Pro-Palestine campus movement: Columbia president resigns in New York

Columbia University President Minouche Shafik announced her resignation Wednesday, citing the “time of crisis” this spring when the New York campus was at the center of student protests against the war in Gaza and disputes over the rise of anti-Semitism.

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It is surprising that this American economist of Egyptian origin left immediately, she announced in a letter to the teaching and student community, because she had overcome a wave of resignations in the winter of -last year from her peers from the University of Pennsylvania, Elizabeth Magill, and from Harvard, Claudine Gay.

“I am making this announcement now so that the new management is in place before the start of next semester,” Ms Shafik wrote “with sadness” in an email obtained by AFP.

“This is a time of crisis when it was difficult to overcome the different opinions within our community,” she laments.

She reported “threats”, “insults” and even “mistreatment” against her, “colleagues” and “students” and “decided” to let “her career” face Columbia better at the challenges of the future”.

“We must all do everything in our power to resist the forces of polarization,” he implores the former president of Columbia.

The university she has headed since July 2023 was among the first to launch at the start of Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, in response to the bloody attack by the movement. Palestine on its soil on October 7.

Columbia was at the forefront of protests and campus occupations across the United States in April, recalling the movement against the Vietnam War in 1968.

At Ms. Shafik’s call, New York police forcibly evicted a few dozen protesters and students on April 30 and the large graduation ceremony was canceled.

In early July, three Columbia administrators were fired for text messages exchanged at a public forum in May, which the conservative media reported had “old anti-Semitic prejudice.” ” published according to the presidency.

Ahead of the start of the academic year in a few weeks, Columbia announced Friday that it would restrict public access to its sprawling, tree-lined campus in northern Manhattan.

This private university with a large budget funded by donors and large companies, some of them connected to Israel, welcomes tens of thousands of students and professors.

The leadership was accused of not fighting strongly enough against ideas or actions aimed at Jewish students, but also of being too heavy handed against small groups that were against Palestine.

Congress interviewed Ms Shafik last winter along with other university presidents, with the Republican right accusing them of not being firm and vague enough in the face of rising anti-Semitism. on the campuses.

House Republican majority leader Mike Johnson, who came to Columbia at the height of the crisis to denounce the “terrorism” of the demonstrations, welcomed Ms. Shafik’s departure in a statement Wednesday night.