For about a week, every morning at dawn, I have been coasting the tent camp erected by students on the west side of the lawn in front of Columbia University’s Butler Library. The east lawn was cleared 24 hours before the birth of this one, about 10 days ago, after the New York police, called to intervene by the new President of ColumbiaDr. Nemat Shafik (or “Minouche,” as she prefers to be called) has arrested more than 100 students. For reasons of security and public order, access to the camp has been restricted for several days only to those who have a university badge.
At that time the campus is still more desolate than usual, the air is fresh in the morning and warms up quickly when the sun appears. At the edges of the tent camp there are sleepy students wrapped in multiple blankets. They are there to make sure that no one can infiltrate and create disorder or carry out dangerous acts. Their faces are covered, it’s difficult to recognize them. Anyone could be one of my students. The field is tidy, clean, incredibly organised. Silent. Some students sit cross-legged towards the sun, meditating. Others, lazily walk towards the food station with puffy eyes from a sleepless night. Nobody smokes in the camp, nobody litters.
Everything is organized and respected. After mediations of the days spent between Columbia and the students, the latter managed to convince the administration to Don’t call the police in exchange for opening the tent camp to everyone and the firm expulsion of those who are responsible for actions or words that incite violence and which have no place in any civil society. Despite the calm, one senses one subtle tension but present, not knowing if and when the police will return for clear them out and arrest them.
Much has changed since the beginning of the protest and it is important, therefore, to offer a brief chronology of events. The demonstrations were born from a request from a large group of students – members of about 100 student organizations at Columbia – to divest from those companies or businesses in Israel related to the war in Palestine. Columbia rejected the young people’s request, stating, among other things, that there was no evidence that the rest of the students and professors agreed and that, furthermore, this could not be ascertained by denying the students’ request.
Following the first occupation, with the students expelled and arrested within 24 hours of the start of the protest, the day after Minouche Shafik had received strong criticism from the US Congressional Education Committee on her ability to protect the Jewish community at Columbia University, which felt threatened by recent incidents of anti-Semitism and violence on the university campus.
The second occupation, the one that continues today, arose spontaneously soon after the arrests of the first. At first a pair of pale tents were pitched, soon removed in exchange for the stay in the camp – perhaps it was hoped that they would get tired in the cold night. But after a couple of days some students pitched new tents, justifying themselves through the rumor that the action had been authorized by Columbia. In reality, there has never been confirmation and, to date, they are counting more than 50 tents in a rectangle of grass approximately twenty by fifty metres.
Meanwhile, outside the walls of Columbia, protesters gathered and threw slogans with unrepeatable phrases, inadmissible from a moral and civil point of view. I have personally witnessed such demonstrations and did not see none of the tent camp students participate in it. However, different media channels have begun to merge the different stories, no longer trying to reconstruct the puzzle of events – onerous work given the complicated nature of them and their interrelationships – but trying to create a premeditated image searching among the multitude of “pieces” available from social media and modern information.
Even great exponents of American politics made time for the occasion, also attracted by the events try to gather consensus among voters, during a delicate year and almost in the middle of the electoral campaign for the presidentiallike the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson (Republican), who called for the President’s resignation in the shadow of Columbia’s alma mater, on the historic steps where, less than a year ago, Minouche Shafik officially took office. L’peak of tension it was achieved a few days ago, with a demonstration outside Columbia organized by the far right and during which several people tried to climb over the University gates.
They participated in the event leading exponents of far-right groups such as, for example, i Proud Boys – neo-fascist militant group founded by Gavin McInnes, seen near Columbia camp tents taking photos just the day before, people proudly waving signs with swastikas and flags of paramilitary organizations from the 1940s (LEHI) in plain sight. All this contributed to increase confusion on the students’ message, which is, in fact, transformed into the sounds of an orchestra that is more reminiscent of a twelve-tone piece that the clear voice of the students.
The powers at play are enormousperhaps too large to have immediate repercussions, but they can change the structure of relations between academia and politics, like a tsunami that arrives silently from afar. Political power is tending to exploit the voice of Columbia students, also to make inroads into the system of American liberal universities, such as Columbia, arguing that Minouche Shafik is no longer capable of check the situation.
During the events of the first occupation, the president is accused of having committed a series of very serious errors: Columbia’s statute, in fact, provides that the President cannot call the police on campus if such a move is not approved by the Senate Executive Committee. Before the eviction, Minouch Shafik actually convened the committee, which expressed its opinion against the use of the police. However, the president decided to go ahead anyway, violating the protocol.
Others charges brought forward by the Senate a couple of days ago, in a session in which the establishment of a task force For to investigate his behavior, consists of revealing details about the names of professors and students under investigation at Columbia during his testimony to Congress – violating the right to privacy and official secrecy -, the use of private investigators who have intimidated and spied on students and the ratification of the code of disciplinary behavior applied to demonstrations, moving it from the rules regulating events on campus under the aegis of the code of conduct, introducing and applying disciplinary sanctions without the consent of the Senate.
The students’ requests are difficult for the Columbia administration to implement, even if it wanted to. In addition to financial disinvestmentstudents are demanding more transparency and the remission of disciplinary sanctions imposed on first-time students. The university, in fact, manages assets for over 10 billion dollars and has an annual operating budget of more than two billion dollars. According to some it is, therefore, practically impossible to accommodate the students’ request, given the complex system of offshore companies and other financial mechanisms that Columbia uses.
As negotiations between Columbia and student representatives continue, students are doing what they can to study for final tests which they will have to support very soon, moving between the tents and the rooms of the library next to the camp. Study, learn, deepen, dream of new horizons. These are traits common to the students I have met at Columbia over the years, regardless of where they come from, their language, their religion. In a touching act political intelligenceduring the visit of the Representative of the House, some professors of different religions and the students of the tent camp gathered for some lessons on anti-Semitism and the history of the conflict between Israel and Palestine.
This is the message that the university must and wants to send: without dialogue there is no growth. Some might be led to think that students are reckless, young, carefree. Real. But that doesn’t deny them the right to demonstrate peacefully their dissent towards an institution that is, directly or indirectly, responsible for the death of innocent civilians, regardless of flag or geography. After the first events in which the police were hastily called to the field at evict the “dangerous” students – who according to the New York police chief did not represent a danger as described by Minouch Shafik – the situation is less tense.
There is no doubt that this is due to an operation that involves many fronts at an administrative and political level who are working hard because students continue their fight without the intervention of the police and the delicate diplomatic work necessary in these cases. However, Minouche Shafik’s message this morning leaves little hope for dialogue: «Although the university will not divest from Israel, we are ready to develop an accelerated timeline for the examination of new proposals of students by Columbia’s Socially Responsible Investment Advisory Committee, the body that considers divestment issues. The university also offered to publish a process for students to access a list of Columbia’s direct investment holdings and to increase the frequency of updates to that list of holdings, to convene a faculty committee to address the issue from the academic freedom and to invest in health and education in Gaza, including support for early childhood development and support for displaced scholars.”
The text concludes: «For all the above reasons, we invite those in the camp to voluntarily disperse». At 5pm Eastern time, Columbia announced the suspension of those who had been in the camp since 2pm. They will not be able to graduate and they will not be able to take the exams. In the evening, the situation appears calm with the students suspended in the camp waiting for eviction, probably by the New York police. Groups of teachers will take turns to make sure there is always someone there, even at night, to witness any violence or abuse, should they happen. Let’s hope for the best, especially for the students, their safety, their rights and why the deaths of innocent civilians end as soon as possibleeverywhere.
