[This statement was originally issued by Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine at Columbia University, Barnard College, and Teacher’s College on 10 April 2024 via their Instagram account.]
As members of the faculty and staff at Columbia, Barnard, and Teacher's College, we are deeply disturbed by the administrations increasingly hostile and ad-hoc treatment of students and student organizations who are actively working to raise awareness about the on-going genocide in Gaza.
In a letter dated April 5, President Minouche Shafik states, "I did not become a university president to punish students." Yet she continues to preside over disciplinary procedures that not only punish students, but do so in violation of the university's stated commitment to free speech and academic freedom, and by contravening existing rules and regulations for investigating and disciplining student activities.
This administration has shattered decades of institutional expertise and tradition when it comes to managing, if not welcoming, student protest on our campus. The last weeks have seen the university abandon the well-functioning procedure for handling violations of the University's Rules of Conduct (a process implemented as a response to the university's abusive treatment of students during the protests in 1968) by outsourcing the entire enterprise to an outside law firm with little or no oversight. That firm was then given the green light to hire a private investigation firm that has shown up at students' residences unannounced, banging on students' apartment doors threatening them with suspension or worse if they don't cooperate in a matter of hours. Students are left terrified: who are these people, do they really represent my university, should I get a lawyer?
We, the faculty and staff, categorically reject any act of violence on campus. We also support our students' rights of speech and assembly. In instances in which there were violations to university codes, we expect the university to follow relevant and existing measures for investigation and sanction of those concerned. However, this is not what is going on. Instead, the university, with an eye towards the April 17th Congressional hearing, has decided to enter into an exceptional state of punitive authority over the students:
The university has suspended students and evicted them from Columbia housing without due process. Students have been given 24 hours to move out of university housing, with no concern for where they will go or even if they have the financial means to do so. With respect to undergraduates, eviction also means cutting them off from the dining halls: that is, depriving them of not just housing but also of food. Besides the very basic question of whether such rapid evictions are legal under New York State or City law, the assumption built into this decision that every student has enough family wealth to fall back on is just outrageous, especially in light of the university's purported commitment to diversity.
- The disciplinary process, now delegated to a private investigatory firm, has taken the approach of throwing a wide range of vague charges at the largest group of students possible - with the notion that they can sort it all out later. In this new disciplinary process, students are denied the right to an advisor of their choice, are not told the specific charges against them, are expected to provide a written statement explaining their position on those unspecified charges, and have no meaningful right to appeal the hearing officer's findings.
- The university has hired an outside law firm to handle "disciplinary matters," whose lawyers have no understanding of university life and of our responsibility for our students. Hearings are now being conducted by recently-hired associates at Debevoise & Plimpton, individuals a couple years out of law school with no expertise or knowledge of the values and rules that constitute Columbia's community. In light of the university's reliance on Debevoise & Plimpton lawyers, the claim made by Claudia Marin Andrade (Associate Vice President for Student Success and Intervention), in the letters of suspension, that "the disciplinary process (as] an educational one," is a farce.
- The number of students who have received notices requiring their appearance at disciplinary hearings who were not involved in organizing or at the event(s) under review raises serious questions about this dragnet approach to punishment: being called into a hearing, even if one has not attended the event in question is creating immense amounts of stress among students, especially foreign students whose US visas depend on their remaining enrolled in full-time study. What's more, it is quite evident, given who has been called in, that the dragnet is operating on the basis of racial profiling: Arab and Muslim students, in particular, are receiving threatening letters for no other apparent reason than their identity.
- The university is selectively enforcing disciplinary actions: Students at unauthorized counterprotests have not been called into disciplinary hearings or investigations, and pro-Israel student groups regularly get approval for events, regardless of whether or not the speaker's politics is considered offensive or even, hateful even, to many others on campus.
We reject the premise of extra-ordinary action under the guise of "a strong foundation of respect" at the university. We see political convenience, a demonizing of pro-Palestinian students, and targeting of their political speech, and we see the turning of a blind eye to proIsraeli actions on campus that stand in obvious violations of standard protocols, including: the glaring lack of a Presidential statement on the chemical attack, an actual act of violence, on a peaceful rally on campus on January 21, 2024; no response to the continuing discriminatory harassment of students and faculty by Professor Shai Davidai via social media; or the hosting of ultra-right wing reactionary and racist speakers, such as an SSI organized event with "son of Hamas" Mosab Hassan Yousef on campus on March 21, 2024.
We urge Columbia's administration to observe commitments to existing disciplinary procedures that place the well-being of students and the community first, rather than political expediency.