Columbia University’s new school year starts Sept. 3 — and some professors are already worried about another semester of chaotic protests, after activist groups have declared they “will be back.“
And with news on Wednesday that university president Minouche Shafik has stepped down to be replaced by interim president Katrina Armstrong, the next semester is even more uncertain.
Last spring, raucous protesting, an illegal encampment and an occupation of Hamilton Hall sent classes remote and upended final exams and the main commencement.
In a July statement, Minouche Shafik said the university is undertaking “community-building” efforts to quell the tensions — including setting up new orientation programs, facilitating negotiations between activist groups and clarifying school rules.
But some professors who saw the protests escalate last spring worry that history will repeat itself. The Post spoke to three:
‘I spend a lot of time worrying’
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“I won’t be surprised if things are just as bad when the semester starts,” said Cliff Stein, a computer scientist and a professor of industrial engineering, told The Post. “This is extremely upsetting…. I’m seeing [antisemitism] on my own campus, in the world I inhabit, and I spend a lot of time worrying about it.”
Although he was not teaching classes last semester, Stein was the Director of the Data Science Institute on campus. When Columbia moved to shutter campus to all non-essential staff following the occupation of Hamilton Hall on April 30, Stein, who has taught at the school for 23 years, said his work was “severely disrupted.”
“I found it particularly upsetting when people were standing outside my building chanting slogans that could be interpreted as calls for violence,” he said. “It felt intimidating and threatening.”
He said the protests also made academic life impossible for people like a visiting teacher he hosted from Germany — who could never actually access campus due to the lockdowns.
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“She couldn’t get on campus after picking up and moving her family across the world to spend time at Columbia,” Stein said. “Why are these protesters allowed to stop that? That has nothing to do with bringing peace to the Middle East.”
Stein said he has spoken to many staff members who feel the same way he does about the chaos on campus: “The number of faculty and students who are on the side of the protesters is actually small. I think the silent majority is being hijacked by a minority.”
He said that Armstrong’s interim appointment has sparked a glimmer of hope after Shafik’s failures: “I think she has a tough road ahead of her but it gives me hope that things may be better this year, both in the enforcement of rules and in the messaging that comes from the president.”
‘Jewish students feel uncomfortable’
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“What’s going on here is making Jewish students feel uncomfortable,” Elliot Glassman, an adjunct professor of architecture, told The Post. “It’s very unsettling how our school and academia could be hijacked, just demonizing one particular side as opposed to being thoughtful and solutions-oriented.”
Glassman, who is a practicing architect, taught his first class at Columbia last fall.
“I started off the semester fine, and then October 7th happened and obviously that was very traumatic,” he recalled. “I couldn’t look in any direction without seeing dozens of pro-Palestine posters, and some of them were very inflammatory.”
Glassman was particularly offended by lectures, hosted by the architecture school, about settler colonialism.
“I was more offended as an academic than as a Jew, because it really wasn’t anything to do with what we were supposed to be teaching the students,” he said. “Besides being inflammatory and incorrect, what does that have to do with architecture?”
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He said he’s watched the value of a Columbia education degrade ad hat many Jewish students have confided in him that the protests on campus made them feel unwelcome.
“This wouldn’t be tolerated really against any other group,” Glassman said. “It can’t go unchallenged. We have to call it out now before things get normalized. I worry about the impact on current students and even future students’ desires to attend Columbia.”
Going into the new school year, Glassman said, “the apprehension is that there’s going to be so many activities on campus that will make the environment even more hostile. I think [protesters have] spent time planning and strategizing what they can do next to make the atmosphere more uncomfortable and more distracting.”
And he puts the blame on the school as well as protesters: “If the administration was doing a proper job, the activists would not continuously be testing the boundaries and moving the goalposts.”
Tom Hays: ‘I’m concerned about the safety of students’
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Tom Hays is “not surprised” that Shafik stepped down as president of Columbia: “Next semester is going to be terrible. Potentially career-ending. She’s smart to get out while she can.”
The assistant professor of pediatrics added that, while he does not know much about Armstrong, he’s “definitely not more optimistic” about the upcoming semester.
Part of the problem, he said, was the school’s nervous refusal to acknowledge the situation.
“The really striking thing was the absence of discussion at the medical center,” he said.
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“Columbia — after George Floyd, after every election — it’s a place where they really wear social justice on their sleeves. There are often emails from the department level about how we’re going to be addressing racism or bias or social justice as physicians, and it’s just striking to me that after October 7th, it was kind of like an awkward, ‘Let’s not talk about this.’
“There were literally people who had preached that silence is violence, and now we’re being silent after October 7th,” said Hays, a neonatologist who specializes in newborn intensive care.
Seeing viral videos of students being pushed out of the protest encampment for being “Zionists” alarmed Hays, who is Jewish. Going into the next semester, “I’m very concerned about the safety of students.”
