What Is Really Going On at Columbia University? Not What You’ve Been Told.

It was a tumultuous weekend on the campus of Columbia University. The arrest of more than 100 pro-Palestinian students from an encampment on the university’s South Lawn has only emboldened protesters, and it’s led to fears of more action by the New York City Police Department. Dark warnings over the weekend suggested Jewish students may be in danger ahead of Passover and anti-Israel student protesters may be driven from campus altogether. Columbia president Nemat Shafik’s appearance before Congress, which helped spark the latest events, has only amplified anger and disbelief at the university’s response to protests.

Amid all this, the student-run independent newspaper, the Columbia Daily Spectator, ran an editorial, “Is Columbia in Crisis?,” laying bare the administration’s failures in the lead-up to the current escalation. “Your students are willingly risking suspension, arrests, harassment, and internal and external threats,” the editorial read, directly addressing the university’s administration. “Why do you continue to isolate yourself from those whom you allegedly seek to serve?”

On Friday, and again on Sunday after a long weekend of developments, I spoke to Colin Roedl and Milène Klein, the current and former editorial page editors of the Spectator. They told me more about what’s actually happening on campus right now, the impetus behind the impassioned editorial, and whether students—Jewish, Muslim, or otherwise—really face danger on campus right now. Our conversations have been edited and condensed for clarity.

Aymann Ismail: What is the mood on campus right now?

Milène Klein: Actually, pretty good. We’re in the newsroom right now. The mood on campus is actually high. There’s a lot of energy. People are chilling on the lawns.

Colin Roedl: We use this anonymous forum called Sidechat. It came up in the hearings in Congress. On it, we’re seeing calls for solidarity. We’re seeing a lot of mobilization from outside communities rallying in protection of the second encampment that’s gone up. The decision to clamp down on the first encampment has only further mobilized student populations, and that’s what kind of developed into our editorial “Is Columbia in Crisis?”

How has president Shafik’s decision to invite the NYPD to evict student protesters from the campus been received?

Roedl: There’s been a large police presence on campus since October, which has been really distressing for a lot of students of color, especially in New York, especially when it’s the New York Police Department. We have prison buses around campus, and an egregious amount of police officers off and on campus. The presence has been very overwhelming. There was a lot of speculation as to when the police were going to intervene. So, when we received an email from president Shafik saying that she was going to let police on campus, that was a moment in which hundreds of students mobilized on campus to watch. There was kind of a weird spectatorship occurring, and it’s still going to this day.

From what we’re hearing over at the newspaper, it was not well received at all from really anybody on campus. We’re already seeing a large mobilization in response. We’re getting increased op-ed submissions, and there are protesters demonstrating off campus. We’re seeing a large response.

Klein: This weekend is the first time the NYPD had been called to actually break up a protest. There had already been arrests around campus, if not actually on campus, so I think many people are very distressed and extremely disappointed—but not surprised. The university introduced security forces to disrupt peaceful protest simply because they want to appease the people who are watching the congressional hearings and who are asking questions in bad faith. This is the audience they are kowtowing to. I think that’s what people are more distressed by than the police presence, to be honest.

How are students on the pro-Israel side reacting to the move?

Klein: Overall, the most vocal contingents of the pro-Israel movement have been generally more inclined to work with law enforcement. There are student activists and professors like Shai Davidai who have vocally praised the NYPD’s presence and critiqued protests for calling out the NYPD. I wouldn’t go as far to say that all members in that contingent are siding with the NYPD, but I think that that is true in general.

The NYPD seems poised to play an even larger role now. Mayor Eric Adams promised to support the university president and add more police to the area. What are you seeing out there right now?

Klein: Both of us have been in the encampment for a little bit today. It’s been fairly calm. The police have retreated from campus and are remaining outside the gates where a really large contingent of non-Columbia affiliates are protesting. The police seem to be preoccupied with them at the moment. Otherwise, the encampment has been relatively calm. The administration has allowed for the erection of more tents. I think things this week will devolve and get a little crazier. President Biden just made a statement. So perhaps White House affiliates will show up at some point. You never know.

It seems everyone is concerned that things will be getting worse. This weekend, Jake Tapper pointed to calls from an orthodox rabbi for Jewish students to stay home for their own safety. How does that square with what you’re seeing on campus?

Klein: I think that’s honestly ridiculous. I haven’t seen any threats or fear among the Jewish students at the university. I don’t know why there would be fear. On campus there’s really no reason why any student would be more scared now than they theoretically would have been in the past. And even then, I don’t really see any reason for fear. I guess the only potential justification that would make sense to me would be the number of outside protesters. Just that, as in any case, you don’t know who’s going to show up to a large demonstration. There’s always going to be bad faith actors of any kind of kind of mass rally. I think Columbia’s inability to vet these people I guess theoretically could be a cause for concern. But there haven’t been any incidents.

