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Over 1,400 academics around the world commit to boycotting Columbia events following student arrests
An open letter calls for the reversal of suspensions related to on-campus protests, the removal of police presence on campus, and the resignations of Shafik and Rosenbury.
By Staff Photographer / Staff PhotographerThe signatories include professors, lecturers, graduate students, postdocs, and academic staff from universities across the world and in various academic disciplines.By Sabrina Ticer-Wurr • April 24, 2024 at 2:40 AM
By Sabrina Ticer-Wurr • April 24, 2024 at 2:40 AM
Over 1,400 academics from around the world have signed a letter committing to an academic boycott of events “held at or officially sponsored by Columbia University and Barnard College” in solidarity with protesters demanding that the University divest from companies with ties to Israel.
As part of the boycott, signatories commit to not participating in “academic or cultural events” held at or sponsored by Columbia or Barnard, which include but aren’t limited to “workshops, conferences, talks, screenings, and invited lectures.” They also commit to not collaborating with Columbia or Barnard administrators who hold positions in the faculty, such as “invitations to academic events at our universities; collaboration on any new grants and workshops; co-authorship of papers.”
The signatories include professors, lecturers, graduate students, postdoctoral workers, and academic staff from universities across six continents and in various academic disciplines. The list includes notable scholars such as Judith Butler, distinguished professor at the University of California, Berkeley; Marc Lamont Hill, professor of anthropology and urban education at CUNY Graduate Center; Wendy Brown, UPS Foundation professor at the Institute for Advanced Study; and Robin D.G. Kelley, professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles.
The boycott follows calls from Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine at Columbia, Barnard, and Teachers College to initiate an “academic boycott of all events,” including the upcoming Commencement ceremonies, until demands are met. The collective held a walkout on Low Steps on Monday in solidarity with the 108 protesters who were arrested on Thursday and the students who were suspended for their involvement in the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment.”
“We reject the false language of ‘safety’ President Shafik has invoked to justify these actions. Likewise, we reject as ludicrous the idea that the Columbia administration was forced to call in the NYPD because of the need to ‘protect students from rhetoric that amounts to harassment and discrimination.’ Indeed, it is the University’s own decision to arrest, intimidate, criminalize, and punish students that has endangered their safety,” the letter announcing the boycott reads.
“President Shafik is focused on deescalating the rancor on Columbia’s campus,” a University spokesperson wrote in a statement to Spectator. “She is working across campus with members of the faculty, administration, and Board of Trustees, and with state, city, and community leaders, and appreciates their support.”
The academic boycott endorses the original demands of the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” and includes additional demands for the University to reverse and expunge the suspensions of affected Columbia and Barnard students, reinstate the Columbia chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voices for Peace, and remove on-campus police presence, and for University President Minouche Shafik and Barnard President Laura Rosenbury to resign.
“We see the administration’s actions for what they are: an embarrassing attempt to appease donors, trustees, and members of Congress by cracking down on students peacefully protesting the University’s complicity in genocide,” the letter reads.
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, associate professor of physics at the University of New Hampshire, recently turned down an opportunity to deliver the annual Grace Lee Boggs lecture at Barnard.
“I think we all have to speak out because none of us are safe until all of us are safe. And the tactics that are being used at Columbia University can very well be used at any of our institutions, so we need to defend academic freedom right now because it’s on the line at Columbia,” Prescod-Weinstein said.
Prescod-Weinstein said she views the issue of protests on campus as twofold. On the one hand, she thinks it is important to address the “critical and urgent issue of getting a ceasefire now ending the genocide and ending apartheid.” On the other hand, she feels that academic freedom and students’ right to protest is a central issue.
“That’s part of my responsibility as a professor, is to help create an environment where students can explore ideas and decide for themselves what they think, and that’s exactly what the students who are engaging in the peaceful encampments are doing, is they are exploring ideas and deciding what they think for themselves, and they’re sharing with the world what they believe,” Prescod-Weinstein said. “It’s our job as academics to support them in this endeavor because that’s what they are supposed to be doing. They’re doing what college students are supposed to be doing.”
Elleza Kelley, GSAS ’16, GSAS ’21, assistant professor of English and African American studies at Yale University, decided to pull out of a recent alumni panel held at Columbia.
“As history shows, putting pressure on institutions works and now is our moment to live the practices we write about. I feel especially, as a scholar of Black Studies, that education and social justice are inextricably linked. At this moment, faculty must show that they are on the side of students and justice, not on the side of administrators and donors,” Kelley wrote in a statement to Spectator.
The open letter also states that some signatories may choose to initiate “common sense boycotts” of individual faculty and publications affiliated with Columbia in accordance with their “particular complicity with Columbia and Barnard’s repression.”
Sheetal Chhabria, GSAS ’12, associate professor of history at Connecticut College, originally planned to attend a workshop called “Global Racisms” hosted by Columbia faculty. After being notified of the boycott by a member of an email thread, she and others on the thread decided to not attend the workshop.
“I think what’s happening at Columbia is part of a wider pattern of what’s happening at universities nationwide, which is, there is a clamping down on freedom of speech and freedom of thought. There’s really a lot more management of students’ dispositions rather than real education,” Chhabria said.
Prescod-Weinstein sees academic freedom as an international, rather than solely domestic, issue.
“I think, also importantly, this is not just an issue at U.S. campuses. We’re seeing repression at Israeli campuses. We’re also seeing that Palestinian academics in the occupied regions are being arrested and incarcerated,” Prescod-Weinstein said. “Academic freedom is under threat from Zionist pressure, and people who want us to look the other way when it comes to the genocide, and so we all must stand together. We must stand with our colleagues across institutional borders because this affects all of us, from the United States to Palestine.”
Chhabria expressed concerns that some scrutiny of universities like Columbia is politically motivated.
“There’s really a very coordinated right-wing attack I think on what’s happening with universities. And we just, I think, as faculty especially we have to resist that as much as we can,” she said.
Deputy News Editor Sabrina Ticer-Wurr can be contacted at sabrina.ticer-wurr@columbiaspectator.com. Follow her on X @SabrinaTWwrites.
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