The Intercept
Administrators at Columbia University braced themselves over the weekend for planned citywide walkouts marking the one-year anniversary of the October 7 attacks in Israel and the start of the war on Gaza. In an email Sunday evening, a Columbia Law school administrator told professors to call campus security officers on protesters who did not heed requests to stop any disruptions in classrooms.
The administrator’s email instructed professors to give two warnings to “students or others who violate the Rules of University Conduct.” Afterward, professors and teaching assistants were told to call the campus Public Safety department if the students “involved in the disruption refuse to stop despite your request they do so” and “there is no immediate safety concern,” according to the email, which was obtained by The Intercept. The email referred to the instructions as “highly practical tips for addressing and de-escalating classroom disruptions.”
The email also instructed professors to call 911 “if the disruptive behavior is so severe that it poses an immediate threat to your safety or the safety of others.” Campus security officers are unarmed.
Columbia University emerged over the past year as a flashpoint of a renewed campus anti-war activism aimed at ending U.S. support for Israel’s assault on Gaza, as well as the war itself. After spreading to campuses across the country, the debate over the war has seen an unprecedented crackdown: thousands of arrests, brutal beatings of students and faculty by police, and existential questions about the limits of academic freedom when it comes to criticizing Israel.
Columbia administrators’ admonitions to students and orders to professors — including a second campuswide email warning that a planned walkout would violate school rules — underscore how, as the fighting in the Middle East continues to escalate, the clampdown on student and faculty activism against the war will continue apace.
Read more https://theintercept.com/2024/10/07/columbia-law-professors-protests-israel-gaza/
