Columbia University President Minouche Shafik delivered her first public address Friday on the turmoil over the war in Gaza that has roiled the campus, calling for the return of “truth and civil discourse” after mass arrests this week.
Shafik, in a more than 3-minute video, said Columbia tried to end the pro-Gaza encampment through dialogue, but the student-led occupation of Hamilton Hall was a “violent act” that put students at risk.
“Every one of us has a role to play in bringing back the values of truth and civil discourse that polarization has severely damaged,” the embattled university president said. “At Columbia, parallel realities and parallel conversations have walled us off from other perspectives.”
The conversations on campus in recent months, she said, “that impressed me the most were those who acknowledged that the other side had some valid points. We need more of that at Columbia.”
The Columbia administration on Tuesday night called in the NYPD to end the takeover of Hamilton Hall and dismantle a pro-Gaza encampment, leading to 109 arrests in and around campus. During the raid, an officer accidentally fired off his gun inside the building.
Shafik, who was born in the Middle East to a Muslim family, suggested she learned from her background and decades-long career at international organizations, “that people can disagree and still make progress.”
Columbia is currently facing a U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights probe, after a group of pro-Gaza student-activists filed a complaint alleging anti-Palestinian discrimination.
Shafik’s speech came the day after the Columbia chapter of the American Association of University Professors, a professional faculty organization, on Thursday called for a vote of no confidence. Among their demands was to reopen campus to faculty, which the administration did on Friday.
Of the 44 arrests made in Hamilton Hall on Tuesday night, 13 of them were not affiliated with Columbia, NYPD data shared with the university showed. More than half were Columbia students.
It was the second time in recent weeks that Shafik turned to police to shut down the tent demonstration, which was first erected hours ahead of her appearance at a congressional antisemitism hearing.
On Friday, students at Columbia University gathered at midnight for a biannual “primal scream,” a college tradition before the start of final exams. Except, with sweeping campus restrictions on those who live outside the university gates, students needed an alternative to their customary location outside the library.
They settled on a new site just off campus: outside the multistory Columbia President’s House on Morningside Drive, where students screamed and chanted for nearly an hour.
