When I first started writing here about what was going on at Columbia, part of the motivation was that I didn’t understand myself a lot of what was happening, especially the actions of the trustees. Things are different now, I think I understand pretty well what is going on and why the trustees are doing what they are doing. A new cave-in is in the works and at some point I’ll write about the complicated story of that, perhaps waiting until it’s a done deal, which might be soon.
At the moment though it seems to me important to just focus on a basic point of morality: an appalling genocide is going on in Gaza, and Columbia University’s response to this genocide is an all-out campaign to stop people from protesting it. This is completely disgraceful.
It’s difficult to get reliable information about what is happening in Gaza, partly because the Israelis have killed most journalists there (and are starving to death the few remaining). All indications are that the Israeli government is pursuing a policy of destroying all homes and infrastructure there, to make sure the inhabitants driven out have nothing to return to. Civilians are being killed and starved with the goal of forcing them somehow to leave. Among the most reliable sources of information are the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, which have detailed stories (see here and here) explaining how starving people seeking food are being killed.
The New York Times has recently published a long article by an Israeli scholar considered a leading authority on genocide entitled I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It. that strongly makes the case that what is going on is genocide.
What has been Columbia University’s response to the moral challenge of this ongoing US-supported genocide?
- A new set of policies promulgated last week, including adopting a definition of “antisemitism” that can be used to tar criticism of Israeli genocidal policies as “antisemitic”. For some commentary on this from a Columbia faculty member, see here.
- For the past year the university has been locked-down, with an intensive security apparatus whose main goal appears to be to make sure that no anti-genocide protests take place on the campus.
- As part of the first cave-in back in March, the trustees removed control of the student disciplinary process from the University Senate, with the trustees taking control themselves of the process through the provost’s office. The intent was to make sure that any student guilty of violating university regulations during an anti-genocide protest would be severely punished. One goal is to make sure that students engaged in such protest are removed from the university and can’t do it again. Another is to make sure that anyone else thinking about what they can do to oppose genocide will be properly intimidated. Last week the trustees issued a statement emphasizing that they, not the Senate, are now in control of student discipline.
- The last two actions have been almost completely successful at stopping any anti-genocide protest on campus. The main exception was the short-lived occupation of a library reading room (see here) back in May. Today the university announced that a large number of students were being suspended or expelled under this new policy. News stories like this one say that 70 students were involved, with two-thirds of them expelled or suspended for at least two years. The news stories make clear that the motivation for these unusually harsh punishments is the desire of the trustees to appease our Fascist dictator and recover grant funding.
The question of what to do about students who engage in disruptive protests is a complicated one. For a history of how Columbia has dealt with such cases in the past, see here. What the trustees and some administrators have done today appears to be completely unprecedented, and part of a deeply immoral set of policy decisions about how to respond to the problems caused by the genocide in Gaza.
Update: For more of the story of how the disciplinary process at Columbia was taken over by the trustees, in contradiction to university statutes, see here. I can’t find on university websites a list of current members of the new University Judicial Boards. Much of the information on university websites still refers to the old Senate-controlled board (see for instance the link describing the UJB at this page). There is an updated FAQ posted yesterday.
The only description I can find of the new UJB panels is that they are made up of “professors and administrators”. Until now, the cave-in has been mostly in the hands of the trustees. With these new actions the moral rot has spread from the trustees to the office of the provost and to (unknown?) groups of faculty and administrators who have signed on to participate in this. There now is some sort of appeals process which is in the hands of “three deans”. Will we find out who they are and will they go along with this?
Haaretz today has this story with the details of how the murder of civilians through starvation is being accomplished.
I believe you might get fewer undergraduate applications of certain race/ethnicity/religions (and maybe more students of another sort…)
We just ran our annual summer program on fundamental physics for high school students. These kids are New Jersey’s top tier, and chatter about colleges is ever-present. The “local ivies” — Penn, Princeton, Columbia (sometimes NYU) — obviously get a lot of mention. This year I must say Columbia just didn’t come up as much. I know, anecdotal, low statistics. But it would not surprise me if some of the students, maybe the young ladies in hijabs or the young men with Zohran! stickers on their laptops, who would have happily gone to Columbia in previous years decide to give it a miss.
I’m sure in raw numbers Columbia will do fine. But the mix will change. Maybe this is exactly what your trustees want?
Keep in mind that Omer Bartov (the Israeli historian interviewed by NYT) is not just “any genocide scholar” – he’s perhaps the world’s leading expert on Wehrmacht’s complicity in the Holocaust. “The Eastern Front, 1941–1945: German Troops and the Barbarization of Warfare” is one of the most groundbreaking works ever done to dispel the myth of the “clean” Wehrmacht vs “criminal” SS (he demonstrated SS and Wehrmacht were all part of the same murderous machine). So he knows what he’s talking about when he declares that he knows genocide when he sees it.
By many accounts, the ONLY thing keeping Netanyahu in power, even perhaps the only thing keeping him from being dragged to the Hague, is ongoing war; in which case his passing seems the only thing that will bring it to an end; his sole incentive is to prolong it.
Amit,
Yes, the story of why the trustees are doing what they are doing is a complicated one, but part of it is that a significant faction of them are very much devoted to the cause of suppressing by any means criticism of the ongoing genocide. Some categories of students no longer wanting to come here (and some categories of faculty and staff not wanting to work here) is not a bug but a feature.
