The new semester at Columbia University begins on September 3, but some professors are already concerned that chaotic protests will continue for another semester after activist groups vowed to “come back.”
The upcoming semester has also become even more uncertain with news Wednesday that President Minouche Shafik will step down and be replaced by Interim President Katrina Armstrong.
Last spring, noisy protests, illegal camping and the occupation of Hamilton Hall led to classes being made remote and final exams and graduation ceremonies being canceled.
Minouche Shafik said in a July statement that the university was undertaking “community-building” efforts to ease tensions, including setting up new orientation programs, facilitating negotiations between activist groups and clarifying school rules.
But some professors who saw protests escalate last spring worry that history could repeat itself. The Washington Post spoke to three of them.
“I spend a lot of time worrying.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if things are just as bad when the semester starts,” Cliff Stein, a computer scientist and industrial engineering professor, told The Post. “This is very upsetting. [antisemitism] “I spend a lot of time worrying about that on my campus, in the world I live in.”
Stein, who did not teach classes last semester but was director of the campus’s Data Science Institute, said her work was “severely disrupted” when Columbia University closed the campus to all non-essential employees following the Hamilton Hall siege on April 30. Stein, who has taught at the school for 23 years, said her work was “severely disrupted.”
“It was especially upsetting when people were standing outside my building yelling slogans that could be interpreted as calls for violence,” he said. “I felt intimidated and threatened.”
He said the protests had also made academic life impossible for people like a visiting teacher he hosted from Germany, who was unable to physically enter the campus because of the lockdown.
“She traveled across the world with her family to attend Columbia University, so she couldn’t get on campus,” Stein said. “Why would protesters block that? This has nothing to do with bringing peace to the Middle East.”
Stein said he has spoken to many staff members who feel the same way he does about the unrest on campus. “There is actually a minority of faculty and students who side with the protesters. I think the silent majority is being hijacked by the minority.”
He said Armstrong’s interim appointment offered a ray of hope after Shafiq’s failure: “I think she has a tough road ahead, but it gives me hope that things might be better this year, both in terms of enforcement of the rules and messaging from the president.”
“Jewish students feel uncomfortable.”
“What’s going on here is disturbing to Jewish students,” Elliot Glassman, an adjunct professor of architecture, told The Post. “It’s disturbing that our institution and our academic discipline have been hijacked in a way that just demonizes certain sides, rather than pursuing thoughtful solutions.”
Glassman, a practicing architect, taught his first class at Columbia University last fall.
“The beginning of the semester was going well, but then October 7 happened and it was a complete shock,” he recalled. “It was hard to look anywhere without seeing dozens of pro-Palestinian posters, some of them very inflammatory.”
Glassman was especially upset about the lectures. Organized by the School of Architectureon settler colonialism.
“It infuriated me, not just as a Jew, but as a scholar, because it had absolutely no bearing on what we should be teaching our students,” he said. “What does it have to do with architecture, other than being inflammatory and wrong?”
He said he has seen the value of a Columbia education diminish, and many Jewish students have confided in him that protests on campus have made them feel unwelcome.
“This cannot be tolerated against any other group,” Glassman said. “We cannot ignore this. We need to speak out now, before things return to normal. I worry that this will impact the aspirations of current and even future students who want to attend Columbia.”
As the new semester approaches, Glassman said he is concerned that “there will be too much activity on campus and the environment will become even more hostile.” [protesters have] We spent time planning and strategizing what we could do next to make the atmosphere even more uncomfortable and to create a distraction.”
And he places as much blame on schools as on protesters: “If schools were doing their jobs properly, activists wouldn’t be constantly testing the boundaries and moving the goalposts.”
Tom Hayes: ‘I’m concerned about student safety’
Tom Hayes said he was “not surprised” that Shafik had resigned as president of Columbia University. “Next semester is going to be awful. It could be career-ending. She’s wise to step down while she can.”
The assistant professor of pediatrics added that while he doesn’t know much about Armstrong, he’s “by no means optimistic” about the upcoming semester.
Part of the problem, he said, is that the school administration had the nerve to not acknowledge the situation.
“What was really shocking was there was no discussion at the medical center,” he said.
“Columbia is a place that has really spoken out about social justice since the George Floyd incident and after every election. We often get emails from the department level about how we address racism, bias and social justice as physicians, but what struck me after October 7 was that it was a bit awkward and like, ‘Let’s not talk about this.'”
“There were literally people who were preaching that silence is violence, and since Oct. 7, we’ve been silent,” said Hayes, a neonatologist who specializes in neonatal intensive care.
The students’ video went viral, kicked out of protest camp Hayes, who is Jewish, is concerned that they are being suspected of being “Zionists” and is “very concerned about the safety of our students” going into the upcoming semester.
