Departure of Columbia University President Opens More Space For Freedom Of Speech & Expression
Emeritus Professor Tan Sri Dato' Dzulkifli Abdul Razak
Opinion - Bacalah Malaysia
August 22, 2024
As the Palestinian genocide approaches the 11th month of ceaseless massacre of the innocent, university campuses in the US continue to be making headlines.
The latest highlight is the resignation of Columbia University president Nemat Talaat “Minouche” Shafik, mid-August, which was much welcomed by some students and professors.
In December last year, the president of the University of Pennsylvania voluntarily tendered her resignation, followed closely in January by Harvard’s first black president who faced similar criticism as her colleague.
Unlike her counterpart, the latter also came under intense scrutiny on alleged plagiarism in her doctoral dissertation submitted more than 25 years ago. Another person, the president of MIT, who was questioned at the same hearing was somehow spared from similar pressures. She however is said to be Jewish!
In the latest incident, Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine said that after months of chanting “Minouche Shafik you can’t hide,” she had “finally got the memo.”
“To be clear, any future president who does not pay heed to the Columbia student body’s overwhelming demand for divestment will end up exactly as President Shafik did,” the group wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Meanwhile, the university’s chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace said on X that Columbia students “will never forget the sheer violence unleashed upon us by Minouche Shafik, and we will not be placated by her removal as the university’s repression of the pro-Palestinian student movement continues.”
Reportedly, she resigned from her position after a tumultuous short tenure, beginning July 2023 as the 20th president that saw her face heavy criticism over her alleged handling of student protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.
When Shafik authorised the police to sweep the encampment and arrest more than 100 pro-Palestinian students on April 18, things came to a hilt.
The move further inspired similar protests at university campuses nationwide resulting in thousands of arrests, some like Columbia also cracked down on campus protests by suspending students and cancelling classes.
In late April, police using riot gear were reported to storm a building occupied by protesters, forcefully arresting demonstrators, leading to violent crackdown and clashes with police.
The students set up a pro-Palestinian protest encampment (better known as “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” sit-in) at Columbia as a means to demand the university divest from companies they said were enabling the war in Gaza unabetted.
As such some saw her timely departure as “an opportunity for Columbia to reset, recommit to the basic values of academic freedom and free expression, and to stand firm against outside pressures intent on dismantling higher education in the US.”
Michael Thaddeus, a professor of mathematics at Columbia and the vice-president of Columbia of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), said support for Shafik from faculty and students “collapsed after the tumultuous events of last spring.”
This was evident from the faculty vote of no confidence spearheaded by the AAUP, which passed by a wide majority, he told Newsweek.
“It was equally clear from the poll of students conducted by New York Magazine and the Columbia Spectator, in which only 4 percent of those polled agreed that “her administration has handled the demonstrations well.” He added: “We at AAUP will continue to fight for academic values, including a commitment to free, robust, and untrammeled debate by faculty and students.”
In the same breath, Nadia Abu El-Haj, a professor of Anthropology at Columbia University and Barnard College and the co-director of the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia, said Shafik’s presidency “was an epic failure” with “no understanding of what a university is and zero commitments to its core values.” The former president was said to have left many pieces to be picked and the damage repaired.
Her actions in ordering the arrests were also criticised by Columbia College Student Council, while faculty denounced what it called an “unprecedented assault on student rights”.
Evidently, hundreds of Columbia professors staged a walkout and signed onto an open letter criticising her handling of the demonstrations.
Like the countless military strikes, the mass action organised by student-led coalition like the Columbia University Apartheid Divest, Students for Justice in Palestine, and Jewish Voice for Peace to insist that their demands are met, taking a life of their own!
They continue to gather protesting against the “continued financial investment in corporations that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide, and occupation in Palestine.”
There are many lessons that we can benefit from their overwhelming display of true courage in the fight for humanity. – BACALAHMALAYSIA.MY
- The writer is former Rector of the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM)