“I did not become a university president to punish students.” 

— Minouche Shafik, President of Columbia University

Really, Ms. Shafik?!? Just since October, to refresh your memory, here’s some of what you’ve done:

• suspended Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace chapters
• banned protests not approved by the University administration¹ 
• imposed new restrictions on social media and other communications² 
• refused to come out forcefully against a “skunk chemical spray” attack which sickened pro-Palestinian protesters
• told students at a Listening Forum that saying “intifada” (uprising) is equivalent to using the N-word. 

Now Columbia University has taken its reactionary campaign of political suppression of those students and faculty standing with the Palestinian people in opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza to a whole new, fascistic level.³ 

On April 3, the University announced that it was suspending four students, banning them from campus, and evicting them from their University housing—with only 24 hours to clear out!

Their “crime”? They’d allegedly been part of a March 28 “Resistance 101” program on the situation in Gaza that the University hadn’t approved, a program which included a speaker who the university alleges is a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. (The speaker denies any affiliation with PFLP.)

Why should students even have to get permission to have a political discussion—especially at a moment when anyone with an ounce of humanity is duty-bound to act and speak out against the mass murder, torture, blatant war crimes and crimes against humanity and outright genocide Israel is carrying out in Gaza? 

These students should be applauded and celebrated for their courage and convictions. Instead, Columbia University treats them as criminals, hiring a firm led by “former law enforcement investigators”—i.e., pigs—to go after them. Then Columbia charged them (preliminarily) with “disruptive behavior, endangerment, violation of law, violation of University policy, and ‘failure to comply,’” according to the Columbia Spectator. “You may remain in your Columbia residence for 24 hours after which time your access to your residence and dining services will also be suspended,” the students were told.

“Columbia is making us homeless, taking away our campus jobs, our sole source of income, taking away our scholarships, our access to dining halls, our access to classrooms and education that we have earned,” one of the evicted students said at a rally on campus on Thursday, April 4. 

Another targeted student said, “I stand before you today as one of the six Columbia students unjustly and inhumanely suspended from Columbia as of 8 p.m. last night… I received 24-hour notice that I, a full-scholarship, federal-work-study receiving student with disabilities and housing accommodation, will be evicted from my University housing. This was all done with no hearing and no semblance of due process. Shame on Columbia.”

Who Are the World’s #1 Terrorists?

The University cited the U.S. government’s designation of the PFLP (Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine) as a “terrorist” organization as a key reason for going after participants in “Resistance 101.” But why should the U.S. government be able to dictate – or University administrations for that matter—which political forces students can and can’t hear and evaluate for themselves—or what students and faculty can say? Think about the precedent that would set.

By any reasonable definition, including the targeting of civilian non-combatants for political purposes, the U.S. government is the largest “terrorist organization” on the face of the earth. 

To take but one of many examples that could be cited, America’s 2001-2013 “war on terror” contributed to the deaths of some 4.5 million people across seven different countries!⁴  And right now, the U.S. is enabling its close ally and client Israel to carry out mass murder and to terrorize 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza and millions more in the occupied West Bank.  

In fact, Columbia University regularly hosts—and honors—leading imperialist and Zionist political figures who have directly helped carry out these bloody crimes. Why, it even has one on its faculty—Hillary Clinton—who, as U.S. Secretary of State in 2011, spearheaded an illegitimate military assault and coup that devastated Libya. She literally burst into laughter at hearing the news of the rape and lynching of Libya’s ousted leader, Muammar Qaddafi.⁵   

Going After Students for April 4 “All Out for Al-Shifa” Solidarity Protest 

No sooner had students been punished for their “Resistance 101” discussion than the University President, Shafik, announced on April 5 that the University was “in the process of identifying participants” in the April 4 “All Out for Al-Shifa” (the hospital under bombardment by Israel) solidarity protest.⁶ This was a courageous protest to stop an act of genocide in defiance of Columbia’s illegitimate bans on unauthorized protests.

Shafik warned that identified students “will face discipline under our policies” in a written statement, which illustrated how Columbia as an institution and its leadership are willing cogs in this U.S. imperialist death machine. In condemning recent unauthorized programs and protests, Shafik declared, “I want to make clear that it is absolutely unacceptable for any member of this community to promote the use of terror or violence.”⁷ Yet Shafik has refused to condemn—or even acknowledge—Israel’s wanton violence in Gaza! She wrote, “I realize that our campus has been deeply shaken by the war between Israel and Hamas, starting Oct. 7 with the horrific Hamas terrorist attack in Israel, and now unfolding as a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.” 

