Columbia University president Minouche Shafik urged other university higher-ups to “engage in serious soul searching” over the fallout from the campus protests in a new op-ed about campus free speech.
“We must do a better job of defining the boundaries between the free speech rights of one part of our community and the rights of others to be educated in a place free of discrimination and harassment,” Shafik, 61, wrote in the Financial Times.
Shafik – who was appointed as Columbia’s 20th president in July 2023, and was formally inaugurated just three days before the Hamas terror attack – had made headlines for several weeks as the Morningside Heights campus became ground zero for a wave of anti-Israel tent encampments.
In the new op-ed, Shafik claimed that the majority of the campus activists are “passionate, intelligent and committed” – and blamed the chaos and hateful rhetoric of “the actions and antisemitic comments of some.”
The first tent encampment emerged on a Columbia lawn in mid-April, on the same day that Shafik offered flakey testimony on campus antisemitism before the House Education and Workforce Committee.
During the height of the protests, Shafik faced serious scrutiny – and even calls to resign – from both sides of the political aisle when she initially appeared to cave to the protesters.
The issue came to a head after the university finally demanded the protesters disband the tent camp.
That’s when protesters stormed and occupied a campus building, causing Shafik to give the green light for a massive NYPD raid that resulted in dozens of arrests.
In her essay, Shafik insisted that school officials “engaged in serious, good faith dialogue with protesters” – but added that she and other head honchos in higher education must “engage in serious soul searching about why this is happening.”
“If colleges and universities cannot better define the boundaries between free speech and discrimination, government will move to fill that gap, and in ways that do not necessarily protect academic freedom,” she suggested.
Shafik – who was deputy governor of the Bank of England and had plum jobs at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund before getting the Columbia gig – also wrote Columbia and other schools need to heal in order to move forward productively.
“Rather than tearing ourselves apart, universities must rebuild the bonds within ourselves and between society and the academy based on our shared values and on what we do best: education, research, service and public engagement,” she opined.
Despite Shafik’s call for soul-searching, divisions at Columbia and other Ivy League institutions still run deep: On Friday morning, police in riot gear stormed the University of Pennsylvania encampment and arrested several protesters.
Columbia also announced this week that it canceled its university-wide graduation ceremony due to “security concerns.”
