Officials at Columbia University, facing surging tensions on campus that raised safety concerns, have announced all classes will be virtual on Monday as Passover begins.
Columbia President Minouche Shafik said in a statement the decision was made to “deescalate the rancor and give us all a chance to consider next steps.”
The move underscores how tense the situation has become at the Ivy League school and the enormous challenge facing Shafik to get the situation under control.
While I don’t disagree with the concept at all here, I’m a little uneasy over the idea that anyone would have to do anything to go out of the way for their own safety, especially taking up a political cause. That should be the default
What’s interesting, or awful, is that was exactly what was being asked of Palestinian and Middle Eastern diaspora members: that they hadn’t disavowed Hamas (or ISIS, or going back to 2001, Al Qaeda) enough and were suspect until they did.
It was so bad that we saw joke headlines like “Palestinian children killed in Israeli strike criticised for not condemning Hamas”.
No question. Unfortunately some folks would go out of their way to endanger the safety of others, whether they like it or not. If I’ve learned anything about democracy and society it’s that passive stability (in safety and other regards) seems impossible. Some people have to be actively working to maintain such stability. If you have a well funded government that represents your interests, then public servants will do most of this work, you just go and vote. If you don’t… more of that work gets outsourced to private individuals. And since there always are private individuals who are working towards replacing, underfunding, undermining governments, it follows that even if you have such a government that is favorable to protect you, you still have to work to counteract those other folks.