Simply after 2 p.m. final Wednesday, Nemat Shafik, the president of Columbia College, stepped out of an workplace constructing on Capitol Hill and into an idling black SUV.
She had simply endured an intense grilling by a congressional committee investigating antisemitism on elite faculty campuses. Now, a recent problem was quickly constructing again on her personal turf, the place pro-Palestinian scholar demonstrators had staked out an encampment dominating Columbia’s garden.
For a college attempting to reassure Congress that it was getting its campus beneath management, the timing might scarcely have been worse. With a slim window to behave, Dr. Shafik directed her automobile to a legislation agency close to the White Home, the place she arrange a makeshift command heart.
The secretive deliberations that adopted over 24 frantic hours have despatched Columbia right into a disaster over free speech and security not like any the campus has seen since 1968. The occasions additionally set off a sequence response rattling campuses throughout the nation, simply as one of the crucial attempting educational years in reminiscence neared its finish.
In idea, Dr. Shafik had a spread of choices to take care of the protests and shield Jewish college students; within the second, although, she noticed little selection, in line with three individuals who described the non-public discussions. Her testimony had pointed towards coming down onerous on the protesters.
Regardless of transient makes an attempt to barter with them and objections from key leaders on campus, Dr. Shafik ordered what she later conceded was an “extraordinary step.” She suspended the scholars and ordered New York Metropolis police in riot gear to arrest greater than 100 activists who refused to go away on Thursday afternoon.
However as an alternative of quelling the protests, Dr. Shafik’s resolution appeared to backfire. By this week, she was besieged on all sides.
College students protesters had been unbowed, and shortly the encampment had regrown to be even bigger than earlier than. Dr. Shafik’s personal school threatened to revolt over an “unprecedented assault on scholar rights.” A least one main Jewish donor lower off assist. And whereas the White Home voiced deep concern, the very Republican lawmakers she had got down to attraction to known as for her resignation.
“It’s probably the most vital check Columbia has confronted since its restoration from ’68,” stated Robert A. McCaughey, a longtime college professor who has written a historical past of Columbia, suggesting there have been actual questions whether or not Dr. Shafik, an Egyptian-born economist, might outlast it.
If the battle was dealt with badly, he added, it might additionally contribute to a rising “disaster of confidence” in universities as engines of social progress that put together future generations to confront the world’s most urgent challenges.
Columbia declined a request to interview Dr. Shafik.
However in a press release, a college spokeswoman stated the president had remained in “fixed contact” whereas she was in Washington, together with on calls that lasted till midnight. The spokeswoman, Samantha Slater, additionally stated Dr. Shafik was now targeted on “de-escalating the rancor” on campus.
Pupil demonstrations for the Palestinian trigger have turn out to be a continuing function of choose faculty campuses for the reason that Israel-Hamas battle broke out. Many activists, together with some Jewish college students who assist the motion, say they’re combating to protect human life in Gaza, the place native well being officers say greater than 30,000 folks have died, and to finish Israel’s oppression of Palestinians.
However demonstrations from the left have additionally included, at instances, antisemitic hate speech, threats and outright assist for Hamas. In latest days, nonstudent protesters gathered outdoors Columbia’s gates have used particularly vitriolic rhetoric that has left some Jewish college students feeling unsafe.
Now, with solely days of lessons left within the spring semester, neither aspect seems to have a transparent endgame. College leaders are counting the times till summer time, hoping to guard Could’s graduation ceremonies from disruption.
Columbia faces one of the crucial complicated balancing acts between defending college students on campus and respecting its deeply cherished dedication to educational freedom. The college is dwelling to massive Jewish and Arab scholar populations, and boasts a number one Center Japanese Research Division, a twin diploma program with Tel Aviv College and a wealthy historical past of scholar activism courting again to the Nineteen Sixties.
Dr. Shafik, a world finance knowledgeable with few prior connections to Columbia, has conceded the college was unprepared for the outpouring that adopted Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault. She had been ceremonially inaugurated simply days earlier than. However because the protests escalated, and the presidents of Harvard College and the College of Pennsylvania misplaced their jobs after botching their very own appearances earlier than Congress in December, she slowly started clamping down.
Within the fall, the college suspended two scholar teams, College students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, whose rolling protests repeatedly violated its insurance policies. This month, it suspended college students who it stated had been concerned in an occasion known as “Resistance 101,” the place audio system brazenly praised Hamas.
By the point she was known as to testify earlier than the Republican-led Home Committee on Training and the Work Power this month, it regarded as if Dr. Shafik may keep away from the destiny of the opposite Ivy League presidents focused by Congress.
