Campus Clashes Spread to California and Texas as House Speaker Condemns Unrest (2024)

Pinned

Here are the latest developments.

At least 34 people were arrested on Wednesday at the University of Texas at Austin, the state’s flagship public university. In Los Angeles, officers tackled some protesters at the University of Southern California and swept away their tents around lunchtime, then later in the day arrested protesters who had refused to disperse.

Administrators at Cal Poly Humboldt said they were shutting down the campus through the weekend, concerned that protesters occupying two buildings could spread to others. And officials at Brown University in Rhode Island warned students participating in an encampment that they would need to leave or “face conduct proceedings.”

Mr. Johnson’s visit to Columbia brought further attention to the divided campus, where last week’s arrests set off a cascade of student activism nationwide. His appearance came as the school’s president, Nemat Shafik, prepares to confer with the university senate, which could censure her as soon as Friday for violating students’ rights with last week’s crackdown.

Here’s what else to know:

• The fresh clashes on campuses Wednesday came after dozens of arrests were made at Yale and New York University earlier this week. Police officers at the University of Minnesota took nine people into custody on Tuesday after protesters erected an encampment, and two Ohio State students were arrested late Tuesday as a demonstration was broken up. Here’s where else protests are happening.

• After Columbia on Tuesday set a midnight deadline for the latest group of encamped protesters to disband, the university delayed the prospect of police action for 48 hours early Wednesday, saying administrators were making progress in discussions with demonstrators.

• Speaking for the first time about the protests at American universities, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Wednesday characterized them in a statement as “horrific” and reminiscent of events at German universities in the years before the Holocaust. Read more about his comments.

• Mr. Johnson said Jewish students at Columbia had told him of “heinous acts of bigotry,” and he called for Dr. Shafik to resign “if she cannot immediately bring order to the chaos.” The speaker said there could be an appropriate time for the National Guard to be called in, and that Congress should consider revoke federal funding if universities can’t keep the protests under control.

• Battling a rebellion on his right, Mr. Johnson is the latest Republican trying to reap political advantage from the explosive cultural moment unfolding at universities, which has allowed his party to put the academic left on the spot. His visit came days after the House approved $95 billion in foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, a move that put his job on the line as the hard right revolted against advancing the security package.

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

On social media, the L.A.P.D said that its officers would arrest people for trespassing “at the request of USC.” A spokesman for the department, Jeff Lee, said that the situation was still fluid and that he couldn’t say how many people had been arrested.

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

A few dozen protesters are standing in a circle, linking arms in the middle of the park. About 200 other protesters have moved to the edges of the park, chanting, “Divulge, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest.”

Columbia’s campus became a stage for confrontation and political theater.

On the other end stood Low Library, similarly grand and colonnaded. A crush of reporters had gathered on its stairs because the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, was due to speak after meeting with Jewish students. In the morning, Mr. Johnson had called for the resignation of Columbia’s embattled president, Nemat Shafik, who he said had failed to protect the Jewish students from antisemitic attacks.

But after Columbia on Tuesday night backed off a threat to call in the police to dismantle the tents, the mood in the encampment had relaxed. Students picnicked on Dunkin’ Donuts and Popeyes.

Columbia had said it would continue negotiating with the protesters, who are demanding that it divest from companies with financial ties to Israel. At a news conference near the encampment, a student protest leader, Khymani James, declared, “This is a win for us.”

There was a counterprotest area of sorts near the encampment. On one side of a low stone wall, an Israeli flag was hanging, and the wall was covered with posters of the hostages taken by Hamas. But there were only a few people there. One of them, Jonathan Swill, sat on the sidewalk scrolling through Psalms on his phone and praying.

Mr. Swill, 27, a graduate student in biomedical engineering, seemed unimpressed that Mr. Johnson was on his way.

“I couldn’t care less about him, I mean, it’s a political stunt,” he said, adding, “I’ve had to deal with this for six months, and he’s decided now’s the time?” Mr. Swill, who said he had friends who were killed at the Nova festival in Israel on Oct. 7, returned to his Psalms.

On the encampment side of the fence, Ben Garber, an alumnus from the class of 2018, said he did not have much use for Mr. Johnson either.

