Zachary Marschall, editor in chief of Campus Reform, tells AFN the now-gone university president should have been shown the door for allowing protesters to take over the campus.
“This was absolutely necessary,” he says, “but she should have been fired.”
AFN reported in an April story, now four months ago, that Columbia was cancelling remaining classes on campus for the spring semester rather than arrest and remove the anti-Israel protesters.
Columbia announced it was moving to remote classes out of “safety concerns” for its students. Almost one quarter of those students, 23%, are Jewish.
The protesting students took over a campus building, Hamilton Hall, and also set up a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” and refused to leave, Campus Reform has reported.
Among the Columbia faculty, three university deans resigned earlier this month after private text messages revealed all three of them had mocked a Jewish event held in May despite the anti-Semitism prevalent on the campus.
In one telling standoff, Jewish professor Shai Davidi was banned from the Columbia campus when he organized a counter-protest with fellow Jews.
Before Shafik stepped down, Columbia sent out a statement explaining it will have a "mediation" program intended to encourage constructive dialogue.
Marschall, however, predicts there will only be more protests when students return.
“Our so-called elite institutions are not only just incapable of protecting Jewish students,” he alleges, “they have demonstrated absolutely no evidence they have used the summer to beef up their policies, or taken any measures to make campuses more secure for everybody this fall.”
