in higher education” as a result of the hearings. It was, at least, a watershed fundraising event for Stefanic, according to Politico, which reported that the upstate NY Congresswoman had raised more than $7 million in first quarter, after grilling colleges on antisemitism.)
But it wasn’t as if Columbia was not forewarned. Committee chairwoman Virginia Foxx, “a blunt partisan,” said the Times, in a profile just the day before the hearing, had issued a press release charging Columbia with “some of the worst cases of antisemitic assaults, harassment, and vandalism” of any university. “Due to the severe and pervasive nature of these cases, and the Columbia administration’s failure to enforce its own policies to protect Jewish students, the Committee must hear from Columbia’s leadership in person to learn how the school is addressing antisemitism on its campus.”
Indeed, Shafik brought two of Columbia’s co-trustees with her on the 17th, including former TV news celeb Claire Shipman, and they pretty quickly made it clear that they believed in clear lines, admitting to suspending two pro-Palestinian student groups, 15 students, and five professors for making prohibited antisemitic statements, a make-nice gesture, noted by the Times, which reported that such “disciplinary details… are usually confidential.” “We have a specific problem on our campus,” said Shipman, “so I can speak from what I know and that is rampant antisemitism.”
Though there would be “several tense exchanges between members of Congress and Columbia representatives,” most of the second-guessing by GOP critics came after the hearing, including this statement by Stefanik: “If it takes a member of Congress to force a university president to fire a pro-terrorist, antisemetic faculty chair, then Columbia University leadership is failing Jewish students and its academic mission.” As it turns out, that was a bit of a shot across the bow, but the consensus seemed to be, at that moment, that Shafik left the hearing with her head on her shoulders – and a few pats on the back. Louis Menand of the New Yorker gave Shafik no kudos, instead called her Washington performance “a breathtaking ‘What was she thinking?’ episode in the history of academic freedom. It was shocking to hear her negotiating with a member of Congress over disciplining two members of her own faculty, by name, for things they had written or said.”
Sources
About President Minouche Shafik (Columbia University)
Columbia Leaders Grilled at Antisemitism Hearing Over Faculty Comments (New York Times)
Stefanik raised more than $7 million in first quarter, after grilling colleges on antisemitism (Politico)
The House Republican Going After Universities on Antisemitism (New York Times)
Columbia University President and Board Chairs to Testify at Antisemitism Hearing (U.S. Congress)
Columbia Leaders Grilled at Antisemitism Hearing Over Faculty Comments (New York Times)
Further Reading
Who Are the Columbia Professors Mentioned in the House Hearing? (New York Times)
Columbia Told Congress It Would Crack Down on Student Protests. Now It Has. (Chronicle of Higher Education)
4 Takeaways From the Hearing on Antisemitism at Columbia University (New York Times)
At Heated Congressional Hearing, Lawmakers Scrutinize Columbia U.’s Response to Campus Antisemitism (Chronicle of Higher Education)
All Hell Breaks Loose
Back on campus, perhaps letting the thin air of Capitol Hill success get the better of her, Shafik declared lockdown Thursday as all in-classroom classes were moved online and the NYPD swooped in, removing the protesters’ tents and arresting over 100 students. Lydia Polgreen of the Times offers one of the best on-site reporting on what happened – and how it happened. “As a journalist,” she writes, “you usually go to the front line to find the news. But sometimes the front line finds you.” She was on campus that morning talking to protesting students and listening to more protesting students that night, outside NYPD headquarters downtown, a block from where she lived. “Shafik wrote to the N.Y.P.D. requesting that officers clear the quad,” reported Polgreen, quoting Shafik declaring the protests “a clear and present danger” to the university. But if there was danger, wrote Polgreen, “the police seemed to struggle to find it. In remarks reported by The Columbia Daily Spectator, the Police Department’s chief of patrol, John Chell, said that there were no reports of violence or injury. `To put this in perspective, the students that were arrested were peaceful, offered no resistance whatsoever, and were saying what they wanted to say in a peaceful manner,’ he said.”
Not everyone was assuaged and the school’s Jewish chaplain warned Columbia’s 5000 Jewish students that they were not safe. “The events of the last few days, especially last night,” wrote a student, have made it clear that Columbia University’s Public Safety and the NYPD cannot guarantee Jewish students’ safety in the face of extreme antisemitism and anarchy.” Shafik’s apparent toughness seemed only to embolden more anti-Israeli protests and more college administrations suffered through more pro-Palestinian protests, which were met with more arrests.
“A crackdown on demonstrators at Columbia University in New York spawned a wave of activism at universities across the country, with more than 800 arrests, reported the New York Times, in a daily tally, including its color-coded map, started on the day after Shanik testified and here quoted on April 29. The College Fix is a reliable protest monitor of news from all over.
And on the West Coast the University of Southern California administration stirred up the free speech hornets, citing “safety concerns,” threw up its hands, first canceling a pro-Palestinian valedictorian’s graduation speech, then cancelling the entire “main stage” graduation ceremony. David French of the New York Times attributed the threats to “two student groups, Trojans for Israel and Chabad,” which accused the Muslim valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, of “openly traffic[cing in] antisemitic and anti-Zionist rhetoric.” But French says that USC provost “canceling a speech because of future safety concerns is a more egregious form of censorship than the classic “heckler’s veto,” when protesters silence speakers by disrupting their speeches. U.S.C.’s decision to cancel Tabassum’s speech was a form of anticipatory heckler’s veto. U.S.C. canceled the speech before the heckling could even start.” As it turns out Nemat Shafik of Columbia had made a similar argument, in a Wall Street Journal essay published before she testified before Congress, stating that reconciling speech rights among some students with the right for their classmates to live “free of fear, harassment and discrimination, has been the central challenge at our university and on campuses across the country.”
