Bowman: Columbia bowed to ‘right wing pressure’ in student arrests

NEW YORK — Democrats rushed to condemn Columbia University for cracking down on free speech following the arrests of over 100 pro-Palestinian protesters — with Squad member Jamaal Bowman jumping into the cauldron on Friday.

“I’m very concerned with some of Columbia’s actions,” Bowman said, joining six Columbia professors similarly appalled by the arrests during a virtual press conference Friday. “They seem to be folding to pressure from a right wing Congress’ weaponizing of the unfolding events in the Middle East as a means to suppress fundamental freedoms of expression.”

The former school principal also slammed the House Education and Workforce Committee on which he sits for “using this moment to attack a liberal education and to attack higher education.”

Bowman represents one of the largest Jewish districts in the nation and is locked in a tight Democratic primary with Westchester County Executive George Latimer, a staunch Israel supporter funded by AIPAC. Bowman has caught flack from moderates for his ongoing criticism of Israeli military policies and controversial statements following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack.

On Friday, he made clear he is comfortable going on the offensive on the fallout from the international conflict, as he did by embracing Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s recent rebuke of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Latimer did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Bowman’s remarks on Friday.

Bowman’s entrance into the Columbia strife — which spilled into public view Thursday with the mass arrests — underscored the political significance of this moment in higher education. Colleges and universities have seen increasingly harsh crackdowns on student speech since the onset of the Israel-Hamas war. The tension playing out on campuses across the country has also provided an opportunity for Democrats to finally leverage a free speech debate Republicans have dominated for years — with implications for House races.

During his remarks Friday, Bowman called a House committee hearing Wednesday with Columbia President Minouche Shafik and others “nothing more than an act of political theater, once again, designed only to further long-standing Republican attacks on education justice in this country.”

On Thursday, Shafik authorized dozens of New York Police Department officers to stream onto campus and forcibly remove protesters from an encampment they refused to leave — a move the school president made just one day after she testified before the same Congressional panel that led to the ouster of the presidents of Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania last year.

A Columbia spokesperson said in a statement to POLITICO that the school has "rules regarding the time, place and manner that apply to protest activity, and we will continue to enforce those," adding that it is "committed to ensuring the core functions of the University continue."

Asked about Bowman’s criticisms, committee spokesperson Nick Barley emphasized that Democrats also raised concerns about the rise in antisemitism at Columbia. “He doesn’t want to acknowledge the inconvenient truth that there is bipartisan support to address rising antisemitism in America’s schools,” Barley said in a statement.

Fellow Squad member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who called Israel’s bombardment of Gaza a “genocide” last month, took to X on Thursday to bash Columbia and its affiliate school Barnard College for suspending Isra Hisri, the daughter of Squad member Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), whom the NYPD confirmed was later arrested with the other Columbia protesters.

“What merits asymmetric crackdowns on Palestinian human rights protests?” Ocasio-Cortez asked.

Hisri was suspended and arrested just one day after Omar grilled Shafik at the hearing, asking if she has seen a protest on campus specifically “against Jewish people” and blasting the school for suspending and evicting students involved in an unauthorized pro-Palestinian panel earlier this month.

“There has been a recent attack on the democratic rights of students across the country,” Omar said during the hearing.

And Democratic New York City Comptroller Brad Lander criticized Columbia for “calling the cops on its own students for engaging in nonviolent protest.”

“The university has a long history of respecting free speech on campus, and I support the faculty who are pleading with their administration to continue that tradition,” he wrote on X. “We must not allow MAGA Republicans to weaponize antisemitism against freedom of expression.”

It’s a shake up of a free speech debate Democrats had largely ceded to Republicans, who have pounced on elite, left-leaning college campuses they see as propagating progressive ideology and suppressing conservative voices. In 2020, then-President Donald Trump called Columbia a “liberal, disgraceful institution” after its scientists published a study finding that lockdown delays led to tens of thousands of additional COVID-related deaths.

But conservatives warmed to Columbia this week, applauding Shafik’s move to have the students arrested.

Rep. Virginia Foxx, a North Carolina Republican who chairs the education committee, said in a statement she was “glad President Shafik has taken the long overdue step of inviting the New York Police Department to clear this radical, unauthorized encampment.”

The right-leaning New York Post printed on its cover Friday a photo of a protester wearing a keffiyeh being carried by their arms and legs off campus by police. The headline: “EVICT-ORY!”