For a university that houses the most ostensibly prestigious school of journalism in the nation, Columbia seems to struggle oddly with the concept of the term “deadline.” Of course, as Marc Caputo observed earlier this week, they also struggle with the word “journalism.”
With its top journalism school and journalism review, Columbia holds an esteemed place in media
So how did @CJR, Columbia profs & the reporters it produces miss the formation of so much anti-Israel or ant-Semitic bias fostered at & around the school?
How did NY media miss it? https://t.co/QzHCZ412Mr
— Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) April 21, 2024
Indeed, and that’s not all they missed. The same supine leadership that produced that environment finally seemed to take the university’s ongoing pogrom against Jewish students and faculty seriously. They called the NYPD to respond to the occupation of the campus by pro-Hamas radicals and gave students until midnight last night to put an end to their anti-Semitic activism.
And then, of course, Columbia president Minouche Shafik promptly retreated from her red line and extended “talks”” for another 24 hours:
University President Minouche Shafik initially set a midnight deadline on Wednesday for them to clear out before the school would “consider alternative options” to remove the tent city in a letter on Tuesday. …
Following the “conversations” over the next 48 hours, the university plans on making a statement about the negotiation’s progress.
Sounds like the kind of red line that Columbia’s most famous alum drew in Syria and Ukraine, no?
It had the same effect on campus. Shafik and her team tried to argue that the talks had resulted in progress for a return to normalcy at Columbia, as the New York Times dutifully reported:
Around 3 a.m., a statement from the university said student protesters had agreed to remove a significant number of the tents erected on the lawn, ensure non-students would leave, and bar discriminatory or harassing language among the protesters.
“In light of this constructive dialogue, the university will continue conversations for the next 48 hours,” the university said, delaying the prospect of police action to disperse the protests.
The university had previously said that if no agreement was reached by the deadline, the school would consider “alternative options” for clearing the lawn of the tent city. That raised the specter of the New York City police returning to Columbia’s campus.
Gee, they must have gotten some significant changes, right? Right?? Er … nope. The radicals sounded just as determined to dictate terms on campus. Back to the NY Post:
However, the Columbia division of Students for Justice in Palestine said just after the midnight deadline passed that they had left talks with the school “until there is a written commitment that the administration will not be unleashing the NYPD or the National Guard on its students.”
Some demonstrators were seen dismantling tents on the west side of the South Lawn ahead of Tuesday’s initial midnight deadline, but others just relocated to Furnald Lawn while dozens of others remained where they were.
Yes, that vacillation by Columbia’s administration certainly showed them! Give the radicals credit; they appear to have learned their negotiating tactics and strategy from Hamas. Concede nothing and force the other side to either back down or do something they’d avoid at nearly all other costs — enforce the rule of law.
Needless to say, this situation is entirely absurd, almost as absurd as the demands from the same governing elite in the US on Israel to negotiate with Hamas itself. These protesters are obstructing the school from conducting its core mission of education, harassing and threatening students and faculty members on the basis of their religion, and are now feeling empowered enough to seize control over the campus itself on a permanent basis.
This is precisely why we have law enforcement. When criminals conduct a home invasion, police don’t sit around offering concessions to allow them to keep occupying the home. Law enforcement only negotiates the terms of the criminals’ surrender, not their own or the homeowners’. Once the NYPD showed up on campus, they should have executed their plan to clear the area and arrest the terror-symps that have conducted their own special little pogrom to make Columbia Judenrein.
The radicals have now taken measure of Shafik and exposed her cowardice. When the next deadline arrives, they’ll offer another set of meaningless and entirely temporary concessions to get another postponement, and another. That’s what happens when you draw red lines and then quail at the moment of enforcing them.
We’re funding all of this too, through student loans, Pell grants, research monies, and more. But we shouldn’t be.