Columbia University senate to examine administration amid campus protests (2024)

“In the end, many of us were not yet ready to use the words ‘censure’ and ‘no confidence.’ Others were ready to use these words,” Jeanine D’Armiento, a professor of medicine in anesthesiology and chair of the executive committee of the senate said in a statement. The statement said the group wanted to “communicate to the Trustees that what the administration they oversee has been doing is not working and their approach must change.”

Shafik has faced scrutiny from many corners, including calls to resign from House Speaker Mike Johnson (La.) and other Republicans. Columbia’s Board of Trustees, meanwhile, has offered its strong support of the president.

The outcome of the senate’s meeting, which was attended by hundreds who joined via Zoom, reflected the wide range of views on campus as people struggle to reconcile complicated and emotional views on the Israel-Gaza war, concerns about antisemitism and fast-moving events. The group is planning to meet again next month, D’Armiento said.

“It’s only one week since our students were arrested, and it is actually too soon to make a judgment on that without reviewing what has happened over the entire eight months,” she said. “That doesn’t mean we couldn’t do it in the future.” But any decision, she said, requires information and a thoughtful process.

“When the going gets tough,” said James Applegate, an astronomy professor who is part of the executive committee of the Columbia University senate, “academics form a committee. That’s what we did.”

In response to the senate’s vote, a university spokesman on Friday evening released a statement saying “the administration and Senate share the same goal of restoring calm to campus so everyone can pursue their educational activities.”

Columbia’s protests have reverberated nationally, with encampments formed in solidarity, and crackdowns on protesters upending some campuses with hundreds of arrests in recent days. The demonstrations have highlighted stark divisions at many schools, and left administrators struggling to restore calm in the days and weeks before commencement.

In Boston, Emerson College’s student government called for President Jay Bernhardt’s immediate resignation in a unanimous vote of no confidence Friday afternoon, a day after Bernhardt expressed regret for police actions against the students. More than 100 demonstrators were arrested on campus Thursday in what some students said were physical encounters.

Bernhardt’s email to the campus later “failed to adequately acknowledge the damage these events have caused to the arrested students as well as the Emerson community,” the student government resolution read.

Arrests were made at more campuses across the country Thursday night into Friday.

Police broke up a protest at Ohio State University, school spokesperson Ben Johnson said, and those who refused to leave were arrested and charged with criminal trespass. He said he couldn’t provide the number of arrests.

At Indiana University, police arrested 34 protesters, including 28 who were affiliated with the university, according to Hannah M. Skibba, a spokesperson with the university’s public safety department. Charges included trespassing, resisting law enforcement and battery on a public safety official, and she said the school-affiliated protesters are now barred from university grounds for a year, including dorms.

Protests also led to arrests at Oklahoma State University, Arizona State University and the Auraria Campus in Denver, which houses the University of Colorado and two other schools.

At Columbia, protests continued more than a week after the arrests of more than 100 people.

There was more activity around the encampment on Friday, and some ugly, even violent chants — including “Yea, Hamas, give ’em hell” — began midafternoon.

Leaders of the student groups propelling the divestment activism said they couldn’t confirm or deny those words. They were already dealing with a different issue of the day stemming from incendiary remarks uttered by one of their own earlier this year.

“Zionists don’t deserve to live,” Khymani James said in the video clip, which resurfaced Thursday and drew condemnation from the White House.

Early Friday, the Columbia junior posted an apology on X, saying that “every member of our community deserves to feel safe without qualification.”

Late in the day, Columbia University Apartheid Divest issued a statement saying James’s words in January “do not reflect his views, our values, nor the encampment’s community agreements. … We are students with a right to learn and grow.” James has been speaking all week at the daily media briefings but was not visible at Friday’s briefing. For its part, CUAD said that “Khymani is not a spokesperson and never was.”

When asked about James on Friday night, Ben Chang, a university spokesman, said the student had been banned from campus.

The university’s handling of protests has been under the microscope in the days since Shafik testified earlier this month before a House committee investigating antisemitism on several campuses. Along with three other Columbia leaders, she spent hours answering a barrage of questions from lawmakers about what the school had done to combat antisemitism.

At a December hearing, three university presidents shocked many listeners when they repeatedly declined to say that calls for the genocide of Jews would violate their campus policies. The presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University resigned within weeks of their testimony, and some lawmakers said in recent days that Shafik should resign as well.

Meanwhile, in the pre-dawn hours before the April 17 hearing began, pro-Palestinian protesters were putting up tents at the center of Columbia’s Morningside campus in an unauthorized demonstration.

The next day, the university called in the New York Police Department. Shafik, in a letter to the police, said the actions of the protesters were violating university rules, including interfering with the operation of the university, refusing to identify themselves, refusing to disperse and damaging campus property.

Many faculty members, students and others viewed it as overly aggressive and antithetical to the university’s support of freedom of expression.

At Columbia, criticism spread on multiple fronts in recent days, including from student activists, alumni and lawmakers. Johnson, the House speaker, stood on the steps of the school’s administration building on Wednesday and called for Shafik to resign.

Later that day, the university’s Board of Trustees issued a statement of support for Shafik. The president pledged to always take a thoughtful approach to resolving conflict, the board wrote, and “balancing the disparate voices that make up a vibrant campus like Columbia’s, while taking a firm stance against hatred, harassment, and discrimination. That’s exactly what she’s doing now.”

On Friday, university senators discussed recent administrative actions and vented their frustrations, but avoided a formal action expressing harsh criticism, according to several senators.

Applegate said it was a chance for people to “step back and say we don’t want to blow the place up just yet.”

Ben Orlove, an anthropologist at Columbia, said, “This is a highly charged environment. You could read this as kicking the can down the road, but I don’t think so. The knives are out. And in these tense times, it’s really a statement of the resilience of the university.”

Meanwhile, the academic year is winding to a close. With the tents still in place and demonstrations continuing at the center of campus, negotiations continue between protesters and the administration. For several days, a small group of faculty, administrators and University Senators has been talking with student organizers “to discuss the basis for dismantling the encampment, dispersing, and following University policies going forward,” the university announced in a campuswide email Thursday night. “We have our demands; they have theirs. A formal process is underway and continues.”