Columbia University President Minouche Shafik has resigned months after protests about Israel’s war on Gaza gripped the New York institution. For many, regardless of where they stood on the conflict or how they viewed the campus demonstrations, her resignation came far too late.
In an announcement on Wednesday night, Ms Shafik claimed progress had been made in “a number of important areas” on campus, but also acknowledged a “period of turmoil”. I was a master’s student at the Columbia Journalism School during the time she describes and witnessed mounting calls for her resignation that started almost immediately after October 7.
An Egyptian-British economist, Ms Shafik joined Columbia in July last year as the Ivy League school’s first Arab, Muslim and female president. It was a proud moment for the community, for representation and diversity, and was a turning point in Columbia’s history of white, male presidents. The inauguration festivities were lavish and our Upper West Side campus was lit up by a dance party and laser light show.
Ms Shafik’s inaugural address contained many references to the importance of dialogue and discourse in a diverse community. In it, she included this quote from the 1967 Kalven Report – a University of Chicago investigation into how colleges should approach “political and social action” on campus.
“A good university, like Socrates, will be upsetting…” it read. “The university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic…a university must sustain an extraordinary environment of freedom of inquiry and maintain an independence from political fashions, passions and pressures.”
In her own words, Ms Shafik added that the purpose of the university is, in part, to “encourage vigorous debate” among eager students who come “from different backgrounds and have different ways of looking at the world”.
“At a time of great divisions, the experience of reading and debating texts together creates the foundation for informed and enlightened citizens and leaders,” she added.
Reading that address now, it’s difficult not to compare it with her administration’s response to student protests at Columbia that peaked with the forcible removal of the Gaza solidarity encampment that sprang up on campus.
It’s known that Ms Shafik faced mounting pressure from donors and some student groups as anti-war protests broke out on campus shortly after the start of Israel’s military operation in Gaza. Israeli students and their allies claimed there was a rise in campus antisemitism, while Palestinian students and those involved in solidarity protests faced doxxing threats and career blacklisting.
Reports of the administration quelling student speech emerged almost as soon as the war began, though, and like many of my graduate colleagues at the journalism school and undergraduate peers on campus papers and radio, I had covered the protests throughout the school year.
In November, just over a week after the announcement of a new task force to combat antisemitism on campus, the university suspended the Columbia chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace following a walkout that attracted hundreds of students. The administration said it was an “unauthorised event”.
In December, Ms Shafik attended the Cop28 conference in Dubai, dodging a Congressional hearing on campus antisemitism that ended with the eventual resignations of her MIT and Harvard counterparts.
In January, there were allegations that protesting Columbia students had been sprayed with a hazardous chemical called “skunk”, a weapon that the Columbia Daily Spectator – a student newspaper – said had been developed in Israel and used for crowd control in the West Bank. Administrators’ initial response included a criticism of student organisers for holding an unauthorised rally.
Ms Shafik appeared in front of members of the US Congress for her own hearing in April, leading to her being accused by campaigners for academic freedom of throwing professors and students “under the bus”. Columbia’s Gaza solidarity encampment at Columbia sprang up soon after this.
In the early hours of April 18, a small group of students erected tents on one of the campus’s main lawns. By evening, Ms Shafik had called New York police officers to the campus for the first time in more than 50 years, a move that resulted in the arrests of more than 100 students. Officers later said the protesters had been peaceful and did not resist arrest.
The encampment then moved to the adjacent lawn — and garnered a much larger crowd of supporters — where it stayed for about two weeks. Students slept through cold, rainy nights, receiving donations of hot meals, blankets and sanitary products. Figures including Palestinian photojournalist Motaz Azaiza, US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, independent presidential candidate Cornel West, and activist Mohammed El-Kurd, made appearances and guest speeches throughout the encampment’s lifespan.
But after a series of failed negotiations between demonstrators and the administration, Columbia’s students embarked on a university protest tradition. Just after midnight on April 30, the anniversary of one of the most famed anti-Vietnam war student protests in the US, pro-Palestinian protesters occupied Hamilton Hall. From a balcony, students displayed a hand-painted banner reading “Hind’s Hall”, an effective renaming of the building in honour of Hind Rajab, a six-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israeli fire in Gaza.
After a first round of arrests, the administration sent the student community an email saying that “to bring back the NYPD at this time would be counterproductive”. The Hamilton Hall action lasted about 24 hours before Ms Shafik authorised another raid.
That night, heavily militarised units of the NYPD – frequently deployed to protests – entered our campus. They had only just arrived at Hamilton when they began moving the media away; I was one of a small group of student journalists ushered backwards into a dormitory and barricaded inside while the police arrested our peers.
We were kept away from any line of sight to Hamilton Hall while officers reportedly brutalised students during arrests. One fired a gun inside Hamilton Hall. By then, seemingly fruitless calls for Ms Shafik’s resignation had become all too familiar.
For many students on campus, it seems Ms Shafik’s legacy is not the one of diversity, respect, education and dialogue that she promised in autumn last year. She will be replaced, but the shadow of her handling of this historic protest movement will remain.