“Politicians want to come and have their photo taken,” he said. “It’s an election year.”

As the sun began to dip toward the west, a few stray raindrops fell, and the sky threatened to rainbow. Mr. Johnson appeared on the steps of Low. Most of the encampment dwellers stayed in the encampment and continued to go about their quiet afternoon. But hundreds of people crowded the steps, craning for a view. Many of them booed, but then the crowd quieted to try to hear what he had to say.

They couldn’t quite manage it. “We can’t hear you!” they began chanting.

Mr. Johnson, flanked by fellow Republican lawmakers, delivered his message. “The madness has to stop,” he said. He said Jewish students had told him of “heinous acts of bigotry” they had experienced because of their faith. His advice for the people in the encampment: “Go back to class and stop the nonsense.”

Cells of protesters in the audience got off a few rounds of “Free Palestine / Free, free Palestine” and “Disclose / Divest / We will not stop / We will not rest.”

But then the politicians withdrew, and so did the protesters. The drizzle stopped, sun poured down on the quad and the crowd dispersed slowly and peacefully.

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

Netanyahu calls U.S. student protests antisemitic and says they must be stopped.

“What’s happening in America’s college campuses is horrific,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “Antisemitic mobs have taken over leading universities. They call for the annihilation of Israel. They attack Jewish students. They attack Jewish faculty.”

It was not immediately possible to solicit a response from the students, who are not organized into a single group.

A relatively small number of students have staged protests for months at universities in different parts of the country to protest Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza, which began after Hamas led an attack on Israel on Oct. 7 in which around 1,200 people were killed and more than 200 others were taken hostage. Since then, the authorities in Gaza say, more than 34,000 people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes and fighting, a majority of them women and children.

The protesters’ main policy demand is that the U.S. government stop sending military aid to Israel. Some students have also called on universities to stop investing in weapons manufacturers and to sell, or divest, holdings in funds and businesses they say profit from Israel’s invasion of Gaza and the occupation of Palestinian lands.

Organizers of many of the campus groups leading protests around the country have said that they denounce violence and antisemitism. But some demonstrators have used anti-Jewish and anti-Israel slurs and other threatening language, and some Jewish students have said they feel unsafe. Some protesters have also expressed sympathy for Hamas, which controlled Gaza before the war and has vowed to destroy Israel.

The protests swelled in recent days at some of the most prominent academic institutions in the country, including Columbia, Yale, Cornell and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. The police have responded, in some cases by making hundreds of arrests.

One impact has been to force university leaders to grapple with how far to permit protests, which are broadly protected as free speech, given that some protesters have used antisemitic language. Some Jewish students and leaders also say they see the demonstrations themselves as antisemitic or as fostering antisemitism.

In portraying the antiwar protesters as antisemites, Mr. Netanyahu is aligning himself with some Republican leaders, who have sharply criticized university leaders and the Biden administration for doing too little to crack down on the protests.

Last month, Mr. Netanyahu spoke to Senate Republicans via a video link during a closed lunch meeting and criticized the Democratic majority leader, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York. Mr. Schumer, who is a Jew, had said in a speech on the Senate floor that Mr. Netanyahu was an impediment to peace in the Middle East and called for a new election to replace him.

On Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson, a conservative Republican, visited Columbia University in New York, the site of one of the most prominent of the student protests. Mr. Johnson said that President Biden should take action, including potentially sending in the National Guard, to quell the protests at Columbia, which he asserted had grown violent and antisemitic.

The demonstrations are becoming a political headache for President Biden, because the student protesters, and other left-leaning Democrats who sympathize with them, are important constituencies in his hopes for re-election in November.

By portraying the protests in such stark moral terms, the Israeli leader could reinforce Mr. Biden’s political bind.

Mr. Netanyahu appeared to equate protests against his government’s prosecution of the war Gaza with hatred of Jews. He said the protests on American campuses were “reminiscent of what happened in German universities in the 1930s,” an apparent reference to ideologically militant pro-Nazi student groups that, according to the Holocaust Encyclopedia, worked with the security forces to carry through Hitler’s agenda.

