Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, whose daughter was among the students arrested at a Columbia University protest encampment against Israel’s actions in Gaza, suggested while visiting the protesters on campus last week that some Jewish students supported genocide. Ms. Omar, a Democrat, was rejecting the argument that the protests were antisemitic, noting that many of […]
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Columbia University has given students until 2 p.m. on Monday to clear out from the pro-Palestinian encampment that has occupied a central lawn on its campus for nearly two weeks, warning them that they will face immediate suspension if they do not leave by then. The move is an attempt to clear the encampment without […]
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The past week has seen a growing wave of protest encampments and other demonstrations on university campuses across the United States, many of which have been met by mass arrests and other forceful police actions, as well as intense media scrutiny. And the demonstrations continue to spread. But campus protests overseas have been sporadic and […]
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Columbia University’s senate voted on Friday to approve a resolution that called for an investigation into the school’s leadership, accusing the administration of violating established protocols, undermining academic freedom, jeopardizing free inquiry and breaching the due process rights of both students and professors. The university’s president, Nemat Shafik, has been under attack for her decision […]
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A wave of pro-Palestinian protests spread and intensified on Wednesday as students gathered on campuses around the country, in some cases facing off with the police, in a widening showdown over campus speech and the war in Gaza. University administrators from Texas to California moved to clear protesters and prevent encampments from taking hold on […]
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April 24, 2024, 12:24 p.m. ET April 24, 2024, 12:24 p.m. ET Nemat Shafik, the president of Columbia University, at a House hearing last week.Credit…Amanda Andrade-Rhoades for The New York Times Columbia University’s president, Nemat Shafik, assured Congress last week that her administration was committed to taking serious action against antisemitism on campus, including by […]
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Columbia University set a midnight deadline late on Tuesday for an encampment of student protesters to disband, after which New York City police could be sent in to clear the grounds and make arrests. In an email to the university two hours before midnight, Columbia’s president, Nemat Shafik, said university administrators were in talks with […]
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Just after 2 p.m. last Wednesday, Nemat Shafik, the president of Columbia University, stepped out of an office building on Capitol Hill and into an idling black SUV. She had just endured an intense grilling by a congressional committee investigating antisemitism on elite college campuses. Now, a fresh challenge was rapidly building back on her […]
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Columbia University will offer students the option of attending classes remotely for the last few days of the semester, a reflection of how days of tumult have unsettled the campus. After the arrests of more than 100 student protesters last week, student activists were undeterred, setting up large new encampments on the university’s lawns. Dozens […]
Read More Columbia University will offer students the option of attending classes remotely for the last few days of the semester, a reflection of how days of tumult have unsettled the campus. After the arrests of more than 100 student protesters last week, student activists were undeterred, setting up a large new encampment on the university’s lawn. […]
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At New York University, the police swept in to arrest protesting students on Monday night, ending a standoff with the school’s administration. At Yale, the police placed protesters’ wrists into zip ties on Monday morning and escorted them onto campus shuttles to receive summonses for trespassing. Columbia kept its classroom doors closed on Monday, moving […]
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In February, Nemat Shafik, the president of Columbia University, told the school’s senate that she sensed a “low level of trust” in the administration. There was a feeling, Dr. Shafik said, that “the administration is the enemy,” according to the minutes of her meeting with the senate. If the campus distrusted Dr. Shafik two months […]
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Columbia University is grappling with the fallout from its president’s promise to Congress that she would crack down on unsanctioned protests, and her decision to ask the police to clear an encampment on campus. Demonstrations just outside Columbia’s gates, which are currently closed to the public, took an especially dark tone over the weekend, when […]
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Days after Columbia University’s president testified before Congress, the atmosphere on campus remained fraught on Sunday, shaken by pro-Palestinian protests that have drawn the attention of the police and the concern of some Jewish students. Over the weekend, the student-led demonstrations on campus also attracted separate, more agitated protests by demonstrators who seemed to be […]
