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Thank you for speaking with me Marianne. I want to start with why you came together to organize as Jewish faculty at Columbia/Barnard? What was the intervention you were hoping to make? What were you hoping would be different than in the previous hearings
Since October 7, different progressive faculty groups have come together around various statements, protest, and activism. I worked with Jewish and non-Jewish faculty on one effort after the [Columbia administration] announced the three co-chairs of the new antisemitism task force and we noted that none of the three had any experience or expertise on the issue – which for an educational institution was very troubling!
But it was in anticipation of the Congressional hearings that Jewish faculty came together as such. We knew we had something very particular to say about the antisemitism narrative that would be circulating at the hearings. We hoped we could perhaps dispel or interrupt that narrative, or at least enlarge the conversation to prevent antisemitism from being so wholly weaponized and politicized. We were alarmed by what happened to the Presidents of Harvard and Penn and were desperately hoping that the same wouldn’t happen at Columbia. That was a real motivating force for us.
We wrote a long letter to President Shafik - a shorter version appeared in the Columbia Spectator that went out widely but we also wrote a much longer one that was sent to her. In it we offered our expertise. We cautioned that “though antisemitism functions as the Committee’s current engine of outrage, their purpose is not to assure that Jewish students can flourish on campuses ... but to falsely caricature and demonize universities as supposed hotbeds of “‘woke indoctrination.’” We actually gave President Shafik answers to some of the questions she’d be getting in Congress.
We hoped - we had assumed - that the Columbia administrators might have learned something from the experience of [the previous hearings]! Clearly not. That’s why we placed the piece [in the Guardian] the following day. We wanted to make it clear: Pres Shafik didn’t need to capitulate like that. She did not have to answer their bad faith questions the way she did. She did not need to throw academia under the bus and agree with the premises of MAGA Republicans’ questions about her own students and faculty.
You mentioned this in passing, but it does seem notable that the three co-chairs appointed to run an antisemitism task force at a university were not themselves experts on antisemitism!
Indeed! I should add that the task force now has about 20 people on it - three of them experts/scholars on antisemitism. But it is also troubling that the taskforce has publicly stated that they refuse to use or come up with any definitions of antisemitism to guide them. There’s a concern that without this the task force becomes primarily a space to gauge students’ feelings on the issue and, in the words of one co-chair, to “know it when [they] see it.” This confuses the question, refuses to educate the community on an important issue, and prevents us from identifying anti-Jewish hatred when it occurs.
On the topic of students’ feelings, it feels important to note that there has been a tendency in recent years on campus and more generally to equate discomfort with harm far beyond the issue of Israel/Palestine – which has of course come with its own “anti-woke” backlash. Is there an opportunity or a lesson for all of us here?
I think there is, yes. There is a real opportunity coming out of this situation to revisit how we distinguish between that which is hurtful and that which is harmful.
We need to listen closely to students and consider what they’re actually asking for when they’re asking for their feelings to be acknowledged, when they’re asking for trigger warnings. What are all the layers at play here? In feminist spaces, we have been discussing the request for trigger warnings for a long time – and they should be taken seriously.
At the same time, and this is something we wrote in the [faculty] letter, just because you feel unsafe doesn’t mean you are unsafe. The distinction matters. A college education is about having your beliefs challenged - and that is going to make you feel uncomfortable.
What we’re seeing [at] Columbia and with all the Congressional hearings and the media, however, is that feelings and fears are being exacerbated and escalated by forces and people external to our classrooms and to our campuses. The irony is that these are often the same “anti-woke” people who’ve been calling our students “snowflakes” and dismissing their feelings for years. Yet here they now are relying on the same arguments.
I find it terrible that Jewish students are being used as a vehicle for their arguments. In whose interest is it to make students feel afraid? In whose interest is it to whip up these fears and anxieties about the lack of safety – in whose interest is it to seed division and further the bifurcation between students? Brandeis University has a campaign right now inviting Jewish students who feel unsafe elsewhere to transfer to Brandeis. But the whole idea of singling Jewish students out right now as primary victims of discrimination does not make Jewish students safer.
I wonder how you would have described the tone and tenor on campus leading up to the hearing, ahead of the encampment?
The hearing came at a moment when dialogue across political difference had become much more difficult. In the late fall, we’d been able to have community conversations sponsored by one of the Deans, but once the university administration began really policing and monitoring students, constantly citing them for rules that were arbitrarily being changed, suspending the two student groups [SJP and JVP] – it all led to increased suspicion and distrust.
The atmosphere on campus was really heated – and also anxious. There was always this feeling that another shoe was going to drop: another suspension of a student, another infraction we weren’t expecting, another rule. And on top of that, there was growing nervousness about what would happen at the hearing.
We didn’t know it at the time, but of course many students were also busy quietly organizing, training, studying nonviolent protest, buying tents etc.
As we’ve now seen play out. So let’s turn to the encampments on campus and the response from universities, including sending police to arrest students and faculty.
Goodness, what a horrible set of events! First, we went from watching President Shafik throw academia under the bus and go along with MAGA Republicans on the committee, to watching her call in the NYPD on our students within a matter of hours, without any negotiation, without any hesitation – when even the NYPD themselves said students posed no danger and were peaceful. For what? To prove to the congressional committee that she was serious about her promises, that she was going to crack down. Of course, it all backfired on her anyway - those same Members of Congress are still calling for President Shafik to be fired because of the global movement the repressive tactics and the NYPD arrests unleashed.
And then, just two weeks later, after the erection of another encampment, and another escalation of the situation by an administration that was not taking student demands in any way seriously, students occupied a building. Within less than 24 hours and with no professional mediation, under the guise of campus safety, an army of police in riot gear rather brutally arrested over 100 protesters, treating our students as terrorists, rather than students we care about and teach.
Thinking about those of us who aren’t on campus, but are nonetheless watching this all unfold, I’d love for you to share what you see at stake here. Why should we be paying attention to this?
It’s important to start with the Congressional hearings themselves. We should be clear: these hearings aren’t about protecting Jewish students or preventing antisemitism, they’re about a much larger agenda of attacking higher education and academic freedom. We’re living in the aftermath of the Trump-era: K-12 education is closely monitored, books are being banned.
The likes of [Speaker] Mike Johnson come onto our campuses to mock us, to say that people like me are twisting students' minds, making them into “woke liberals” – but campus is not a space where students are being brainwashed; it is a space where we are teaching students to ask questions.
At their best, university and college campuses serve as protected spaces to engage in inquiry, to form community, to learn how to argue and debate, to think critically, to conduct research, to build knowledge and expertise, to compare different sources and consider different historical perspectives. This is what’s been devalued and this is what’s now under virulent attack. I believe we all have a stake in the fight to maintain and protect such spaces. To me, this is a vital public good.
We are approaching the end of the academic school year, but of course the question of what is and isn’t protected speech – and this distinction between hurt and harm, as you put it – remains a live wire. What do you believe needs to happen next?
I don’t want to say that words are never harmful. We know from Jewish history and the history of other forms of racism that words can go on to produce real harm. Distinguishing between hate speech and protected speech can be difficult and dependent on context. Take the expression ‘From the River to the Sea’ as an example: we know it is the official Likud party platform. What does it mean in the context of pro-Palestine movement? That Palestinians will have lives and equality between the river and the see, or is it a call to eradicate the state of Israel, as others hear it?
The First Amendment has clear language and protects our rights to expression. We can and should apply these laws as best we can. And we can and should apply the procedures that our institutions have put in place to deal with these questions. It is hard to be true to subtlety and nuance but it is really important that we do actually listen and look closely at context.
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