“It’s unconscionable,” he said. “It has to be stopped.”

Soon after coming to power in 1933, the Nazis passed a law that led to the dismissal of many Jewish university teachers and emboldened student groups to deploy violence and intimidation against Jewish faculty members and students.

On Wednesday, Davidai took on Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive New York Democrat who has said that Columbia calling the police on students was “a heinous failure of leadership that puts people’s lives at risk.” Davidai called her an “agent of chaos.” She has not responded.

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

Students flood Harvard Yard to protest the suspension of a pro-Palestinian group.

But Harvard’s actions appeared to have galvanized students, who flooded the yard’s grassy patches and erected tents as part of an “emergency rally” against the suspension of the student group, also known as Harvard for Palestine.

Jason Newton, a Harvard spokesman, said in an emailed statement that the university was monitoring the protest and “prioritizing the safety and security of the campus community.”

Harvard for Palestine was suspended after it, along with others, organized a protest last week in Harvard Yard. An email from the university that was obtained by the university’s student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, demanded that the group “cease all organizational activities” through the spring term.

Pro-Palestinian groups at Harvard have faced a backlash over how they described the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7. The group leading Wednesday’s protest issued a letter at the time — initially signed by many other campus groups — saying that the Hamas-led attack “did not occur in a vacuum” and that, given the history of the region, the group held “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.”

The university has been at the center of a series of controversies since the war. Its former president, Claudine Gay, resigned after being accused of plagiarism and while trying to fend off allegations that she had not done enough to protect Jewish students on campus.

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

‘Everyone was ready to act.’ At Brown, students are galvanized by nationwide protests.

“What we’re putting on the line is so minimal in risk, compared to what Gazans are going through,” said Niyanta Nepal, a Brown junior from Concord, N.H., and the president-elect of the student body. “This is the least we can be doing, as youth in a privileged situation, to take ownership of the situation.”

Brown was just one in a series of schools around the country where students protesting the war in Gaza had set up an encampment in solidarity with Columbia students who were arrested last week. After Columbia’s president called in the police to clear out its encampment, protests at campuses across the country intensified, resulting in hundreds of arrests.

Ms. Nepal said this emergence of a national student movement on college campuses provided a galvanizing push to Brown students. “I think everyone was ready to act, and the national momentum was what we needed,” she said.

Rafi Ash, a sophom*ore from Amherst, Mass., and a member of Brown University Jews for Ceasefire Now, said the student protesters were in it for the long term.

“We’ll be here until they divest, or until we’re forced off,” he said.

“The right to protest is essential and protected at Columbia as we’ve said before,” Chang added. “But harassment and discrimination is antithetical to our values and an affront to our commitment to be a community of mutual respect and kindness.” He added that much of the incendiary language was coming from outside protesters around the perimeter of the campus.

Chang also addressed a “rumor” that university officials threatened to bring in the National Guard. “Let me be clear, that is untrue and an unsubstantiated claim,” Chang said.

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

Johnson denounces pro-Palestinian protests, invoking the possibility of bringing in the National Guard.

A number of hard-right Republican lawmakers, including Senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Josh Hawley of Missouri, have recently called for troops to be sent in to crack down on pro-Palestinian protests on campus. Mr. Cotton did the same in 2020 when he said military force should be used to put down riots across the country amid the civil unrest that followed the death of George Floyd, a Black man who was killed by the police in Minneapolis.

The United States has a grim history of employing the military to quell campus protests. In 1970, the Ohio National Guard opened fire on antiwar protesters at Kent State University, killing four students and wounding nine others.

Organizers of many of the campus groups leading protests around the country have said they denounce violence and antisemitism. But as tensions have risen in recent days, some demonstrators have used anti-Jewish and anti-Israel slurs and other threatening language, and some have expressed sympathy for Hamas. In one instance, a masked protester shouted, “We are Hamas. We’re all Hamas.” And according to the campus Chabad at Columbia, Jewish students have been verbally harassed with calls to “go back to Europe" and “stop killing children.”

Jewish students on many campuses have reported feeling unsafe, while many pro-Palestinian protesters have said they are being lumped with threatening actors in an attempt to silence them.

