A quick update on what has been going on here at Columbia in recent months:
- The campus has been rather quiet this semester, about to get much more so as the semester ends and we go into winter break. The only sizable demonstrations on campus this fall were ones on Oct. 6 and 7 in support of Israel and Israeli hostages, as well as to commemorate Israeli victims of the October 7 massacre. The Columbia Spectator has had a team of student journalists look into why there have been no anti-Israel protests on campus, see Amid a crackdown on protests, students began organizing Palestinian cultural events. The University keeps canceling them.
- Security remains tight, with IDs carefully checked by multiple guards at each of a few gates to the central campus (“Checkpoint Charlie” is the one at Broadway and 116th). While a second level of ID checking at entrances to each academic building has very recently been discontinued, there’s no indication of a plan any time soon to open the gates.
- We get lots of stirring communications from the administration about their devotion to freedom of expression. Also, we get announcements of new policies that, for instance, seem to indicate we’re no longer allowed to post unapproved things on our office doors (to be fair, no one knows whether this is actually going to be enforced, we’re getting conflicting information).
- The Task Force on Antisemitism issued its fourth report, which is about classroom and teaching issues. It starts with a vigorous endorsement of academic freedom, and makes clear that what’s at issue is not so much antisemitism as excessively anti-Israel or “anti-Zionist” behavior by the faculty. The Specter has detailed coverage here.
One problem I’ve always had with arguments about “Zionism” and “anti-Zionism” has been that it’s unclear to me exactly what “Zionism” means. I always thought I was a “Zionist” (since I support Israel’s right to exist, in particular as a state providing protection to the Jewish people). But Scott Aaronson explained here that to him it means being willing to kill Palestinian children on a large scale (and giving the finger to the rest of the world when doing so) in order to eliminate any possible threat from the Palestinian people. This seems to also be the point of view of a sizable part of the Israeli government. By his definition, I’m (very strongly) opposed to “Zionism”. The task force report doesn’t engage with the issue of what limits it’s appropriate to put on faculty and student expression of their opposition to murdering children.
- We recently received notification from the university that we can submit claim forms asking for part of the \$20 million Columbia is paying out to Jewish or Israeli members of the community who have been victims of antisemitism. Quite a few of my Jewish colleagues are trying to figure out if they qualify because of what happened to them when they expressed opposition to the genocide in Gaza.
- The search for a new president of Columbia was supposed to be done by now, with a candidate chosen and in place Jan. 1. Instead we have an announcement that the trustees need to
extend this process beyond the start of the new year to take the time to fully understand each candidate’s strengths and potential fit.
According to Bloomberg, a major reason they haven’t managed to hire anyone is that leading candidates have opted out, specifically the chancellor of Vanderbilt and the provost at Harvard.
For a good explanation of the illegal Trump campaign to shakedown universities (and of the role of the Columbia trustees in going along with this), see this article in the Chronicle. There’s an explanation here of how this affects anyone thinking of taking the Columbia job. Would you take the job if it was offered to you by people now famous the world over as the most willing to go along with illegal demands from the Trump fascist would-be dictatorship? A high priority of the trustees appears to be making sure that nothing happens here that will upset Stephen Miller. Would you take a job that came with marching orders “Don’t do anything to upset Stephen Miller, or we’ll fire you as fast as we fired Katrina Armstrong”?