Finally, adding insult to injury – or simply conceding to complexities-- Columbia’s faculty senate voted last Friday to approve a resolution that called for an investigation into the school’s leadership, accusing the administration of violating established protocols, undermining academic freedom, jeopardizing free inquiry and breaching the due process rights of both students and professors.
Sources:
Columbia, Free Speech and the Coddling of the American Right (New York Times)
Columbia Can’t Keep Us Safe (X Post)
Here’s Where Protesters on U.S. Campuses Have Been Arrested (New York Times)
Protest news from all over (College Fix)
Citing safety concerns, USC cancels pro-Palestinian valedictorian’s graduation speech (Los Angeles Times)
When a Mob Gets to Veto a Valedictorian’s Speech (New York Times)
Columbia University President: What I Plan to Tell Congress Tomorrow (Wall Street Journal)
Columbia’s faculty senate voted last Friday to approve a resolution (Reuters)
Further Reading
Columbia cracks down on student protesters after Shafik hearing (Times Higher Education)
Arrests at Columbia Protests May Signal a Shift in the Campus-Activism Playbook, Experts Say (Chronicle of Higher Education)
After Arrests of Students at Columbia, the Mood Shifts (Chronicle of Higher Education)
USC’s Era of Protest (New York Times)
Emory Cracks Down (New York Times)
MSU Faculty Senate votes no on Israel divestment (The State News)
Photos (New York Times)
Why Gaza Protests on U.S. College Campuses Have Become So Contagious (New York Times)
Trending in The Times
· Monday Briefing: Plans for Gaza’s Future
· As Colleges Weigh Crackdowns on Protests, Questions About Outsiders Linger
· Columbia Bars Student Protester Who Said ‘Zionists Don’t Deserve to Live’
· Barnard Ends Suspensions for Most Student Protesters Who Were Arrested
· Three Questions About Politics and the Campus Protests
It’s a Governance Problem, Stupid
David French, who says he’s “seen countless protests,…defended countless protesters — and I’ve even been protested against at several schools” since his first protest experience at Harvard 30 years ago, concludes that “There is profound confusion on campus right now around the distinctions between free speech, civil disobedience and lawlessness.” This is not so obvious: “At the same time, some schools also seem confused about their fundamental academic mission. Does the university believe it should be neutral toward campus activism — protecting it as an exercise of the students’ constitutional rights and academic freedoms, but not cooperating with student activists to advance shared goals — or does it incorporate activism as part of the educational process itself, including by coordinating with the protesters and encouraging their activism?”
Lydia Polgreen sees the problem as “the right-wing culture war on America’s campuses” which “has been unfolding for some time” and only recently has “helped push” “legitimate concerns about rising antisemitism… into an uneasy alliance that threatens all kinds of speech.” She believes that too many university administrators are “trembling in the face of their powerful trustees and MAGA politicians,” having “fallen into a trap in which they must be ready to call in the troops at the slightest sign of discord they deem dangerous in the name of `safety.’” Polgreen believes these forces “are an existential threat to the long tradition of free assembly in American universities.”
Perhaps most important, is French’s understatement, “University complicity in chaos isn’t unusual.”
Sources
Colleges Have Gone Off the Deep End. There Is a Way Out (New York Times)
Columbia, Free Speech and the Coddling of the American Right (New York Times)
Further Reading
Decisions Under Fire’: Campuses Try a Mix of Tactics as Protests Grow (New York Times)
What Students Read Before They Protest (New York Times)
Shortstack: SMU is Back, Virginia Bans Legacy Admissions, Harvard and Caltech Want Test Scores, Chinese Money is Buying Research…and more
· How S.M.U., Once the Rogue of College Sports, Got Back to the Big Time (New York Times)
For those wanting to trace the evolution of money and college sports over the past half-century, Southern Methodist offers a perfect example
· US degree completions slide downwards (Times Higher Education)
Steepest recorded decline in college graduation numbers joins sliding enrolment and unprecedented campus closures among major nationwide warning signs
· Harvard and Caltech will require test scores for admission again (Washington Post) The colleges join other selective universities that have recently made similar decisions in the wake of new research
· Virginia becomes second state to ban university legacy admissions (Scripp News) After the Supreme Court said universities could no longer consider an applicant's race, legacy-based admissions drew greater scrutiny.
· SUNY campuses begin phasing out plastic bottles, bags, utensils, even balloons (Journal News) SUNY campuses will phase out the use of plastic utensils, bags, bottles and other items in the coming years as part of a statewide push to keep hard-to-recycle waste out of landfills.
· Harvard to resume standardised testing in admissions (Times Higher Education) Giving a major push to a growing trend, Ivy League institution concludes that using the SAT and ACT produces a net gain in equity
· New UC Berkeley chancellor is Richard Lyons, ex-business school dean (San Francisco Chronicle)
· Rising Discipline Problems in Schools: Another Sign of Pandemic’s Toll (New York Times. Incidents of student misconduct have risen in New York City since pandemic disruptions, though serious crimes in schools have decreased.
· Goddard College in Vermont to close (Higher Ed Dive) With insolvency looming, the institution opted to shutter permanently and struck a teach-out partnership with Prescott College in Arizona.
· How many colleges and universities have closed since 2016? (Higher Ed Dive) We’re tracking major closings, mergers, acquisitions and other consolidation among public and private nonprofit institutions from 2016 to the present.
· Research for Sale: How Chinese Money Flows to American Universities (Wall Street Journal) Contracts were valued at $2.32 billion between 2012 and 2024, amid concerns in Congress that the academic ties could pose a national-security risk.
Wow. Something many people need to read