Columbia has become something of a poster child in the battle over higher education in the United States. From a crisis-filled 2024 spring semester to cycling through four presidents in less than two years, headlines around Morningside Heights seem to convey nothing but perpetual crisis.
In early March, the Trump administration froze $400 million in federal funding to the university in light of concerns surrounding antisemitism on campus. Two professors, Ryan Enos and Steven Levitsky, recently published a Harvard Crimson op-ed condemning the lack of action from fellow universities in the face of Trump’s attacks on Columbia. The title, “First They Came for Columbia,” alludes to Reverend Martin Niemöller’s famous prose that warns us of the dangers of bystanding.
Although I unreservedly condemn the Trump administration’s attack on educational freedom, I disagree with Enos and Levitsky’s framing of the present situation. By painting Columbia as a victim of federal actions and blindly calling on peer institutions to rally in support of the university, we risk forgetting or sanitizing the many real problems associated with their student activism over the past year.
Media reports out of Morningside Heights during the height of Columbia’s “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” and surrounding protests largely focused on the occupation and subsequent storming of Hamilton Hall in late April 2024. But the sensational images of police officers in riot gear juxtaposed against unarmed students neglect an important part of the story: the harassment of Jewish students by many protesters.
I am concerned that we have become too blinded by recent federal actions to question the severity of harassment that has occurred on Columbia’s campus. Are we meant to forget how they chanted “burn Tel Aviv to the ground” simply because Trump has attacked the foundations of academic freedom? Are we meant to forgive the activists who harassed and attacked students owning mezuzahs and wearing Star of David necklaces only because Trump has threatened fundamental scientific research?
I fear we will never reach a day of reckoning on these questions if we continue advocating the David vs. Goliath image of the federal government bearing down on Columbia. The Trump administration’s politicization of higher education funding is outrageous and unacceptable. Columbia students by no means deserve to be on the receiving end of these actions, but its activists have also ensured that the university will never be entirely blameless.
At the same time, activism at Columbia did not always resort to harassment, and I applaud the many protesters who made their voices heard without causing harm to others. The Trump administration’s reaction to these protests is politically self-serving and disproportionately draconian. But by viewing the situation in only black-and-white terms and framing Columbia as a victim that an evil government “came for,” we absolve ourselves of contemplating any nuance in these developments. Without considering all sides of the story, we will too easily overlook the activists’ past transgressions or implicitly provide them a blank check of support, which I will never accept.
We don’t have to agree with the Trump administration’s authoritarian measures to condemn the many actions taken by student activists as hateful and inexcusable. We must shed the victimhood with which we regard Columbia and urge student activists there to accept more responsibility across the board. In the face of unprecedented attacks against this country’s founding values, it is our duty as leaders of our generation to craft a movement that stands up to public scrutiny. There will be no room for Columbia activists’ grave mistakes if we seek to win public support, and only by approaching this issue from an unbiased perspective will we learn from them and succeed in such an endeavor.
Lucas Guan ’27 can be reached at lucas_guan @brown.edu. Please send responses to this column to letters@browndailyherald.com and other opinions to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
