Alumni pressure and a crime-fighting mayor helped set the stage for Columbia arrests
Six days ago, Columbia University President Minouche Shafik indicated she had no intention of bringing police back to respond to pro-Palestinian protesters on the Ivy League school's Manhattan grounds.
Doing so would be "counterproductive, further inflaming what is happening on campus, and drawing thousands to our doorstep who would threaten our community,” she wrote in a message signed by other school leaders.
For some, the news was welcome. They saw it as a needed course correction after Shafik sidestepped university protocols when she first called in NYPD officers two weeks ago, hoping to quell protests fueled by opposition to the Israel-Hamas war.
For others, Shafik's turn away from law enforcement intervention was troubling at best. Some prominent alumni pleaded with her to be more aggressive amid reports of Jewish students being targeted on campus. Immediately remove the pro-Palestinian encampments, they urged in a letter signed by thousands, demanding she take harsher action to secure the grounds. If needed, they said, summon the police.
By Tuesday night, the president's mind had changed.
New York City Police Department officers descended on campus en masse and arrested scores of protesters for the second time. Police seized an academic building where a group of students, protesting the university’s ties to Israel, had broken in and barricaded themselves the night before. They smashed doors and broke windows, upending the building's interior, the school said.
"I know I speak for many members of our community in saying that this turn of events has filled me with deep sadness," Shafik said in a message to students and staff Wednesday. "I am sorry we reached this point."
Latest on Columbia protests: Police in riot gear storm into building held by pro-Palestinian demonstrators
The circumstances that prompted Shafik's swift change of heart are by no means simplistic. Global scrutiny of Columbia’s administration has only grown in recent weeks, fueled by fallout from her testimony before Congress last month. Republicans and Democrats told her they were concerned Columbia and other campuses aren't doing enough to address antisemitism prompted by the unrest in the Middle East.
While she testified in Washington, students set up encampments at the center of campus and refused to remove them until the university divested from the state of Israel. A day later, police made more than 100 arrests on the site.
As the dust settled from the second police sweep, observers said two important factors appeared to have played notable roles in shifting the dynamics at Columbia, which has become a touchstone for nationwide disagreement over the Israel-Hamas war.
For one, many alumni were clearly alarmed by what they were seeing. And so was New York City's mayor.
Columbia protests, explained: How the NYC university became the epicenter of disagreement over the Israel-Hamas war
Influential alumni insist Shafik bring in NYPD
In her first year on the job, Shafik has tried to walk the tightrope faced by every prominent college president: a need to assuage influential alumni while also placating faculty members. Neither group is a monolith – both camps are split by generational divides, and certain factions within each have more decision-making sway than others. At Columbia especially, they don’t always see eye to eye.
Some powerful donors – Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots, among them – have amped up their pressure on Shafik recently by pulling their support from the university over concerns about the safety of Jewish students and staff. Others have voiced their frustration more broadly with her handling of campus security as finals began and graduation ceremonies approach.
An alumni letter published Monday demanded that Shafik up the ante. Thousands of former students and current parents insisted she "remove illegal encampments” and “take swift and strong disciplinary action against students engaged in hate speech, threats, and criminal conduct.”
One of the signatories of the letter was Lisa Carnoy, a former co-chair of Columbia's board of trustees. She played a central role in selecting Shafik as the university's president last year.
In an update Tuesday to the same letter, many alumni urged Shafik to bring the NYPD back. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators, they wrote, had “crossed an indefensible line far beyond legitimate protest into the realm of lawless mob violence.”
All that pressure undoubtedly influenced the political landscape Shafik had to assess, said Lincoln Mitchell, an adjunct associate professor of political science at Columbia.
"If you get an alumni base angry, you’re done," he said.
Divisions over NYPD presence on campus
Shafik's first call to the NYPD didn't seem to hurt her much with the people in charge of her job security. In a statement last week, the university's board of trustees indicated it largely approved of her tactics to defend the campus.
“The Columbia University Board of Trustees strongly supports President Shafik as she steers the university through this extraordinarily challenging time,” the board said April 24.
Many faculty members, on the other hand, were highly critical of the first round of arrests. The university senate, the school’s primary decision-making body, passed a resolution two days later saying the move raised serious questions about her respect for shared governance.
"NYPD presence in our neighborhood endangers our entire community,” a group of faculty leaders wrote in a news release as police officers again took over the university Tuesday. “Armed police entering our campus places students and everyone else on campus at risk."
Though many faculty members have stopped short of demanding Shafik's resignation in recent weeks, Tuesday night's arrests caused fresh outrage. On Thursday, the school's chapter of the American Association of University Professors pressed for a vote of no confidence in her administration, calling it "the only way to begin rebuilding our shattered community."
A large group of undergraduates, meanwhile, appears to want the university to take steps to distance itself from Israel. More than 2,000 students voted in a divestment referendum that passed by a wide margin last week, according to the school newspaper.
A crime-fighting mayor offers to help
Columbia's administrators also are navigating the crisis during a distinct era in New York City politics.
Mayor Eric Adams, a former NYPD captain, was elected in 2021 on a public-safety-oriented agenda. While in office, the notoriously tough-on-crime politician has rolled out high-tech security robots in Times Square and applauded the state's decision to let National Guardsmen patrol subways.
Although he's a Democrat and a supporter of free speech, he has shown little patience with the protests that have gripped Columbia and other New York City campuses in recent weeks.
On Tuesday, he warned that the demonstrations plaguing the Ivy League school had “been co-opted by professional outside agitators” – a concept he has alluded to in the past while discussing civil unrest in the city.
"It was about external actors hijacking peaceful protests and influencing students to escalate," Adams said at a news conference Wednesday morning, though he offered limited evidence.
Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, accused the mayor of demonizing students who have vocally opposed the Israeli government.
"This is a mayor who too often acts like the solution to our every problem lies with the police, whether it's homelessness, mental illness or student protest," she said. "That’s all part of the context that set up the disaster that we saw at Columbia."
Last weekend, Adams said he increased the police presence around the Upper West Side campus. And he made a promise that the NYPD would “stand ready to respond” if another request came.
A few days later, it did. At Shafik's behest, the NYPD will maintain a presence on Columbia's grounds through at least mid-May.
Zachary Schermele covers education and breaking news for USA TODAY. You can reach him by email at [email protected]. Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Alumni pressure at Columbia converges with a crime-fighting mayor
