What really went down on Columbia campus as protest deadlines loomed — and passed — is shameful
Columbia University administrators seemed poised to take a brave stand against ongoing student protests Monday — and the💙n totally wimped out, ✃cowering in the face of student activists.
This morning, school president Minouche Shafik steadfastly that Columbia would notꦚ divest its endowment from Israel.
“The university will not divest from Israel,” Shafik c💧ourageously declared, while also acknowledging that negotiations to clear student protesters — who have been camped out on campus since April 17 — ꦑhad been unsuccessful.
Ball in her court, Shafik laid down a new 2 p.m. deadline for the “liberated zone” to empty and the camp to be dismantled.
But 🔯student protesters𒁏 — threatened with suspension if they failed to clear out on time — seemed dubious that the administration would really follow through. After all, there have already been multiple eviction deadlines that the school let pass without incident.
Little seemed to be going on in the camp in the morning and early afternoon hours. I saw bins full of fresh bed sheets and tampo♚ns, and buffet-style trays of food laid out for campers.
Around 𝓡1:30, campers formed a picket line and began marching around the encampment chanting, “Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest.”
Teaching staff, clad in orange vests with the word “Faculty” plastered on the back, gathered to stand guard near entrances to the encampment.
As the clock ticked ever closer to the deadline, I heard a student organizer on a megaphone vow that it will be “hard to disperse us” and declare: “We will not back down. We will not be moved unless by force.”
Follow The Post’s coverage of the pro-terror protests at colleges across the US:
- Tear gas sprayed at UCLA encampment as cops face off with anti-Israel protesters wielding fire extinguishers
- Stanford submits ‘deeply disturbing’ photo of campus anti-Israel protester wearing Hamas headband to FBI
- Iranian college offers free tuition to US students expelled for participating in anti-Israel protests: ‘Our people’
- MAP: US colleges where students have been arrested over anti-Israel protests
This was the moment for Columbia’s leadership to stand strong: Enforce school policies. Sweep the encampment.
Two p.m. came … and went. Nothing happened.
Campus security remained largely out of sight. While the NYPD reportedly were ready and waitinꦆg to help, they had no presꦛence on campus — something the university itself would have to authorize, as it is private property.
And so students continued to 🐻march well past 2 p.m., their faces still covered with keffiyeh to obscure their identities.
“Shafik ha🔯s blood on her hands,” one protester shouted.
Shafik, by the way, was nowhere to be seen.
“Globalize the intifada,” students chanted in unison. “From the river to the sea, Palestꦺine will be free.”
Meanwhile, the crowd outside campus gates — where protesters withoutಌ Columbia IDs have gathered for days, supposedly in sol𒀰idarity but seemingly to incite the kids inside to stay put — grew rowdier and rowdier.
꧋The stench of un-showered students and trays of food baking in the sun wafted over campus as student protesters screamed at the top of their lungs and helicopters hovered overhead: the furthest thing from an elite university in the mids🐟t of final exam season that you can imagine.
Marching continued until around 4 p.m., with student protesters slowly sputtering out under the heat of the sun. But hey, that’s the only heat they felt: They made it past yet another deadline with no repercussions.
By evening, the university finally began to suspend students who refused to leave — prohibiting their ability to come and go on campus. But the camp still stood, as if administrator❀s hoped that cutting off access to library bathrooms wouldꦯ make protesters pack it in.
In delayin💮g 🍌time and again, and attempting to appease both sides, Columbia has only pissed off everyone in the process.
The one brave thing Shafik has done was to clear the first encampment two Thursdays ago. One hundred-plus students were handcuffed by NYPD and amply warned they were in violation of campus policies𝓡 and resigned to the fate of being arrested.
But then the president let the c𝔉amp pop back up all over again — and did just about nothing to sไtop it.
Deadlines 💖came 🐼and went. Promises were made and never kept.
Other universities have handled this m🙈uch better — like Princeton, where students were practically as soon as they started pitching tents in the courtyard.
University leadership are responsible for the application of rules, with consistency and transparency. Columbia’s administration has done precisely the opposite.
And now, angry, emboldened student 📖protesters know t🌱hat the school is not good for its word.