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Many of the more than 100 Columbia University and Barnard College students who were arrested after refusing to leave a pro-Palestinian encampment on campus on Thursday woke up to a chilly new reality this week: Columbia said that their IDs would soon stop working, and some of them would not be able to finish the […]
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As a journalist, you usually go to the front line to find the news. But sometimes the front line finds you. This happened to me not once but twice on Thursday, as an epic battle over freedom of expression on college campuses unfolded from one end of Manhattan to another. The first was when I […]
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The president of Columbia University, Nemat Shafik, is grappling with the fallout over her handling of student protests against the war in Gaza. After appearing in a congressional hearing where many Republican lawmakers criticized the university’s efforts to quash antisemitism on campus, the school called in local law enforcement for the first time in decades […]
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Dozens of student protesters at Columbia University gathered outside early Friday afternoon, just across from where their tent encampment had been demolished by university officials the day before. Some students had been there through the night. Others, including a few who had been arrested Thursday, had only recently arrived. There were heaps of blankets, deliveries […]
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For about a day and a half, pro-Palestinian activists at Columbia University set up what they called a “Liberated Zone,” a temporary community with the spirit and values they wished existed on campus always. It was an impromptu tent village, with more than 50 tents, pitched on a large green lawn just outside the school’s […]
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Columbia’s exceptionally poised president, Nemat Shafik, clearly has no intention of going down like the former heads of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, both driven from their jobs following disastrous appearances before a congressional committee investigating campus antisemitism. Testifying before the same panel on Wednesday, she readily agreed with Republicans’ premise that pro-Palestinian activism […]
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The president of Columbia said the university had suspended 15 students. She promised that one visiting professor “will never work at Columbia again.” And when she was grilled over whether she would remove another professor from his leadership position, she appeared to make a decision right there on Capitol Hill: “I think I would, yes.” […]
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Representative Elise Stefanik leaned into the microphone and volleyed a series of questions at the university president sitting in front of her. It was about three hours into a congressional hearing examining antisemitism at Columbia University, and the president, Nemat Shafik, paused, sighed and gave a nervous laugh. Ms. Stefanik had asked whether the university […]
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Representative Elise Stefanik leaned into the microphone and volleyed a series of questions at the university president sitting in front of her. It was about three hours into a congressional hearing examining antisemitism at Columbia University, and the president, Nemat Shafik, paused, sighed and gave a nervous laugh. Ms. Stefanik had asked whether the university […]
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Four Columbia University officials, including the university’s president and the leaders of its board, went before Congress on Wednesday to try to extinguish criticism that the campus in New York has become a hub of antisemitic behavior and thought. Over more than three hours, the Columbia leaders appeared to avoid the kind of caustic, viral […]
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Several Columbia faculty members — and particularly their apparent pro-Palestinian stances — were in the spotlight at Wednesday’s hearing. One of the professors, the focus of Representative Tim Walberg’s questioning, was Joseph Andoni Massad. Dr. Massad, who is of Palestinian Christian descent, teaches modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia, where he also received […]
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Nemat Shafik, the president of Columbia University, will face a group of House Republicans on Wednesday who have accused the school of allowing a pervasive pattern of antisemitic assaults, harassment and vandalism on campus since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel. Columbia and Dr. Shafik have had months to prepare for this hearing, and […]
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Virginia Foxx, the Republican congresswoman from North Carolina, has spent the last few months giving elite schools a hard time. As the chairwoman of the House committee on education, she oversaw a tense hearing in December that spurred the resignations of the presidents of University of Pennsylvania and Harvard. She has led an investigation of […]
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Four months after an explosive congressional hearing on antisemitism precipitated the resignations of two Ivy League presidents, another university president is about to step to the hot seat. On Wednesday, Columbia’s president, Nemat Shafik, will testify about antisemitism before the same House committee that grilled the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard and the […]
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