Columbia President Minouche Shafik faces mounting calls to resign as anti-Israel protest grows
Columbia University President Minouche Shafik is facing mounting calls to resign as anti-Israel protests at the Manhattan campus continue to swell with some 200 demonstrators gathering on Monday.
New York’s Republican delegation, along with the Columbia Jewish Alumni Association, have each penned letters calling on the embattled president to step down over her handling of the protests where antisemitic and pro-Hamas chants on campus have made headlines in recent days with little to no opposition from the university.
“It is time for Columbia University to turn the page on this shameful chapter. This can only be done through the restoration of order and your prompt resignation,” House Republican conference chairwoman Elise Stefanik and the nine other Republican representatives from the Empire State wrote in a letter exclusively obtained by The Post on Monday.
The CJJA echoed the Republicans’ sentiment, claiming the protests have made the university “the center of worldwide hatred and bigotry” as other schools, including NYU and The New School, have started similar demonstrations in solidarity with Columbia.
“President Shafik’s silence has been deafening. Appeasing antisemitism never works,” the alumni group wrote in a scathing statement Monday.
“It is well past time to have asked the NYPD to clear campus and enforce university rules. President Shafik must immediately resign,” the CJJA added.
Hours later, the CJJA walked back their initial statement, saying, “President Shafik must call the NYPD back in, and take immediate and decisive action that dramatically changes the facts on the ground: or resign.”
Local Democrats also called on the university to crack down on the protests, but stopped short of demanding Shafik to resign.
“Both elected representatives and members of the administration’s of academic institutions need to combat what is this dramatic rise of antisemitism and a feeling of insecurity from Jews on campus,” US Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) said.
Follow The Post’s coverage of the pro-terror protests at colleges across the US:
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- Stanford submits ‘deeply disturbing’ photo of campus anti-Israel protester wearing Hamas headband to FBI
- Iranian college offers free tuition to US students expelled for participating in anti-Israel protests: ‘Our people’
- MAP: US colleges where students have been arrested over anti-Israel protests
Fellow Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), echoed Goldman and said it is now up to the university to prove itself by quelling the demonstration and standing by its Jewish students and staff.
“I think the pressure is on for the university president to step up and act. I think there has to be accountability,” Gottheimer said. “We’ve seen good steps forward, but the bottom line is we’re gonna be watching every single day.”
Antisemitism controversy at Columbia University: Key events
- More than 280 anti-Israel demonstrators were cuffed at Columbia and the City of New York campuses overnight in a “massive” NYPD operation.
- One hundred and nine people were nabbed at the Ivy League campus after cops responded to Columbia’s request to help oust a destructive mob that had illegally taken over the Hamilton Hall academic building late Tuesday, NYC Mayor Eric Adams and police said.
- Hizzoner blamed the on-campus chaos on insurgents who have a “history of escalating situations and trying to create chaos” instead of protesting peacefully.
- Columbia’s embattled president Minouche Shafik, who has faced mounting calls to resign for not cracking down sooner, issued a statement Wednesday saying the on-campus violence had “pushed the university to the brink.”
- Columbia University president Minouche Shafik was accused of “gross negligence” while testifying before Congress. Shafik refused to say if the phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is antisemitic.
- More than 100 Columbia professors signed a letter defending students who support the “military action” by Hamas.
Shafik, who defended her school’s handling of antisemitism before lawmakers last week, canceled in-person classes on campus Monday, telling students in an email that they “need a reset” as the heated demonstrations entered a sixth day.
“I am deeply saddened by what is happening on our campus. Our bonds as a community have been severely tested in ways that will take a great deal of time and effort to reaffirm,” Shafik wrote ahead of the start of Passover Monday evening.
“Students across an array of communities have conveyed fears for their safety and we have announced additional actions we are taking to address security concerns.”
Along with pressure from politicians, including President Biden and Mayor Eric Adams, the university is facing financial fallout — New England Patriots team owner Robert Kraft announced he was yanking his support from Columbia, saying it was “no longer an institution I recognize.”
