Free Gaza, free speech and the showdown at Columbia University
Despite efforts to quash pro-Palestinian protests on campus, students continue to organise and demand divestment from companies with ties to Israel, as the US witnesses an "Ivy League spring."
For the past week, Columbia University has emerged as one of the latest epicenters of the global struggle to save Gaza from the Axis of Genocide. Israel with full economic, diplomatic and military support of the United States and other Western colonial powers, has been starving, dehydrating and carpet-bombing Gaza for 200 days now.
Inspired by the pain that every free-thinking human being feels at the sight of emaciated and burnt children and families, Columbia students took on big personal risk when taking a stand and building a Gaza Solidarity Encampment in the centre of campus last week.
Their goal: to get the university to divest from companies with ties to Israel.
After Columbia's president disbanded the protests by calling the police, another encampment has already popped up on campus. In addition to divestment, demonstrations are now calling for the removal of police presence and the reversal of disciplinary action taken against protesters involved in the first encampment.
I am a Columbia University alum and fired John Jay College of Criminal Justice professor who has joined in, spending time listening and learning from this fearless generation of student fighters. I cut my teeth as a student organiser at Columbia College from 1996 to 2000 and at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) from 2004-2006.
In 1997, we shut down the campus with a giant human circle in support of striking workers on campus who were mistreated and underpaid. The ongoing struggle for more classes on anti-colonial struggles and ethnic studies included a banner drop during graduation, highlighting some of the voices marginalised by Columbia’s core curriculum.
On October 4, 2006 we shut down the racist, anti-immigrant group the Minutemen who were pushing white supremacy and anti-immigrant hysteria on campus.
The Gaza Solidarity Encampment follows a storied history of students standing up for what is right, just like the 1968 generation did in protest of racism against Black America and the US war in Vietnam, in which we dropped 6 million tons of napalm and bombs on the Southeast Asian country from 1962 to 1975.
The Baroness Shafik
At the centre of the struggle for free speech and a free Gaza is the new president of Columbia, Manouche Shafik, who is trying to finish her first year on the job. She justified siccing riot police on peaceful student protestors by saying, "the safety of our community was my top priority and we needed to preserve an environment where everyone could learn in a supportive context."