Speech for the Ages: Columbia Prof Slams Police Violence Against His Students

Speech by Rashid Khalidi will ring true around the world and inspire new generations of students to address the injustice inflicted on Palestinians

I want to share one of the most compelling speeches I have heard in many years. It was just delivered, spontaneously and without notes, the day after New York City police violently removed students at Columbia University who had occupied Hamilton Hall in protest of the university’s financial ties to Israel.

The police action came after Columbia president Minouche Safik cut off negotiations with student protest leaders. Those negotiations could have created a formal process where the university’s Board of Trustees would have reviewed the investment ties to the Israeli military. Instead, Safik unilaterally and without getting faculty approval (required by university rules) opted for a militarized response. She had more than 200 of her own students and faculty arrested in the last three weeks. Many of those occupying the building reported being beaten with batons and having their heads stomped. Many of the students now face automatic expulsion with virtually no due process on the eve of graduation.

Can you imagine what the US government would be saying had this kind of repression of student protests happened in a country like Iran or China?

Just below is the speech by Dr. Khalidi, the Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia and widely considered one of the top scholars in the world on Palestine. His recent book, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine, has been met with major critical acclaim. Based on meticulous research, the book destroys just about every myth ever constructed about the creation of the state of Israel. Khalidi has been on the Columbia faculty for 22 years.

Here is Khalidi’s speech:

Khalidi says Columbia President Minouche Shafik and the university's Board of Trustees "will go down in infamy" for bringing police onto campus for the first time in 56 years. "This administration has brought disgrace on Columbia University," he said, saying Shafik capitulated to "craven external forces" such as right-wing members of Congress who were calling on New York’s Governor to order the National Guard onto campus to quell the protests. He pointed out that many of the 700 Columbia students arrested by New York City police in 1968 after a similar takeover of Hamilton Hall to protest the Vietnam War are now hailed on the university's own website as heroes. He says the same favorable view from Columbia's establishment will be bestowed on the current generation of Columbia students, while Safik and the Board of Trustees will fade into ignominy.

Khalidi says in reference to the student protests:

"This is the conscience of a nation speaking through your kids... public opinion is with us. It's just the politicians and leaders of this university who are blind, deaf, and dumb to the moral imperative coming from our students."

Another point: 54 years ago this month the Ohio National Guard killed four college students at Kent State University who were protesting the Vietnam War. After the killings, over 4 million students in the US went on strike in the Spring of 1970. After Columbia’s initial wave of student arrests on April 18, campus protests spread to more than 140 universities in the country and to many others around the world, including 14 in the United Kingdom. Police repression against students almost always backfires. 

After US soldiers entered the Kent State campus in 1970 and killed four student protestors, over 4 million students went on strike in the United States.

Like a malodorous release of chemical fumes, the unfortunate “tone” of repression set by Safik at Columbia traveled quickly to other schools. The video below from CNN journalist Nick Valencia captures a deeply disturbing but typical scene. Georgia state police used tear gas (a chemical weapon outlawed during war) and rubber bullets on students at Emory University in Atlanta engaging in non-violent protest over that school’s financial ties to Israel. Georgia police aimed machine guns at protestors who had the temerity to demand that Emory divest its $11 billion endowment from companies profiting from the conflict in Gaza. Students peacefully protesting the same issue at other schools, including the University of Texas and University of Southern California, also have been met with brutal police violence. Across the country, more than 3,000 student protestors have now been arrested.

It’s also disturbing that the primary person orchestrating the repression at Columbia appears to be the same man who masterminded the repression of the Occupy Wall Street encampment in NYC's Zuccotti Park in 2011. That man is Cas Holloway, pictured below. He was deputy mayor of New York City during Occupy Wall Street when billionaire Michael Bloomberg was running the city. He later went on to work for Bloomberg's company for several years. Last January, Columbia hired him as "chief operating officer" to essentially quash pro-Palestinian protests to appease a certain class of powerful benefactors. I’ll note Bloomberg himself has given millions in donations to the university.

The face of New York City’s Repression, Inc. Lawyer Cas Holloway has built a lucrative career helping institutions violate free speech and the right to protest.

In my view, the reason US police forces are responding to student protestors with such brutality is because our government has lost the argument over Gaza. Making profit from what the International Court of Justice already has determined is a "plausible genocide" — as Columbia and other universities do through their billion-dollar investments in weapons manufacturers — is totally out of step with public opinion and violates any principled ethical framework. Attacks on student protestors throughout the US are not only ineffective, they are a symptom of the the weakness of both the Netanyahu government and the Biden Administration in the face of the horrific events in Gaza and the growing strength of the anti-war movement.

There is also another way: administrators at six major universities refused to call in police, negotiated in good faith with their protesting students, and made significant concessions that proves non-violent direct action can be effective. (Those six schools are Rutgers, Northwestern, Evergreen, Vassar, Middlebury, and Brown.) However, this requires administrative leadership far more enlightened than currently exists at Columbia.

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Steven