A university review panel says the president undermined academic freedom by allowing NYPD to break up a protest in Gaza.
Columbia University's embattled president came under renewed pressure as a campus review panel sharply rebuked her administration for suppressing a pro-Palestinian protest on its New York campus.
President Nemat Minouche Shafik faced an outcry from many students, faculty and outside observers for calling in the NYPD to dismantle a tent camp set up on campus by students protesting Israel's war in Gaza.
After a two-hour meeting Friday, the Columbia University Senate passed a resolution saying Shafik's administration undermined academic freedom and disrespected the privacy and due process rights of students and faculty members by calling the police and stopping a peaceful protest.
“The decision … has raised serious concerns about the administration's respect for shared governance and transparency in the university's decision-making process,” the panel said.
The senate, made up mostly of faculty and other staff members plus student representatives, did not name Shafik in its resolution, avoiding a harsher no-confidence motion.
The resolution also established a task force to monitor the “corrective measures” the senate asked the university administration to take in dealing with the protests.
Shafik, who is a member of the senate, did not immediately respond to the resolution.
She did not attend Friday's meeting and still retains the support of university trustees, who have the power to hire or fire the president.
Columbia spokesman Ben Chang said the administration shares the same goal as the senate — to restore peace on campus — and is committed to “continued dialogue.”
Nationwide protest
Police arrested more than 100 people on the Columbia campus last week and removed protesters' tents from the main lawn of the school's Manhattan campus, but protesters quickly returned and set up tents again.
The mass arrests in Columbia sparked similar protests and encampments at several other US universities.
On Friday, at least 40 protesters were arrested in Denver at the Auraria Campus, an institution shared by the University of Colorado Denver, Metropolitan State University of Denver and Community College of Denver, according to a statement from the school.
In Texas, University of Texas at Austin President Jay Hartzell faced a similar backlash from faculty on Friday, two days after he joined Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in calling the police to break up a peaceful pro-Palestinian protest.
Dozens of protesters were taken into custody, but charges were dropped because authorities lacked probable cause — or reasonable grounds — to make the arrests, the Travis County District Attorney's Office said.
Nearly 200 university faculty members signed a letter of no confidence in Hartzell for “needlessly putting students, staff and faculty at risk” when riot and mounted police turned on protesters.
Meanwhile, hundreds of protesters at George Washington University in Washington, DC, remained gathered for a second day on Friday. The school said the students did not follow instructions to leave, and several were suspended and temporarily banned from campus.
The White House has defended free speech on campus, but US President Joe Biden this week condemned what he called “anti-Semitic protests” and stressed that campuses must be safe.
Student-led protests against Israel's war in Gaza have spread overseas.
At the prestigious Sciences Po university in Paris, pro-Israel protesters challenged pro-Palestinian students occupying the school building on Friday. The police kept the two sides apart.
Pro-Palestinian students at the prestigious university later agreed to call off their event in exchange for an “internal debate” about the university's ties to Israel.