Think about that sentence. What Hamas did was “horrific,” but Israel’s deliberate killing of more than 32,000 Palestinians, overwhelmingly civilians, and its genocidal destruction of the homes, medical and food infrastructure of Gaza is euphemized as a “humanitarian crisis” for which she blames no one. 

What Rules Columbia? The Strategic Interests of U.S. Imperialism

Columbia University claims to uphold free speech, academic freedom, critical thinking and debate—including of unpopular ideas, which it calls a “vital interest” in its 2019 Rules of University Conduct: 

…fostering a climate in which nothing is immune from scrutiny. And Columbia, in particular, has a long tradition of valuing dissent and controversy and in welcoming the clash of opinions onto the campus. To be true to these principles, the University cannot and will not rule any subject or form of expression out of order on the ground that it is objectionable, offensive, immoral, or untrue.

All this goes out the window when U.S. imperialism’s strategic interests are at stake—and they’re definitely at stake when it comes to Israel and its role as a key pillar of U.S. power, especially at this moment of rising regional and global challenges to its domination of the Middle East. There may be a “Palestine exception” when it comes to speech and activism, but there’s no “exception” to U.S. imperialism fighting to maintain its position as dominant exploiter and oppressor in the world—even if it means arming a massive genocide in Gaza and attempting to stomp out opposition to it.

As the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian highlights in his social media dispatch Revolution #17:

...there is the vicious repression being brought down against people protesting the genocide in Palestine carried out by Israel, with the full backing of the U.S. government and both ruling class political parties (Democrat and Republican). Colleges, and especially "elite" universities, have been a focus of this repression—repression which has crudely violated supposed "rights of free speech" and "standards of academic freedom." Students and faculty have been targeted, and even university presidents have been driven out of their positions for failing to fully repress these protests.

Chilling Impact Even for Tenured Faculty

At a recent discussion of the Al Jazeera documentary The Palestine Exception, Columbia faculty members talked of how this climate of repression was impacting the faculty and the broader dangers it posed:

One anonymous faculty member said that they cannot say stop the violence in Gaza because “there’s no way that that would go well in my department.”

“I know of two instances where faculty members have bullied or tried to use institutional processes to bring consequences against other colleagues whose speech about Palestine and Israel that they don’t like,” [Prof. Joseph] Howley said.

“I think we realized that we are in great danger of losing not only free speech, but academic freedom,” [Prof. Rashid] Khalidi said.⁸ 

“Is This the End of Academic Freedom?”

This was the title of a New York Times opinion piece⁹ from two New York University professors who expressed similar fears, warning “we are in a moment of unparalleled repression,” in which university administrations aren’t protecting dissent, they’re suppressing it. They write, 

At universities across the country, any criticism of Israel’s policies, expressions of solidarity with Palestinians, organized calls for a ceasefire or even pedagogy on the recent history of the land have all emerged as perilous speech. In a letter to university presidents in November, the A.C.L.U. expressed concern about “impermissible chilling of free speech and association on campus” in relation to pro-Palestinian student groups and views; since then, the atmosphere at colleges has become downright McCarthyite.¹⁰ 

They warn, 

It is no wonder that students across the country are protesting an unpopular and brutal war that, besides Israel, only the United States is capable of stopping. It is extraordinary that the very institutions that ought to safeguard their exercise of free speech are instead escalating surveillance and policing, working on ever more restrictive student conduct rules and essentially risking the death of academic freedom.

From the Vietnam War to apartheid South Africa, universities have been important places for open discussion and disagreement about government policies, the historical record, structural racism and settler colonialism. They have also long served as sites of protest. If the university cannot serve as an arena for such freedoms, the possibilities of democratic life inside and outside the university gates are not only impoverished but under threat of extinction.

Why Is All This Happening?

As we wrote last week: 

Here, all those courageously standing up need to understand the very real power and significance of their actions—in the fight to stop this genocide, and what this could mean in the fight to overthrow the whole capitalist-imperialist system that is enforcing this genocide. To quote again from Bob Avakian: 

...representatives of the ruling class in this country have a definite sense that if youth especially at “elite” universities begin to seriously question and act against what this system is doing—if the system “loses the allegiance” of large numbers of those students—that can be a big factor in creating a real crisis for the system as a whole, as happened in the 1960s: a crisis that, now more than ever, this system really cannot afford, when the whole country is already being torn apart by deep divisions, with bitter clashes right among the ruling powers. So, at the same time as they are bitterly divided, the ruling powers of this country are firmly united in their determination to punish and intimidate especially students at elite universities who have stepped forward to protest the genocidal slaughter of Palestinians. The ruling class is desperate to prevent opposition to its fundamental interests from spreading and involving masses of people, from all parts of society.