https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2024/05/04/our-campus-our-crisis/
"On April 30, armed police officers swarmed the Columbia University campus for
the second time in two weeks, shutting down a student occupation of Hamilton
Hall and clearing what was left of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment. Students had
first seized part of the South Lawn, then the attention of the entire Columbia
community, and then the national political narrative, as imitation protests in
support of Palestine erupted at colleges across America. By refusing to leave
unless Columbia committed to divest from Israel and cut ties with Tel Aviv
University, among other demands, the students were acting in the shadow of
1968, when protesters dramatically took over buildings, including Hamilton, to
resist the Vietnam War and the university’s racial politics. Those events
established Columbia’s reputation as a hotbed of dissent where social and
political change takes root before spreading to the rest of the country — often
at great cost to the institution. As the school itself notes about ’68 on its
website, “It took decades for the University to recover.”
The encampment and the takeover of Hamilton represented a dramatic escalation
of months of activism on campus. Since the October 7 attack on Israel and its
subsequent war in Gaza, which has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, the
school has been the site of intense protests and counterprotests with bitter
debates on campus over antisemitism and Islamophobia, genocide, and free
speech. Overseeing it all was a new president, Minouche Shafik, whose
inauguration had come just three days before 10/7 and who had scarcely begun to
acquaint herself with the Columbia community when the campus was thrown into
crisis. With national political figures and billionaires agitating for the
removal of other Ivy League presidents, Shafik was charged with resolving
standoffs among groups with vastly divergent interests: deep-pocketed donors
used to getting their way, faculty with the security of tenure, and students
who believe Columbia is betraying its legacy as an engine for progress. As the
encampment impasse played out, it became clearer than ever that people were
living in two different Columbias. As pro-Palestinian protesters built a
community of hope and solidarity around their support for Gaza, many pro-Israel
students reported feeling unwelcome and organized their own counterprotests on
and around campus. Some of the latter group packed their bags and left, while
many of the former were hauled off to jail and suspended.
The staff of the
Columbia Daily Spectator, the nearly 150-year-old
undergraduate newspaper, has been covering every minute of this story.
Recently,
New York Magazine asked us to create this report, leveraging our
intimate knowledge of the university and its people to tell the story from the
inside. Our reporters, writers, editors, and photographers polled more than 700
Columbians to better understand what happened, took more than 100 portraits of
members of the community, and compiled this oral history of the two weeks that
forever changed our university. —Isabella Ramírez, editor-in-chief,
Columbia
Daily Spectator"
Via
Garbage Day: Let’s talk about Drake
https://www.garbageday.email/p/lets-talk-drake
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
