NEW YORK –
Columbia’s embattled president came under fresh pressure Friday as a university oversight committee met to address her two-week-old attempt to quell protests that have rocked the Ivy League school and spread throughout the country and the rest of the world.
President Nemat Minouche Shafik faced an outcry from many students, faculty and outside observers for calling the New York police to campus on April 18 to dismantle a tent camp set up by protesters against Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza .
Police arrested more than 100 people that day and removed tents from the main lawn of the school’s Manhattan campus, but protesters quickly returned and set up camp again, reducing Columbia’s chances of shutting down the protest.
Since then, hundreds of protesters have been arrested at schools from California to Boston as students set up camps similar to the one in Columbia, demanding that their schools divest from companies involved in Israel’s military.
Like-minded protests against Israel’s actions have also spread abroad, with tensions erupting outside Paris’ prestigious Sciences Po University on Friday when pro-Israel protesters came to challenge pro-Palestinian students occupying the building. The police had to intervene to keep the two sides apart.
At Columbia, the university senate will hold a hearing Friday afternoon to vote on a resolution on the president’s actions that could range from an expression of discontent to an outright censure.
The White House has defended free speech on campuses, but Democratic President Joe Biden denounced “anti-Semitic protests” this week and stressed that campuses must be safe.
Some Republicans in Congress have accused Shafik and other university administrators of being too soft on protesters and allowing Jewish students to be harassed on their campuses.
After failing to quell protests two weeks ago, Columbia administrators have resorted to negotiations with students, so far without success. The school has set two deadlines to reach an agreement this week, the last at 4 a.m. Friday, and both passed without an agreement being reached.
“Talks have shown progress and are continuing as planned,” Shafik’s office wrote in an emailed letter to the university community Thursday evening. “We have our demands; they have theirs. A formal process is underway and continuing.”
State police attempt to break up a pro-Palestinian protest at the University of Texas on Wednesday, April 24, 2024, in Austin, Texas. (Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman via AP)
Texas Clash
University of Texas at Austin President Jay Hartzell faced a similar backlash from professors on Friday, two days after joining Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in calling police to break up a pro-Palestinian protest.
Dozens of protesters were arrested, but charges against most were dropped the next day.
Nearly 200 university faculty members signed a letter dated April 25, saying they have no confidence in Hartzell after he “unnecessarily endangered students, staff and faculty” when hundreds of officers dressed in riot gear and rampaged on horseback the protests. .
Hartzell in a statement said he made the decision based on the protest organizers intending to “seriously disrupt” the campus over an extended period.
The confrontation in Texas was one of many that broke out this week between protesters and police summoned by university leaders, who say the encampments constitute unauthorized protests, endanger student safety and sometimes subdue Jewish students. to antisemitism and harassment.
Civil rights groups condemned the arrests and urged authorities to respect the right to freedom of expression. Activists behind the protests say their goal is to pressure schools to divest from companies that contribute to Israeli military actions in Gaza, and to blame any hostile behavior on outsiders seeking to hijack the movement.
While Columbia remains the epicenter of the student protest movement, national attention has shifted to new campuses, from the University of Southern California (USC) to Emory University in Atlanta to Emerson College in Boston, almost every day. This week. USC this week canceled its main May 10 graduation ceremony, saying the new required safety measures would have caused excessive delays in crowd control.
On Friday, about 200 protesters gathered at George Washington University, a few blocks from the White House, carrying “Free Palestine” signs, wearing black and white Palestinian keffiyehs and chanting slogans.
“We will take disciplinary action against GW students involved in these unauthorized protests that continue to disrupt university operations,” the university said.
Authorities also began making arrests Friday at a protest encampment at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona.
A livestream from the organizer showed dozens of protesters setting up tents on the campus lawn. The police came in within half an hour and told protesters they couldn’t camp there but could stay if they didn’t have tents.
California’s Cal Poly Humboldt, a public university in Arcata, said it had closed its campus over the weekend and moved all classes online, as protesters continued a weeklong occupation of a school building.
(Reporting by Julia Harte in New York, Kia Johnson and Doina Chiacu in Washington, Andrew Hay in New Mexico; Editing by Bill Berkrot)