Columbia president Minouche Shafik urges ‘soul searching’ after anti-Israel campus protests
NY Post
Columbia University president Minouche Shafik urged other university higher-ups to “engage in serious soul searching” over the fallout from the campus protests in a new op-ed about campus free speech.
“We must do a better job of defining the boundaries between the free speech rights of one part of our community and the rights of others to be educated in a place free of discrimination and harassment,” Shafik, 61, wrote in the Financial Times.
Shafik — who was appointed as Columbia’s 20th president in July 2023, and was formally inaugurated just three days before the Hamas terror attack — had made headlines for several weeks as the Morningside Heights campus became ground zero for a wave of anti-Israel tent encampments.
In the new op-ed, Shafik claimed that the majority of the campus activists are “passionate, intelligent and committed” — and blamed the chaos and hateful rhetoric on “the actions and antisemitic comments of some.”
The first tent encampment emerged on a Columbia lawn in mid-April, on the same day that Shafik delivered flaky testimony on campus antisemitism before the House Education and Workforce Committee.
During the height of the protests, Shafik faced serious scrutiny — and even calls to resign — from both sides of the political aisle when she initially appeared to cave to the protesters.
“The right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances,” is guaranteed right at the top of the First Amendment, but the folks in charge of The Washington Post see such action as profoundly sinister if the “wrong” people do it, or perhaps the paper’s problem is with association and communication for the wrong causes.