Roedl: The director of the Kraft Center for Jewish Life, Brian Cohen, issued a letter saying he didn’t believe Jewish students should leave Columbia, and that the university and the city need to do more to ensure the safety of the students. So I think—

Klein: Wait. We just got an email from Columbia’s chief operating officer. Are you joking?

What does it say?

Klein: It says, “increasing patrol strength to reach a total of 35 additional guards and two additional supervisors per shift, a total of 111 additional safety personnel”—“this will more than double the current safety personnel per shift. Additional coverage of the Kraft Center during the Passover holiday.” Which I think is simply beyond the pale. Increased coverage during Passover? Please …

Why does it strike you as unserious?

Klein: Because it’s very alarmist. They’ve done this before regarding the Kraft Center. And the truth is that it’s never been under siege. There are no protesters in that area right now. I’ve never seen protesters specifically go by the Kraft Center. I think it’s ridiculous because it implies a level of danger that simply is not there. Honestly, I think this announcement is potentially more distressing to Jewish students than anything else actually happening on campus. Because if you hear the security for the Jewish center is being increased during Passover, the implication is this center could potentially be targeted.

Why do you imagine rhetoric around Jewish students feeling targeted is rapidly increasing like this, then?

Klein: The increased alarm relates directly to the scale of the protests. The protests are larger than anything we’ve seen before, really, aside from the Oct. 10 protest. As a result, pro-Zionist students feel swamped and don’t feel comfortable making their voices heard as opposition just due to the sheer number and constant physical presence of demonstrators. But just because these students feel unsafe does not mean that the center is going to be overrun by a mob, or endangered by people who are protesting not against Jews, but against Israel. I think the rhetoric is honestly the source of a lot of the alarm, as opposed to what’s actually happening. I think it is scary because it feels like campus has been handed over to the police. It almost feels like a military coup. I actually don’t think it has much to do with the protests at all.

Can you give me the play-by-play of what’s happened since Oct. 7, from the perspective of the newspaper?

Klein: I was the head of opinion last semester. On Oct. 7, people took a second to draw in a breath. And then the next day, things began to kick off. News began to do their own coverage, reporting on different gatherings. Whereas we were interacting with different student bodies organizing on campus, seeking pieces from the student body and faculty. The first we got, I believe, was from the unofficial Jewish Caucus of Columbia University Democrats, issuing a condemnation of Hamas and calling for Columbia students to rally around the community. And then there was another piece that we got shortly thereafter in a similar vein. Over a period of time, protests began to grow larger and the administration began to face a lot of pressure to crack down on all pro-Palestinian protests on campus from bodies outside of Columbia, many of them legal bodies or donor bodies with specific vested political interests.

Just the pro-Palestine rallies?

Klein: If you look at internal messaging from our administrators, the rhetoric was very much slanted against pro-Palestinian protesters. They were subject to much more scrutiny than any other kind of demonstration on campus at that time. Pro-Israel protests were given a berth that pro-Palestinian protests were not. And the organizations that had run those pro-Palestinian protests were invigorated by that pushback. The harder they tried to silence someone on Columbia campus, the louder that person will be. And in this case, I think that’s particularly true. And so, protests increased in scale and breadth, and they continued to grow larger. And through that time, we also saw the introduction of more security forces around campus. The NYPD presence at the recent protest was really immense and unprecedented, but it was absolutely not the first time that the police have been stationed around campus as a “peacekeeping force.” That began in October or November.

Was there any one particular flashpoint that in your mind was a turning point on campus?

Roedl: We started receiving a lot of submissions around when the administration suspended Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voices for Peace in November. That was the turning point. There are counterprotests occurring at every event. A lot of the criticism was “you’re suspending Students for Justice in Palestine for unauthorized events without also reacting to counterprotests.” It felt like an asymmetric punishment. After that, we saw the rise of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, and a lot of other student groups mobilizing against the suspension. That’s when Columbia started gaining national attention. This was also around the time of the first congressional hearings and also the doxing trucks. Those two things, I think, were precipitous of greater public scrutiny at Columbia campus and on student organizers specifically.

Can you tell me about the congressional hearings? How have they been received on campus?

