Columbia University’s managers have abjectly surrendered to terrorist supporters masquerading as pro-Palestinian demonstrators who are doing their best to prevent Jewish students from attending classes and to prevent Columbia from operating at all.
Columbia University was holding classes virtually Monday as protests over the Israel-Hamas war continue to engulf the campus.
Columbia president Minouche Shafik said she wanted to “deescalate the rancor and give us all a chance to consider next steps.”
Even the Wall Street Journal‘s characterization of these “protests” as being over the Israel-Hamas war is cynical and misleading. These “protestors” aren’t protesting the war, they’re objecting to Israel’s defending itself against Hamas’ war of extermination. Nor will these terrorist supporters stop. As Shafik bows down here, the “rancor” will only escalate, and the disruptors will then push for ending all support for Israel and for the “from the river to the sea” destruction of Israel.
Here’s more from Shafik:
I understand that many are experiencing deep moral distress and want Columbia to help alleviate this by taking action. But we cannot have one group dictate terms and attempt to disrupt important milestones like graduation to advance their point of view.
And yet, that’s exactly what Shafik is doing when she allows these “protestors” to disrupt to the extent that in-person classes, which are what those students and their parents have paid for and which are far more effective teaching devices than individuals participating remotely via video, are no longer being held. In-person classes that are blocked, not by these terrorist supporters, but by the cowardice of Shafik and her management team. Beyond that, Shafik is refusing to do anything to alleviate the deep moral distress that the school’s Jewish students and their supporters are experiencing, and she is empirically refusing to take any action to supply her defect.
Rather than bowing and scraping at the feet of the disrupters, Shafik should authorize and require campus police to arrest them, push for New York City’s Progressive-Democratic Mayor Eric Adams to have the arrestees jailed, expel with prejudice those disruptors who are enrolled in any capacity at Columbia, and fire for cause any COlumbia employee participating in the disruption. The only way to deescalate these disruptions is to eliminate the disruptors.
Addendum: Shafik’s perfidy goes even further than merely aiding and abetting the terrorists-supporting disrupters on campus.
A [Jewish] Columbia University professor who has been a vocal critic of the administration’s response to the ongoing anti-Israel student protests was barred from campus after he tried to lead a pro-Jewish rally at the Ivy League college.
Israel-born Shai Davidai, an assistant professor at Columbia Business School and an outspoken supporter of the Jewish state, said that when he swiped his key card at the school’s Morningside Heights campus, it read “deactivated.”
Now Shafik is actively opposing those who disagree with her terrorist-supporting disrupters.
In Thy light shall we see light. Dishonoring the school’s motto, Shafik has turned out the lights.