“I am deeply saddened at the virulent hate that continues to grow on campus and throughout our country,” he said in a statement. “I am no longer confident that Columbia can protect its students and staff and I am not comfortable supporting the university until corrective action is taken.”
Kraft, who is worth $11.1 billion, has been a prolific donor to the university and funded the Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life across from Columbia’s campus with a $11.5 million donation in 2000.
The billionaire then donated another $1.5 million in 2005, with a follow up donation of 5 million in support of Columbia’s athletics program.
Despite the pressure, the university has been accused of rolling over to the protesters after forcing classes to go remote on Monday ahead of the Passover holiday.
Columbia professor Shai Davidai — a vocal critic of the administration’s response to the protests — was banned from campus Monday, saying administrators told him they “can not ensure your safety.”
“I teach at the business campus,” railed Davidai, who held a pro-Jewish rally outside the gates of Columbia earlier in the morning. “They want me to do my job and keep all my responsibilities but none of my rights.”
Meanwhile, a massive new tent city at the Morningside Heights campus popped up with some 200 protesters, all of whom would have had to use their Columbia IDs to get in.
A sign over the tents read, “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” with students showing no indication that they’d be leaving anytime soon.
“I’ve been camping here for several days,” Kahymani James, a political science major, told The Post.
James said the students are demanding “financial divestment, financial transparency, [and] amnesty for all students who have faced disciplinary sanctions in an academic boycott.”
The students were also joined by some faculty members, 54 of whom wrote a letter to university opposing a decision to suspend student protesters and authorizing a raid by the NYPD.
Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis, said it was “unacceptable” that the demonstrators were allowed to disrupt classes at the Ivy League school.
“We should take the word ‘elite’ out of colleges that tolerate these attacks on Jews,” said Potasnik, who visited Columbia on Sunday.
“It’s capitulation to the hate mongers, to those who shout antisemitic statements at us,” he added. “How is it that pro-Hamas demonstrators can get on campus but an Israeli professor who teaches at Columbia can’t?”
The rabbi also called on the college to serve “severe consequences” over the hateful protest.
It remains to be seen who will be punished by the university after days of vitriol and antisemitism on campus during the protest. More than 100 protesters were cuffed last week — including far lefty Rep. Ilhan Omar’s daughter Isra Hirsi — after Shafik called in the NYPD to crack down.
The NYPD on Monday stressed that its hands were tied because Columbia sits on private property.
“Absent from ongoing crime, we cannot just go onto Columbia’s campus as we see fit,” Mike Gerber, deputy commissioner of legal matters, told reporters. “It is up to the university to decide whether or not they want us on campus. As a general matter, and this goes back many years, Columbia does not want NYPD on campus.”
A Jewish Columbia student filed an NYPD hate crime report Monday saying that he was accosted and hit in the head with rocks by pro-Palestinian protesters on campus after he arrived with Israeli flags on Saturday night.
That same night, pro-Israeli demonstrators were also accosted by the protesters who shouted, “Go back to Poland!” and “Go back to Belarus!”
Another viral video of the protest going around the Manhattan campus shows a woman waving a Palestinian flag as she shouts, “Go Hamas! … Long live Hamas and the rebellion.”
Mayor Adams, who condemned the protest, said any crimes or antisemitic incidents happening in and around the campus will be investigated.
“I am horrified and disgusted with the antisemitism being spewed at and around the Columbia University campus — like the example of a young woman holding a sign with an arrow pointing to Jewish students stating ‘Al-Qasam’s Next Targets,’ or another where a woman is literally yelling ‘We are Hamas,’ or another where groups of students are chanting ‘We don’t want no Zionists here’ — and I condemn this hate speech in the strongest of terms,” Adams said in a statement.
“Supporting a terrorist organization that aims to kill Jews is sickening and despicable,” he added.
