Columbia rises again: New war, same call for peace

A woman shouts "I am not afraid! Put my face on camera!" in broad daylight. At the time she was standing at the Yale campus, surrounded by "pro-Palestine" demonstrators at a distance — clear from the drums beating and faces covered with keffiyehs. One person is also seen dancing to the Arabic music that can be heard in the background.  

The video clip, circulated on social media, is not dated. The woman, whose face is uncovered, is seen wearing a t-shirt with the words Jew and Israel written on it. No one reacts. The short clip ends within a few seconds. 

Yale is not the only campus in the US that many critics say is "in crisis." It started with Columbia University last week when students set up tent encampments at the campus, demanding that the university divest from Israeli ties. 

But things turned sour when Columbia University President Nemat Minouche Shafik called the NYPD to clear the Gaza Solidarity Encampment on the campus's South Lawn. It resulted in 108 student arrests. 

This happened last week. 

Columbia students remain on campus despite arrests, eviction from school housing and suspensions. Something else also happened; the student protests spread beyond Columbia. 

More and more students of US universities such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Emerson College, Tufts University, Washington University, The New School, New York University (NYU), University of Michigan, and more have joined such protests in a show of solidarity with Columbia students, and to make the same demands of their institution to divest from Israel. Some of the US universities, apart from Columbia, have also seen student arrests. 

An AP report quotes MIT physics senior Hannah Didehbani as saying that protesters were inspired by those at Columbia. "Right now there are several professors on campus who are getting direct research funding from Israel's Ministry of Defense. We have been calling for MIT to cut those research ties." 

Protesters at the University of California, Berkeley, which had an encampment of about 30 tents on Tuesday, were also inspired by Columbia's demonstrators, "who we consider to be the heart of the student movement," law student Malak Afaneh told AP.

Tensions are at an all-time high across the US' most elite universities. From Columbia reportedly losing at least one billionaire sponsor over the protests, distorted narrative and labels, to top US Republican senators calling President Joe Biden to send in the National Guard — there is a lot to unpack here. 

Let's start with Columbia. 

'The heart of the student movement'

Tensions have been simmering for nearly six months on Columbia's campus over what has been unfolding in Gaza. 

In November last year, the Ivy League institution suspended student groups Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace for allegedly violating school policies for "threatening rhetoric and intimidation," according to media reports.  

In January this year, the Columbia Spectator, a student newspaper, reported that protesters were "sprayed with a foul-smelling substance" during a "divestment now" rally on the steps of Low Library on 19 January. "At least three students required medical attention while others reported physical symptoms such as burning eyes, headaches and nausea."

The incident was then covered by national media. In the following days, according to The New York Times, "in a statement sent via email to Columbia students and faculty members, interim provost Dennis A Mitchell said the alleged perpetrators had been banned from campus following 'what appears to have been serious crimes, possibly hate crimes.'

No arrests were made, the NYT reported then.  

In October last year, there were even doxxing trucks passing by the campus which outed pro-Palestine students at Columbia. It had been reported during that time how students' public show of support led to job offers being rescinded. 

In the last few months, it became clear how those in support of Palestine and calling for a ceasefire are reprimanded. This is also why many protestors in the US cover their faces. This also shed lights on why the lone woman shouted "I am not afraid" and "put my face on the camera" on the Yale campus, while those on the opposite side felt compelled to keep their faces covered. 

The retribution or the consequences of students exercising their academic right to free speech on US campuses are not uniform. It depends and varies on which side one is.  

In October last year, Columbia University Professor Shai Davidai of the Business School stood on campus grounds and termed pro-Palestine demonstrators as "terrorists." 

Davidai continued to teach on campus. In the wake of the encampments, student arrests and a growing student movement, Davidai — according to a Columbia Photojournalism Instagram account — held a press conference outside of campus when he was denied access to campus. 

He said, "All Jewish students have escaped campus" — however, as the Columbia Journalism School students pointed out, many remained actively participating in pro-Palestine protests on campus along with their non-Jewish peers. 

The narrative distortion remains. The fear-mongering and conflating labels between anti-semitism and anti-Zionists, or anti-Israeli occupation of Palestine, remain on campus grounds, despite observers and participants, including faculty members, saying the protests are peaceful and not anti-semitic. 

This distortion or bias against pro-Palestine students — who are labelled as terrorists or terrorist-sympathisers, with ease in many cases — also prevails across a lot of the media coverage as well. 

