[guest post by Dana]

Third Ivy League university president bites the dust:

Columbia University president Minouche Shafik resigned on Wednesday following months of criticism from students, donors and members of Congress over how she handled pro-Palestinian protests on campus, she announced in a letter addressed “to the Columbia community.”

…Elite colleges have struggled to balance the right to protest with student safety — none more so than Columbia, which became the epicenter of the student protest movement.

From Shafik:

“I have had the honor and privilege to lead this incredible institution, and I believe that — working together — we have made progress in a number of important areas,” she said on Wednesday.

“However, it has also been a period of turmoil where it has been difficult to overcome divergent views across our community. This period has taken a considerable toll on my family, as it has for others in our community.” Shafik said her departure from the role “would best enable Columbia to traverse the challenges ahead.”

Really?? Is the challenge to “overcome divergent views”? I would think the challenge is to listen to divergent views and try to find common ground. If that is not possible, then one must recognize and accept that a fellow student has the right to their own beliefs and views. Maybe work thoughtfully to persuade them to understand your own view or leave it alone. However, none of this involves screaming, harassing, threatening, getting physical, or preventing students who don’t share your views from accessing classes and moving thorough the campus, freely and without risk.

Ironically, a federal judge took another prominent university to task for not ensuring the safety of Jewish students and their access to classes:

A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction this week against UCLA, saying the prestigious school cannot allow Jewish students to be barred from accessing classes and campus.

The ruling Tuesday is the first of its kind against a university pertaining to anti-Israel protests that roiled American college campuses this year.

Three Jewish students had filed a complaint against the regents of UCLA in June saying that the university in Los Angeles devolved into a “hotbed of antisemitism” in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war and that the school failed to ensure the safety of Jewish students and full access to campus facilities.

From U.S. District Judge Mark C. Scarsi:

“Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith. This fact is so unimaginable and so abhorrent to our constitutional guarantee of religious freedom,” he wrote…“If any part of UCLA’s ordinarily available programs, activities, and campus areas become unavailable to certain Jewish students, UCLA must stop providing those ordinarily available programs, activities, and campus areas to any students,” Scarsi wrote.

Demonstrating UCLA’s deep concern for the Jewish plaintiffs (and by extension, other Jewish students not a part of this lawsuit), the school responded to the temporary injunction:

A spokesperson for UCLA criticized the ruling to the Los Angeles Times, saying it would “improperly hamstring our ability to respond to events on the ground.” They added that the school is “considering all options moving forward”; the university had previously indicated it could appeal. UCLA’s fall semester for law students begins this month.

I’m reading this as: UCLA believes that it really is *that* difficult to ensure a specific group of students be able to attend class and move around the campus freely, without restraint or harm. And if that’s the case, it’s not the Jewish students that are the problem…

–Dana