Columbia leadership rebuked by faculty panel for police crackdown on protesters
Columbia University’s embattled president came under renewed pressure on Friday as a campus oversight panel sharply criticized her administration for clamping down on a pro-Palestinian protest at the Ivy League school, Reuters reports.
After a two-hour meeting, the Columbia University Senate approved a resolution that President Nemat Minouche Shafik’s administration had undermined academic freedom and disregarded the privacy and due process rights of students and faculty members by calling in the police and shutting down the protest.
“The decision … has raised serious concerns about the administration’s respect for shared governance and transparency in the university decision-making process,” it said.
The senate, composed mostly of faculty members and other staff plus a few students, did not name Shafik in its resolution and avoided the harsher language of a censure.
There was no immediate response to the resolution from Shafik, who is a member of the senate but did not attend Friday’s meeting.
Columbia spokesperson Ben Chang said the administration shared the same goal as the Senate — to restore calm to the campus — and was committed to “an ongoing dialogue.”