Mr. Johnson, who is battling a rebellion on his right, is the latest Republican to insert himself into the increasingly tense cultural moment unfolding on university campuses in response to the Israel-Gaza war in efforts to reap political advantage. Republicans have tried to use the conflict, which is dividing progressives and posing a political problem for Mr. Biden, to put the academic left on the spot and position themselves as the party more steadfast in its support for Israel and concerned with the safety of Jews.

Mr. Johnson’s visit to campus came days after the House approved $95 billion in foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, a move that put Mr. Johnson’s job on the line as the hard right, opposed to backing Kyiv, revolted over the spending package.

On Wednesday, Mr. Johnson, who met with Jewish students privately before his news conference, appeared to be looking for an opportunity to reclaim some conservative credibility and spotlight an issue that unites his party. He said that Dr. Nemat Shafik, the university president whom he also met with briefly, should resign if she cannot immediately get the situation under control. He called her a “very weak and inept leader.”

And he accused progressives of stoking antisemitism in America.

“Powerful people have refused to condemn it, and some have even peddled it themselves,” he said. Mr. Johnson said that Congress needed to “revoke federal funding to these universities if they can’t keep control.”

Mr. Johnson’s brief remarks were interrupted by jeers from students, including one who called him “racist.”

“Don’t lie about what’s going on on campus!” another shouted at him.

A large crowd assembled as Mr. Johnson spoke, building to hundreds and at one point breaking into chant of “Free, Free Palestine!”

Mr. Johnson, looking perturbed by the interruptions, coolly responded: “Enjoy your free speech.”

He said he was there “to proclaim to all of those who gnash their teeth and demand to wipe the state of Israel off the map, and attack our innocent Jewish students, this simple truth: Neither Israel, nor these Jewish students on campus, will ever stand alone.”

The mounting unrest on campuses has splintered Democrats who were already divided over the conflict, with many on the left expressing sympathy with the pro-Palestinian protests, which include some Jews. Others in the party voice concern for Jewish students experiencing a hostile environment at their schools.

A group of House Democrats including Representatives Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, Dan Goldman of New York, Jared Moskowitz of Florida and Kathy Manning of North Carolina toured the Columbia campus with Jewish students earlier this week and called on the university to take stronger action to protect them.

But Mr. Goldman also cautioned against calling for Dr. Shafik’s immediate resignation.

“It is very easy and very politically expedient to simply call for the resignation of anyone who does not do exactly right in every situation,” he told reporters.

Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota — whose daughter, a Barnard College student, was suspended last week for her involvement in a pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia — appeared on Tuesday at the University of Minnesota to praise pro-Palestinian protesters there.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, called the protests at Columbia “peaceful” and denounced a decision by the university administration last week to call in the New York City police to arrest more than 100 student protesters who had organized the encampment on a school lawn and refused to leave.

The administration’s move came a day after Dr. Shafik assured Congress during a heated hearing that Columbia was committed to taking serious action against antisemitism on campus, including by suspending students and disciplining certain faculty members.

But the extraordinary step did not quell the calls from the right for her resignation. And it only enraged the students involved in the protests.

Some Columbia faculty members have called the university’s action an “unprecedented assault on student rights.”

Mr. Johnson on Wednesday said he had a simple message for the students involved in the pro-Palestinian protests: “Go back to class, and stop the nonsense,” he said. “Stop wasting your parents’ money.”

Liset Cruz contributed reporting.

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

Someone yelled “What are you gonna do? Arrest us? Arrest us!” The crowd then booed as Johnson exited the press conference.

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

In response to protests, Brandeis invited students to transfer to its campus.

He promised that in contrast to other colleges, Brandeis would provide an environment “free of harassment and Jew-hatred.”

In a Tuesday phone interview, Dr. Liebowitz said that Brandeis students — about one-third of whom are Jewish — have a broad range of opinions on the Israel-Hamas war, noting that many are critical of the Israeli government and in favor of Palestinian rights.

But he also said Brandeis would take action in response to speech that he characterized as “gratuitous” and crossing a “red line,” such as that which argued that Israel did not have the right to exist or that the Hamas attack of Oct. 7 was a legitimate form of resistance.