Columbia spent months making ready for the listening to. Shailagh Murray, a former adviser to President Barack Obama who oversees the college’s public affairs workplace, recruited a big crew of attorneys, previous political palms and antisemitism specialists to prep Dr. Shafik. It included Dana Remus, President Biden’s former White Home counsel; Risa Heller, a disaster communications guru; former Republican congressional aides; and Philippe Reines, a longtime aide to Hillary Clinton.
Many crew members gathered within the Washington workplaces of the legislation agency, Covington & Burlington, starting the Saturday earlier than the listening to for mock testimony.
Dr. Shafik was decided to not make the identical errors as her Ivy League counterparts, in line with the folks acquainted with her preparation. The place their testimony got here off as haughty and convoluted, she wished to venture humility and competence.
The college handed the committee hundreds of pages of paperwork, together with delicate data that nearly by no means turn out to be public. They confirmed that Columbia had suspended greater than 15 college students and eliminated 5 professors from the classroom, together with at the very least three going through accusations that that they had made Jewish college students really feel unsafe.
Although her testimony on the disciplinary circumstances made supporters of educational freedom livid, the strategy appeared to work contained in the listening to room. Dr. Shafik defended free speech rights, however stated universities “can not and shouldn’t tolerate abuse of this privilege.”
Grudging Republicans largely accepted the solutions.
“Columbia beats Harvard and U Penn,” Consultant Aaron Bean, Republican of Florida, teased from the dais.
However as Dr. Shafik slowly dispatched one potential disaster, scholar organizers had been finishing up a plan to escalate their very own strain on the college.
Within the predawn hours earlier than Dr. Shafik’s scheduled testimony on Wednesday, dozens of scholars poured out of dorms and residences right into a grassy quad outdoors Columbia’s foremost library and pitched tents. When campus awoke, an indication posted on the garden introduced the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” brazenly defying guidelines governing demonstrations.
Columbia directors issued their first warning to contributors to disperse at 9:30 a.m., simply as Dr. Shafik was making ready to take the witness stand. However by the point she received again to Covington’s glass-walled workplaces to show her prep room right into a battle room, the scholars had not budged.
“The genocide in Gaza is just too insufferable for us to proceed to permit our college to disregard each single democratic try that we have now tried,” stated Maryam Alwan, an undergraduate who helped manage the demonstration.
Organizers stated they held hours of discussions with a senior college vice chairman to see if the 2 sides might discover an off-ramp. The scholars had been demanding the college divest from any monetary pursuits enriching Israel and grant amnesty for all activists beneath investigation for protest actions, amongst different calls for.
To some observers, although, it look as if either side had been extra serious about proving a degree than de-escalating.
“You had hard-heads on each ends who wished a confrontation,” stated Dr. James Applegate, a professor of astronomy and member of College Senate’s government committee. “They received what they wished.”
Dr. Shafik, in the meantime, started a sequence of calls with college deans, a few of whom nervous the college was continuing with out correct contingency plans. Round 5 p.m. on Wednesday, she formally notified the College Senate of her intention to name within the Police Division. Its government committee replied with express disapproval, Dr. Applegate stated.
The choice was destined to be fraught. Town’s law enforcement officials have not often been welcomed on campus for the reason that 1968 protests, after they helped violently take away college students occupying college buildings on the top of the antiwar motion.
However Dr. Shafik was adamant that the foundations be enforced. The police warned her the encampment would solely get tougher to root out the longer it lasted. And, with Congress and the Biden administration scrutinizing how Columbia was dealing with antisemitic threats, she had authorized considerations about failing to behave. She started making preparations for the police to reach the following day.
“I’ve decided that the encampment and associated disruptions pose a transparent and current hazard,” she wrote to the Police Division the following day.
On Wednesday night, Dr. Shafik didn’t head again to New York to be readily available when the police arrived, nonetheless. She determined to maintain a longstanding plan to attend a non-public dinner in Washington for the Bezos Earth Fund, in line with a college spokeswoman. Dr. Shafik ended up fielding so many calls that she by no means had time to eat, she stated.
Again on campus, simply earlier than the college’s ultimate deadline to disperse handed that night time, college students within the encampment gathered for a gathering. Closing their eyes for a secret poll, they had been requested for a present of palms if anybody wished to disband slightly than face repercussions.
Nobody raised a hand, in line with a scholar organizer who counted the votes.
Stephanie Saul and Maria Cramer contributed reporting.
