A trip up Broadway recently showed that all was quiet at Columbia University’s main gate at 116th St. But the day before, the first day of classes on the Morningside Heights campus, there was a group of pro-Palestinian demonstrators outside the gate with signs and banners and that included shouts like “Say it loud, say it clear. We don’t want no Zionists here!”
But on that day, the protesters (be they students or not students) were gone. As were the police. But protests will resume, on and off campus, and Columbia’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, must do far better in maintaining an orderly and peaceful place of learning than her predecessor, Minouche Shafik.
Shafik’s fumbling over the protests stemming from the Gaza war that began with the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and Israel’s pursuit of Hamas led to her quitting after barely a year on the job.
If the chants at Columbia on Tuesday were “Jews get out!” or “No Israelis wanted!,” instead of aimed at “Zionists,” the language would have violated the university’s code of conduct against intimidation or harassment of others on campus, that is, Jews and Israelis. As Brian Cohen, executive director of the Columbia Hillel, said, “With the vast majority of Jews believing in the right for Jewish self-determination, we know what is being implied” by using the term “Zionists.”
Cohen asks, correctly, why doesn’t Columbia implement the same policy that New York University just did that prohibits discrimination or harassment against Zionists?
Antisemites on the right and the left use the word “Zionist” instead of “Jew” but the meaning and the hate is the same. Armstrong should get Columbia to follow NYU and bar the Z-word from being used as a weapon against Jews and Israelis.
Protesting over the actions of Israel’s government or the Israel Defense Forces or the policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is allowed on campus downtown at NYU and uptown at Columbia. Indeed, there are huge protests against Netanyahu going on right now in Israel, with hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets.
What isn’t allowed on campus is creating an atmosphere of fear for others on campus, be they women, Blacks, Latinos, Asians, gays, Palestinians, Muslims, Arabs as well as Jews and Israelis. A Columbia faculty Task Force on Antisemitism report published last week found exactly that: Jews and Israelis on campus feeling threatened by some of the anti-Israel protests during the last academic year.
Columbia’s code of conduct is to protect everyone’s rights as members of the university community to study and debate. Intimidation, harassment, fear and threats are not part of that. Of course, the First Amendment rights of students continue, as the government cannot interfere with how people choose to speak, but when joining the university community, each student or faculty member has to accept the code of behavior meant to foster a learning environment.
Believe it or not, most students at NYU and Columbia actually want to get college educations and not engage in protest.