In November, the university cut ties with its chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, preventing it from using the Brandeis name, receiving university funds or hosting events in campus facilities.

This week, as protest has convulsed some other campuses, Brandeis students have been on spring break, to coincide with the Passover holiday.

Columbia’s president, Nemat Shafik, has been at the center of the unrest.

At the same time, she has been targeted by the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, who is visiting campus on Wednesday and called for her to resign in a radio interview because, he said, she has failed to protect Jewish students.

Dr. Shafik, who goes by Minouche, seems to retain the support of the university’s board of trustees, and any vote by the university senate would be symbolic. But the unrest at Columbia has put a spotlight on Dr. Shafik, an economist by trade who arrived at Columbia with a uniquely global perspective for a college president.

Dr. Shafik’s childhood was split across continents: She was born in Egypt, but partly raised in the United States after her family fled the country when she was 4. She earned a master’s degree at the London School of Economics, an institution she also led for six years before arriving at Columbia. She also worked for the Bank of England and the International Monetary Fund.

Her international experience was praised when she was appointed, and the university described her as a “tireless proponent of diversity and inclusion.”

In the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel, Dr. Shafik called for compassion and civility, and asked the campus community to come together. But as Columbia grappled with several instances of antisemitism, the administration took stronger stances, suspending student groups and some individual students, and taking steps to restrict where and when student demonstrations could be held.

The school’s leadership also set up a task force to combat antisemitism, an attempt to address the “root causes” of campus hate.

For some time, Columbia — and Dr. Shafik — seemed to avoid the firestorms embroiling other campuses, including Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, whose presidents were forced to resign after their testimony before Congress failed to clearly state that calling for the genocide of Jews would break their universities’ rules.

But during an appearance last week before the House Education and Workforce Committee, Republican lawmakers grilled Dr. Shafik about her institution’s response to antisemitism. She appeared to sidestep the land mines that helped precipitate the resignations of the presidents of Harvard and Penn, but her conciliatory approach was criticized by defenders of academic freedom.

The campus crisis erupted soon after her testimony. Before she had even returned from Washington, a central campus lawn had been transformed into a makeshift protest site filled with dozens of tents. The protesters said they would not leave until their demands — including that the school divest from businesses with ties to Israel — were met.

The university’s administration asked the New York Police Department to intervene. Officers arrested at least 108 protesters and dismantled the encampment, as a large crowd shouted “Shame!”

The anger at Dr. Shafik from both sides has only increased since.

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

Here’s a list of some campuses with protests against the war.

Here is where arrests have been reported as the authorities attempt to break up protests or encampments:

• Columbia University: The New York City Police Department arrested 108 demonstrators while clearing an encampment at the Manhattan campus on April 18.

• Yale University in New Haven, Conn.: The police arrested 60 people on Monday, including 47 Yale students, after they refused to leave an encampment on campus.

• New York University in Manhattan: Officers made dozens of arrests late Monday after students occupied a plaza on campus.

• University of Minnesota in Minneapolis: Nine people were taken into custody after they erected an encampment on Tuesday. All of those affiliated with the university were allowed back on campus and civil trespass warnings were “set aside.”

• University of South Carolina in Columbia: Two students were arrested after a protest on Tuesday, according to a police report.

• University of Southern California in Los Angeles: The police arrested 93 people at a demonstration on Wednesday afternoon.

• University of Texas at Austin: The police arrested 57 protesters on Wednesday. A spokeswoman for the county attorney’s office said charges against many had been dropped after the office found legal “deficiencies” in their arrests.

• Emerson College in Boston: The police arrested 118 people as an encampment was cleared on Wednesday night, the authorities said.

• Ohio State University in Columbus: A university official said that 36 people, including 16 students, were arrested on Thursday. Earlier in the week, two students were arrested during an on-campus demonstration, university officials said.

• Emory University in Atlanta: At least 28 people were arrested on Thursday morning, an Emory official said; 20 had ties to the school.

• Indiana University Bloomington: On Thursday, the university police said 33 people were removed from an encampment and taken to jail. There were 23 more arrests on Saturday, the police said.

