Faculty members at Columbia University in New York, on Monday staged a mass walk-out, advocating for pro-Palestinian protesters on the school’s campus. In the visuals of the mass walk-out that have surfaced online, hundreds of faculty memebers can be seen protesting against the school president Minouche Shafik's decision regarding the arrest of students at a pro-Palestinian encampment last week.
As per media reports, the NYPD on Thursday arrested around 108 people at the protests at the request of president Shafik and the University administration.
Students and faculty gathered on the school’s campus in large numbers, holding signs and wearing sashes, showcasing their support for the students, The Guardian reported.
The development came after students set up protest tents back on the campus. These tents had earlier been torn down last week by the New York police department. Over 100 students, who were suspended by the university, were also arrested by the police.
The report noted an adjunct lecturer at Columbia law school Bassam Khawaja, who is also the supervising attorney at the school’s human rights clinic, saying that he was “shocked and appalled that the president went immediately to the New York police department”.
“It didn’t seem like any kind of measures were taken to de-escalate,” Khawaja stated.
Stressing that the arrest was unnecessary as the students were protesting peacefully, he added: “It also just seems completely unnecessary. This was by all accounts, a non-violent protest. It was a group of students camping out on the lawn in the middle of campus. It’s not any different from everyday life on campus.”
On Thursday, the professors were specifically incensed by school President Minouche Shafik’s decision to call the NYPD and get the protesting students arrested.
In a jointly signed letter addressed to president Shafik, the faculty members wrote: “While we as a faculty disagree about the relevant political issues and express no opinion on the merits of the protest, we are writing to urge respect for basic rule-of-law values that ought to govern our University," the Daily Caller reported.
“The students that were arrested were peaceful, offered no resistance whatsoever, and were saying what they wanted to say in a peaceful manner,” NYPD Chief John Chell told the Columbia Daily Spectator.
Students had called for their universities to back a ceasefire in Gaza and oust companies with links to Israel.
The incident has prompted national attention, with political leaders of both parties condemning university leadership.
US President Joe Biden denounced antisemitism on college campuses in a statement marking Passover saying, “This blatant antisemitism is reprehensible and dangerous – and it has absolutely no place on college campuses, or anywhere in our country.”