Woody Allen once said that “80 percent of success is showing up.” Yesterday, Columbia University established its academic corollary: 80 percent of defeat is not showing up. In a disgraceful decision that deprived students of one of the most memorable moments of their lives, the university yielded to protesters who have occupied parts of the campus and buildings. Instead, graduates will be allowed to go to small-scale graduations.
It is a profile of cowardice that will stain the record of Columbia for years to come.
Notably, the graduation is ordinarily held on the space where students set up an encampment, but that space was finally cleared by police last week. It did not matter.
Columbia stated that “holding a large commencement ceremony on our campus presented security concerns that unfortunately proved insurmountable…Like our students, we are deeply disappointed with this outcome.”
“Insurmountable?” It is your campus. These are your students. Hold the damn commencement.
Columbia said the security advisers identified “too many variables” for holding the commencement and that adding security would only trigger the protesters.
So the solution, once again, is to do precisely what the protesters wanted.
Schools like University of Southern California said late last month that it was canceling its main commencement ceremony, citing similar security concerns.
Protesters disrupted the commencement at University of Michigan this weekend. However, Michigan did not yield. They handled the disruption and held their ground. They held their commencement.
The decision by Columbia is consistent with how administrators have approached disruptive protests for years. While some of us have called upon schools to suspend or to expel students preventing others from speaking on campus, universities have yielded over and over again. Indeed, citing security concerns became an easy way for schools to cancel conservative speakers while professing neutrality on the content of their views.
Faculty have not only encouraged but participated in such cancel campaigns.
Even classes have been stopped by protesters at places like Northwestern without any repercussions for the students. Northwestern (my alma mater) is the ultimate example of administrators picking the path of least resistance in the face of radicalized students. Recently, seven out of 11 members of the “President’s Advisory Committee on Preventing Antisemitism and Hate” resigned in protest.
Under the controversial agreement, the school will admit five Palestinian students each year, support two Palestinian faculty members annually, create special housing for Muslim students, and add students to Committees to review purchases from Israeli businesses.
Columbia has been consistently ranked at the very bottom of schools for free speech due to its intolerance for opposing viewpoints and failure to protect a diversity of opinions on campus.
Even the dean of its leading journalism school has warned against the “weaponization of free speech.” One of Columbia’s centers publicly complained when Justice Brett Kavanaugh was allowed to speak on campus.
When Columbia finally drew the line at protesters damaging and taking over buildings, the response from many students and faculty was outrage.
After Hamilton Hall was cleared by police, the editors of Columbia Law Review asked for the cancelation of exams because they were emotionally compromised. The editors wrote that the clearing of the unauthorized encampment constituted traumatic “violence” that left them “irrevocably shaken” and “unable to focus.” They were joined by editors of five other law journals, including the Columbia Human Rights Law Review & A Jailhouse Lawyer’s Manual.
They portrayed the trauma as the appearance of counter protesters and police on campus, accusing a “white supremacist, neo-fascist hate group” of “storming” campus. The Columbia students told the university that “many are unwell at this time and cannot study or concentrate while their peers are being hauled to jail.”
Columbia then faced threats of protests at the commencement, so it solved the problem by doing what the protesters were demanding. Of course, it did not solve the problem. Columbia is the problem. It is an example of how administrators have yielded control over their campuses to the loudest and most aggressive elements in their community.
Higher education is not supposed to be an academic version of the Hunger Games where the last person standing wins in a contest of attrition.
It is perhaps only appropriate that Columbia’s final lesson for graduates should be a continuation of years of yielding to the demands of those who dictate what can be said or done on campus.
Many of these students were denied commencement ceremonies four years ago. They worked to get into Columbia and many of their families had to make huge sacrifices to allow them to study at the university. As protests ramped up, they found themselves barred from campus and told again to take remote classes. A Jewish professor’s access card was deactivated because his presence on campus was viewed as too inflammatory for the protesters.
When they are finally ready to celebrate that moment, they have been told, again, that commencement is cancelled. However, this is not due to a pandemic but protesters. They will have to go to smaller graduations that are less objectionable to the radical elements of the student body.
Henry David Thoreau once said “The path of least resistance leads to crooked rivers and crooked men.” It has the same effect on higher education. There was a clear path open to Columbia. Hold the commencement and hold any disrupters accountable. In choosing to yield, President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik has abandoned not just these graduates but the integrity of Columbia.
