Columbia Uni prez breaks silence after ‘horrific’ NYPD raids: ‘You are students who paid an exceptionally high price’

Columbia University president Minouche Shafik has finally broken her silence after the NYPD raids on the campus amid anti-Israel protests. Shafik has called for more “empathy” from the student body. Several dramatic videos of police removing occupiers and the tent city surfaced on social media. The cops stormed an administration building illegally taken over by protesters.

Columbia University President Minouche Shafik has broken her silence on the NYPD raids (Photo by Indy Scholtens / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP)(Getty Images via AFP)

In the last two weeks, an anti-Israel encampment overtook the university’s stately Morningside Heights campus. Shafik said that these events are “among the most difficult in Columbia’s history.”

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What did Minouche Shafik say?

“The turmoil and tension, division and disruption have impacted the entire community,” she said in a video address on Friday evening, May 3. “You are students who paid an exceptionally high price.”

“You lost your final days in the classroom and residence halls. For those of you who are seniors, you’re finishing the way you started: online,” she told the students. Shafik added that the school administration tried “very hard to solve the issue of encampment through dialogue,” but the protesters refused to budge.

The protesters’ demand was that Columbia divest its finances from companies associated with Israel. “Academic leaders talked with students for eight days and nights,” she said. “The university made a sincere and good offer but it was not accepted.”

Shafik noted that when the demonstrators occupied Columbia’s iconic Hamilton Hall, they “crossed a new line.” “It was a violent act that put our students at risk as well as putting the protesters at risk,” she said. She added that she herself saw the “distressing” damages caused to the building.

On a positive note, Shafik said she believed civil discourse can “rebuild community” on campus with both sides’ understanding and work. “The issues that are challenging us — the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, anti-Semitism, and anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bias — have existed for a long time,” she said.

“And Columbia, despite being a remarkable institution, cannot solve them singlehandedly. What we can do is be an exemplar of a better world, where people who disagree do so civilly, recognize each other’s humanity and show empathy and compassion for one another,” Shafik concluded.

Shafik’s video address comes shortly after a Columbia faculty association called for a vote of no confidence for Shafik and other top administrators after NYPD’s raids. Furious students appeared on the president’s doorstep, taking the traditional “primal scream.”

The school’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors condemned the NYPD’s raids on Hamilton Hall, calling it a “horrific police attack.” They blasted the “militarized lockdown” of the Morningside Heights campus. Since mid-April, as many as 200 protesters have been arrested on the Columbia campus.