• Princeton University in New Jersey: Two graduate students were arrested after pitching tents on Thursday.

• University of Connecticut in Storrs: Campus police officers removed at least one tent from a rally on Thursday and took at least one person into custody, a university official said.

• California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt: Protesters have occupied two buildings on the campus in Arcata, Calif., university officials said. Three people were arrested there this week.

• Auraria Campus in Denver: About 40 people were arrested on Friday at a campus that houses facilities for the University of Colorado Denver, the Metropolitan State University of Denver and the Community College of Denver, the campus police said.

• University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign: Social media posts on Friday showed police officers detaining at least one person and taking down an encampment.

• Arizona State University in Tempe: A university official said 69 people were arrested early Saturday after protesters set up an encampment. Three people were also arrested on Friday.

• Northeastern University in Boston: The Massachusetts State Police said that 102 protesters were arrested on Saturday. Earlier in the day, the university said that among those who were detained, students who showed their university IDs were released.

• Washington University in St. Louis: On Saturday, 100 arrests were made and the campus was locked down, according to a university statement. The presidential candidate Jill Stein was among the arrests.

• University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Va.: The university president’s office said that 12 people, including nine students, were arrested on Saturday evening.

Halina Bennet, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Robert Chiarito, Jill Cowan, Matthew Eadie, Colbi Edmonds, Jacey Fortin, J. David Goodman, Johnna Margalotti, Bernard Mokam, Erin Nolan, Jenna Russell, Edgar Sandoval and Jonathan Wolfe contributed reporting.

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

Inside the week that shook Columbia’s campus and reverberated across the nation.

The secretive deliberations that followed over 24 frantic hours led to a decision to suspend the students and ordered New York City police in riot gear to arrest more than 100 activists who refused to leave on Thursday afternoon.

Despite brief attempts to negotiate with them and objections from key leaders on campus, Dr. Shafik ordered what she later conceded was an “extraordinary step.”

But instead of quelling the protests, Dr. Shafik’s decision appeared to backfire. By this week, she was besieged on all sides.

Students protesters were unbowed, and soon the encampment had regrown to be even larger than before. Dr. Shafik’s own faculty threatened to revolt over an “unprecedented assault on student rights.” At least one major Jewish donor cut off support. And while the White House voiced deep concern, the very Republican lawmakers she had set out to appeal to called for her resignation.

The events have set off a chain reaction rattling campuses across the country, just as one of the most trying academic years in memory neared its end.

Now, with only days of classes left in the spring semester, neither side appears to have a clear endgame. On Tuesday night, the university issued a deadline for student protesters to dismantle their encampment, only to extend it as negotiations between the administration and students seemed to be making progress. University leaders are counting the days until summer, hoping to protect May’s commencement ceremonies from disruption.

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

The Columbia president’s congressional testimony last week promised ‘consequences.’

Dr. Shafik said that at the time 15 students had been suspended. Many students have said they were showing support for the more than 30,000 Gazans who health officials there say have been killed in Israel’s bombardment.

When asked whether calls for genocide violated Columbia’s code of conduct, Dr. Shafik responded, “Yes, it does.” Her response was a stark difference from the terse, lawyerly answers to the same question from the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and M.I.T. at their hearing last December. The leaders of Harvard and Penn resigned after a fierce backlash of their testimonies.

Dr. Shafik also promised lawmakers that there would be “consequences” for employees who “make remarks that cross the line in terms of antisemitism.” She disclosed disciplinary actions that were underway against some faculty members, saying five had been removed from the classroom or dismissed in recent months for comments stemming from the war. One visiting professor, she added, would “never work at Columbia again.”

Dr. Shafik, who took her post last July, said that Columbia was committed to free speech but that school officials “cannot and should not tolerate abuse of this privilege” when it puts others at risk.

“I promise you, from the messages I’m hearing from students, they are getting the message that violations of our policies will have consequences,” Dr. Shafik told lawmakers.

Nonetheless, her testimony has been met with criticism by some students and faculty members who have argued that it infringed on both free speech and academic freedom.