Klein: The Columbia delegation under fire—high key, they deserve it. I’m not saying Congress is right about Columbia, because it’s not. But I think we need to see our administrators get a little bit more heat from all angles. The average student wondered why our university president was not saying much about anything. She was new to the role and was stepping into a situation that is really unprecedented at Columbia. I think their strategy at that time was to implement quiet discipline, just to cautiously change policy and to punish student groups quietly so as to not create the kind of controversy that was happening in other universities. I suspect it was to try to also appease forces that were exerting pressure on her to take action. I think what became clear was that her condemnation wasn’t strong enough for those forces, so she became increasingly vocal about the steps that she was planning to take and the disciplinary infractions students could rack up for engaging in certain kinds of behavior and so on. And then obviously, there’s the alleged chemical attack, at which she doesn’t say anything for four days. But I think the lesson that she learned was that trying to avoid saying anything is probably not going to work. I think it had given people the impression that Columbia is avoiding questions because they don’t have answers. So, I think she hoped that by going to Congress, she signals that Columbia is not avoiding these questions and is happy to be transparent.

What is national media getting wrong right now?

Roedl: Actively calling for more police contributes to feelings of unsafety. And those feelings of unsafety are contributing to more police. So we’re seeing a feedback loop with absolutely no communication from our administration. That is the uniting point for a lot of people, regardless of politics, that we’re seeing complete silence from our administration. They made the decision to authorize NYPD on campus, and that’s the last time we have heard from her. Updates from the university either through the university required text messages, or by email, like the one we just read aloud, all read more like press statements about what Columbia is doing, rather than what Columbia is doing for its students. We’re getting a lot of criticisms asking where is Shafik and the Columbia administration. That’s what the newsroom is really interested in right now.

It is also really important to note that we are all students. Regardless of who you are at campus, you know somebody who was arrested. Students watched their friends being carried out by the police. And with all this going on, there are students trying to study. This is our final week of classes. Seniors are finishing theses. And in the background, you have an international microscope on Columbia. The undergraduate student population is like 8,000. That contributes to feelings of being overwhelmed. You’re trying to go to class, but they’re searching your bag or you’re rerouted because the gates are closed.

Klein: There’s a lot of discussion about what is happening at Columbia campus. Like, “There’s crisis at Columbia”—you have this image of students hunting each other in the street, like absolute chaos. There are alarmists framing this all around antisemitism, or a crusade against Jewish students, whom are hiding or being pushed out of campus. I don’t think any of us have seen that. The reality is that we’re a community of people who live together, eat together, and go to class together every single day. And for people who want to hear what Columbia students have to say, you have to read what they’re saying in their own words.

Roedl: I can’t believe the White House chimed in.

Klein: I’m a Jewish student at Columbia. If Joe Biden wants to give me $500, I say why not.

Roedl: The encampment drew people out who have never been to an event before. And we’re seeing the encampment going strong. Students are out there while it rains and are getting sick being out there. Today was admitted students’ day, and the People’s University of Palestine, which is what they’ve dubbed the encampment, was offering different orientation shared resources. We’re still seeing a lot of mobilizations occurring on campus. So it seems like they’re still going strong. And we’ll be here ready to publish voices whenever they come in.

What do you wish the administration pursued rather than going to Congress and deploying the police?

Klein: Fundamentally, it’s the way that every major private university in the country operates. It is beholden to donors and donor interests. Any kind of student protest movement is fundamentally incompatible with these financial and political bodies that are exerting an undue amount of influence on the university and its policy. What I think really needs to happen is the university needs to really reevaluate its relationship to donor bodies, and its relationship with its endowment.

Sounds like you wish that they would just take the protesters seriously.

Klein: Absolutely. I wish they would take the protesters seriously instead of paying lip service.

Roedl: I want them to be genuine. If you’re not going to divest, say it. Currently, there’s just no administration conversation with the community. It feels like the university is sending emails just so they’re screenshotted and posted online, rather than to create genuine dialogue. We hear over and over again from the university president that she wants create spaces for dialogue. But I think a lot of students are saying, “OK, now what?”

Klein: There are spaces for dialogue. They’re outside, on the lawns.

Roedl: Right. Many students are frustrated that there is no way to meaningfully interact and engage. That was something that I was really wanting to stress in the editorial. For example, if they don’t want protests, is the university willing to implement a referendum? That was the intent behind the encampment zone, to get the university to be transparent with them. You have to make sacrifices to be a good institutional body. That’s the reality. You can’t please everybody. I think instead of going to Congress and paying lip service to people who won’t be satisfied no matter what the university does, the university needs to be transparent with its students.

Klein: Protesting is something that Columbia loves to talk about itself in promotion videos and literature. There’s this whole idea of Columbia as a bastion of freedom of expression. To have a university that has long portrayed itself this way then come down hard on student protesters and ignite a conflict between university administrators and a student body that is really passionate about using their voices, is just difficult to understand—it’s sort of shocking.