After a day of protest and confusion on its Manhattan campus, Columbia University announced Monday evening that it had begun to suspend students who had not left a pro-Palestinian encampment by a 2 p.m. deadline.
The measure reflected the difficult balance Columbia administrators are seeking to strike as they try to avoid bringing the Police Department back to arrest those in the encampment, but also commit to the stance that the protest must end.
Students in the encampment, along with hundreds of supporters, had spent a tense afternoon rallying around the site in a show of force meant to deter the removal of its tents. But by 4 p.m., with no sign of police action, most of the protesters had begun to disperse, leaving only what appeared to be several dozen students and about 80 tents inside the encampment.
There is a difference from having to uphold a constitutional right by law or by principle of valuing the right.
Free speech is essential for universities as it creates the space in which scientific discourse and development can strife. This is also why autocratic governments always crack down on universities and then within a few years the quality of research and teaching goes down the drain.
By cracking down on students that were voicing their opinion Columbia declares that it does not want to be an university in that spirit anymore. It might not be a legal problem. But it is a complete moral failure.
W safety of some students cannot be comprised by granting other students their freedom.
On all the Universities were police was brought it, it escalated the situation. We saw evidence of a pro-Israel protestor committing to antisemitic hate speech in order to get the police to violently crackdown on the peaceful anti-genocide protest.
Meanwhile Jewish students and members of faculty from most campuses report that there was not threat towards them by the anti-genocide demonstrations
Bad timing on your end. The Colombia protestors just raided one of the halls and barricaded themselves in.
Tents on a lawn is one thing, even if they did nothing to silence the calls for hate among their ranks. Breaking (in the literal sense) into a building and causing damage is a whole level of escalation from the protestors. At what point do they shift into a violent riot?
Probably around the time when the pro Israeli groups start burning stuff and claim to be part of the protests
You got a source on that?
Only the daily news
So after police came in and violated people things escalated. You are confirming what i said.
Nah, you have it backwards. The protestors broke into a building, so police was sent to get them out. It would be the same outcome as if you decided to break into a building and lock yourself in.
The police raided the protest camp before. Stop playing the zionist game of “before the moment i say, nothing relevant happened!”
The zionist game? That’s been the main playbook of all the Hamas supporters. “What do you mean we fired thousands of rockets aim at civilians before the IDF came in here? They’re just trying to oppress our rights to self expression”
“an university” this is worse than nails on a chalkboard or the word “moist”
Was that the university that private the YouTube video saying protests were allowed on campus or was that another one?
Either way, universities love to pretend they’re bastions of activism until they actually have to be about it.