Duncan Black at Eschaton also made a powerful statement (in furious agreement) today:
https://www.eschatonblog.com/2025/07/which-of-your-faves-disagrees-with-bret.html
Peter, I am sure you know this already, but it is up to you and your colleagues now. I cannot imagine the fear that say, an Arab Muslim Columbia student who may have liked certain facebook posts or maybe just saved certain articles from The Guardian or Al Jazeera is feeling.
Knowing that there are prominent people like you who are as much a part of Columbia as any trustee, and who know they exist and will bear witness, that itself goes a long way. I do not know what you can do, how you can reach out to offer support, but if I can help in any way at all, I will.
By the way, Nima was the closeout speaker for our summer program on fundamental physics. He was spectacular, giving a chalkboard talk on how one could derive things like the size of the earth or breaking point of solids from just hbar and c and maybe Newton’s constant. Your post made me wonder if a current student of Iranian descent would even feel safe enough to set their mind to physics.
To bring up epistemic collapse again, it seems to me (although I must admit that I don’t know much about the Israeli media landscape) that almost all the Israeli media (with a few exceptions like Haaretz) are supporting the government’s narrative. So many Israelis who aren’t paying attention may not realize what the government is doing, and may believe that the cries of “genocide” from the rest of the world are motivated by antisemitism.
Amit,
I should make clear exactly what Columbia is doing and what it is not doing. The university in general is very motivated to protect international students, including muslim ones, if only for its own financial interest (tuition from international students is a big part of their revenue). The main threat to muslim students is the general one from the Trump administration, which applies to all US universities.
What is different about Columbia is something very specific: it has vigorously allied itself with those claiming any sort of pro-Palestinian protest is “antisemitic” and needs to be met with strong repressive measures. I have not seen any approved pro-Palestinian protest on campus this past year, and if you engage in a non-approved one (e.g. the library reading room occupation) you’ll face arrest and expulsion from the university. There is a new “Title VI” office and if you say or write the wrong thing about Gaza/Israel/Palestine you could be brought up on charges of being an “antisemite”. At this point though, I don’t think liking Facebook posts or browsing the web is going to get anyone in trouble.
So, if you’re comfortable giving up your first amendment rights on this issue and keeping quiet about it, I don’t think there’s anything specific about Columbia to worry about…
If you are going to describe how discipline works — or at least how it worked under the previous regime — at Columbia, then you should at least provide a link to Stand Columbia’s explainer here:
https://standcolumbia.org/discipline/
Protests are going to happen, once the term starts. The situation is too dire, the pictures coming out too horrific. There will be arrests and expulsions, and when those fail at suppression, the administration will escalate. Wearing a kaffieh? Sporting a Gaza-shaped pin? Well, that constitutes a silent protest doesn’t it?
Peter Shor,
I’m also not so well-informed about the information sources Israelis read, although it’s clear that you can find ones that will reinforce your beliefs, whatever they are. This goes pretty far back now in this case. If Israelis want an information source that tells them that anything bad happening in Gaza is not their fault, but that of the Palestinians, surely that’s easy to find.
I do think something changed with Oct. 7. Before that, the problem of what to do with the Palestinians in Gaza was a difficult one for Israelis. After Oct. 7, my impression is that a lot of Israelis (e.g. those like Scott Aaronson) decided that they now had a resolution to the problem: “the Palestinians all want to kill me and my family, so killing them is justifiable”. To have genocide, you need genocidal intent, and this new attitude qualifies.
A Stand Columbia supporter,
Whatever the faults of the Senate-based disciplinary process, having the trustees in charge, with a billion dollars or so riding on “will these students be punished quickly enough and severely enough to make Steven Miller happy”, isn’t something better.
Amit,
We’ll see. So far the administration’s crackdown on protest has been remarkably effective.
Dear Peter, I am not contesting that. I am simply pointing out that the Byzantine disciplinary system at Columbia bears explanation, which Stand Columbia does well.
A Stand Columbia supporter,
Yes, Byzantine is accurate and I agree that the Stand Columbia explainer is worthwhile. I’d encourage whoever is managing the Stand Columbia site to set things so that people can access materials like that without having to go through a subscription process.
I found this snippet within the Stand Columbia statement interesting:
…In the past, protests were typically by students against the administration. As such, the Rules of University Conduct were applicable. Current protests fall into this category, but are also oppositional to other students, leading to a paradigm shift that suggests the the applicable rules around these protests must concurrently incorporate both the protest and the discrimination regime.
How is “oppositional to other students” determined? Who does that determination? If a protestor is displaying horrible pictures of children injured or killed by the IDF, is that “oppositional” to Columbia students who are/were members of the IDF? I agree with the call to “consistency” but one can be consistently wrong. I do not have access to the full statement and there might have been better explanations later on.
Look, if the situation in Gaza continues to escalate, Columbia will not the the only place facing these questions. New Jersey has a large Arab and Muslim population (there is a neighborhood in South Paterson called “little Palestine”) and the student body at Rutgers is certainly reflective of that. We will all have to address the question of where the line is between peaceful protest and first amendment rights vs. flagrant disruption and “oppositional to other students”. Get the lawyers on speed dial.
Amit,
Before the crackdown a year ago, the argument was often being made that the protests were “antisemitic”, so subject to discipline, because of the pro-Palestinian/anti-Israeli slogans being shouted. Yes, other places are likely going to see protests about Gaza this fall, and all this will come up again.
Columbia has though solved the problem: just stop all pro-Palestinian protests on campus. If people aren’t allowed to shout any pro-Palestinian slogans, you don’t have to get into the issue of which slogans are “antisemitic” and which aren’t.