Columbia University president faces confidence vote as protests spread

Colombia’s embattled presidency came under new pressure Friday as the university’s oversight committee met to address her effort to oust the Ivy League school and protests that swept across the country two weeks ago.

President Nemat Minouche Shafik faced outrage from many students, faculty, and outside observers for calling the New York Police to the campus on April 18 to remove a camp of tents set up by protesters against Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. Fell.

Police arrested more than 100 people that day and removed tents from the main lawn of the school’s Manhattan campus, but protesters quickly returned and set up camp again, limiting Columbia’s options to shut down the protests.

Since then, hundreds of protesters have been arrested in schools from California to Boston as students have set up camps like the one in Colombia, demanding that their schools divest from companies involved in Israel’s military.

Like-minded protests against Israel’s actions have spread abroad, with tensions rising in front of Paris’s prestigious Sciences Po university on Friday as pro-Israel demonstrators came to challenge pro-Palestinian students who had taken over the building. The police had to come forward to keep the two sides apart.

At Columbia, the University Senate will hold a hearing Friday afternoon to vote on a resolution regarding the president’s actions, which could range from an expression of outrage to an outright condemnation.

The White House has defended free speech on campus, but Democratic President Joe Biden this week condemned “anti-Semitic protests” and insisted campuses must be safe.

Some Republicans in Congress have accused Shafik and other university administrators of being too soft on protesters and allowing Jewish students to be harassed on their campuses.

After failing to quell protests two weeks ago, Columbia administrators have held talks with students, but so far without success. The school set two deadlines for agreement this week — the latest at 4 a.m. Friday — which came and went with no agreement.

“Negotiations have seen progress and are continuing as planned,” Shafiq’s office wrote in a brief email to the university community late Thursday. “We have our demands; they have theirs. A formal process is underway and ongoing.”

texas conflict

Jay Hartzell, president of the University of Texas at Austin, faced a similar backlash from faculty on Friday, two days after he joined Republican Governor Greg Abbott in calling on police to break up a pro-Palestinian protest.

Dozens of protesters were arrested but charges against most were dropped the next day.

Nearly 200 members of the faculty at the university signed a letter on April 25, saying they had no confidence in Hartzell because he “needlessly endangered students, staff, and faculty” when hundreds of officers arrived in riot gear. Dressed up and rode away on horseback. Oppose.

Hartzell said in a statement that he made the decision on the basis that the goal of protest organizers was to “severely disrupt” the campus for a long period of time.

The clash in Texas was one of several that have occurred this week between protesters and police called out by university leaders, who say the camps are unauthorized protests, endanger student safety, and sometimes , subjecting Jewish students to anti-Semitism and harassment.

Civil rights groups have condemned the arrests and urged authorities to respect rights of freedom of expression. Activists behind the protests say they aim to pressure schools to divest from companies that contribute to Israeli military actions in Gaza, and blame any hostile behavior on outsiders trying to hijack the movement. Have to put it.

While Columbia remains the epicenter of the student protest movement, the center of the national spotlight has shifted to new campuses — from the University of Southern California (USC) to Atlanta’s Emory University to Boston’s Emerson College — almost every day this week. USC canceled its main May 10 graduation ceremony this week, saying the newly required safety measures required by crowd control would cause excessive delays.

On Friday, about 200 protesters gathered at George Washington University, a few blocks from the White House, holding “Free Palestine” posters, wearing black-and-white Palestinian keffiyehs and chanting slogans.

“We will take disciplinary action against GW students who engaged in these unauthorized demonstrations that continue to disrupt the operations of the university,” the university said.

Authorities also began making arrests Friday at a protest camp at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona.

A livestream by the organizer showed dozens of protesters setting up tents on the lawn at the complex. Within half an hour the police reached there and told the protesters that they could not camp there, but if they did not have a tent they could stay

Cal Poly Humboldt, California, a public university in Arcata, said it closed its campus over the weekend and moved all classes online, as protesters continued a weeklong occupation of a school building.

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