In The Atlantic's The Unreality of Columbia's 'Liberated Zone', Staff Writer Michael Powell wrote, "The students I interviewed [Jewish students who feel threatened] told me that physical violence has been rare on campus. There have been reports of shoves, but not much more."

According to CNN, Columbia students' demands remain, "Complete divestment from anything related to Israel, financial transparency into the university's investments and amnesty from any disciplinary measures for students participating in the protests."  

Critics of Columbia's handling of the student protests say students' right to free speech must not be infringed and mishandled by arrests. The irony is not lost on many who are aware of how Columbia's 1968 student protests — after the dust settled — are revered now. 

1968 vs 2024

Democracy Now! Co-host and Columbia University alum Juan Gonzalez participated in the 1968 protests when hundreds of students at Columbia University protested the Vietnam War and the university's racist policies. He was one of the student organisers. 

"These students were not disrupting classes. We occupied buildings, we did not allow classes to go forward in 1968… The disproportionate nature of the response, the quickness with which it responded without even consulting or listening to faculty is really astounding.

"Before we were suspended, we were allowed to appear before a tribunal to plead our cause. There were at least rudiments of due process. Here [in 2024] there is no due process. The university already within 24 hours is saying that students are suspended. Even though there is yet no legal proof that the students knowingly participated in any illegal activity," he said at a broadcast on 23 April. 

"What really strikes me is the total flouting of any democratic process by the current administration compared to that in 1968," Gonzalez added. 

According to reports and the Columbia University website, hundreds of students were injured by the police and arrested in 1968. 

But the student protests captured the nation's imagination and as a result, Columbia University ended up terminating its contract with the Institute for Defense Analyses. 30 students were suspended from Columbia as a result of the occupation and protests.

Fast forward to last week, Columbia University President Shafik had likely broken protocol. 

Joseph R Slaughter, associate professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and President of the American Comparative Literature Association, said in an interview with Democracy Now!, "[President Shafik] approached the executive committee senate to invite the NYPD to shut down, squelch the protests. The faculty and the students on the executive committee voted unanimously to reject her request. But she did it anyway." 

Slaughter argued that by doing so, Shafik had violated long traditions of shared governance along with statutes. "Essentially throwing out the rulebook."

It is also worth noting that Shafik was the latest university president to testify in front of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce on antisemitism on the US campus earlier this month. 

On 5 December 2023, during a hearing, then-Harvard University President Claudine Gay and then-University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill failed to clarify their respective universities' policies regarding calls for genocide against Jewish people. Gay and Magill have since resigned, according to media reports. 

Now with tensions still rising, there had been calls to the US president to call in the National Guard in order to counter these protests in Columbia. People such as Columbia faculty Davida Shai, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley and Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton on Monday called for Joe Biden to send National Guard troops onto campuses. 

The Guardian reported that a letter from 25 senators including Mitch McConnell says the president "must act immediately to restore order" on university campuses. 

Beyond this call for an extreme response, the mischaracterisation of the protestors by many in the media also does not help matters. Protestors are often called terrorists or implied that they are Hamas supporters. This resonates with much of the same discourse on Palestine across mainstream media — how the discourse shifts to anti-semitism allegations rather than to address what is being done to Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli military. 

Perhaps America forgot its own 1970 Kent State University chapter? On its 50th anniversary, CNN reported "The shootings turned the tide of public opinion against the Vietnam War, and some political officials even argued that it played a role in the downfall of the Nixon administration. Today, the incident symbolises the political and social divides brought on by the Vietnam War."

The Ohio National Guard fired on Kent State University students as they protested against the Vietnam War. Four unarmed students were killed. Nine were injured.

What's next? 

Columbia student organisers continue to insist on not taking away the attention from Palestine and the assault on Gaza — you may have read how a mass grave of around 300 Palestinian bodies was uncovered in Gaza recently after Israeli troops withdrew from the area. 

Fret not, mainstream media also covered it. 

The student organisers also repeatedly told the media that the rare "extreme" views do not represent their cause. They also insist that they will continue until their demands are met. The following days will be decisive as the right to free speech and peaceful protests hangs in the balance in the 'free world'. 

Perhaps wishful thinking, but it seems it is the privileged Americans and students — most of these institutions are categorised as "the elite" ones in the US, which mean if you are attending one without a scholarship you belong to a privileged class — who can take action to make a dent in the US' ties with Israel.