- Masked pro-Palestinian protesters took over Columbia University's library on Wednesday. Columbia's administration harshly condemned the attack and the NYPD arrested dozens of protesters.
- Harvard faculty Arthur Brooks says that Ivy Leagues are ready to make and keep rules surrounding public protest.
- In light of President Donald Trump's demands of higher education, the question remains to be answered — will universities keep the president's rules in order to keep federal funding, or will they set their own?
Arthur Brooks, an author and Harvard University professor, said universities are starting to get better in how they respond to campus protesters.
Brooks, who is also an Impact Scholar at the University of Utah, told Fox News schools like Columbia and Harvard are “getting it figured out.”
His remarks come following a crackdown on protesters at Columbia University who engaged in pro-Palestinian protests on campus that took a violent turn on Wednesday.
Masked protesters took over the university’s Butler Library in the week preceding finals, forcing out over 900 students, clashing physically with police, vandalizing shelves with pro-Palestinian and anti-Columbia statements and hanging Palestinian flags. The takeover ended with over 60 students suspended and 80 protesters being taken into custody.
Columbia University Acting President Claire Shipman unequivocally condemned the riot.
“I spent the late afternoon and evening at Butler Library, as events were unfolding, to understand the situation on the ground and to be able to make the best decisions possible. I arrived to see one of our Public Safety officers wheeled out on a gurney and another getting bandaged,” she wrote in a letter to Columbia faculty and students. “Violence and vandalism, hijacking a library — none of that has any place on our campus. These aren’t Columbia’s values."
She also condemned students for shutting down the library in the week before finals.
“We, at Columbia, value freedom of speech, robust debate, and peaceful protest,” she said. “(Wednesday’s) disruption of Butler Library was not that. We must, and we will, come together as a community to consider what civil disobedience actually is and what it means.”
Shipman’s reaction has garnered praise from the White House, who said her leadership met the moment with “fortitude and conviction.”
Tom Homan, the border czar for the Trump administration, said that protesters were at risk of deportation for damaging college property and “support(ing) terrorist organizations” like Hamas, which governs Palestine and launched the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7, 2023.
The fraught relationship between the president, higher education and the protestors
Brooks, a professor at Harvard Business School and columnist at The Atlantic magazine, said he thinks Shipman’s comments demonstrate a shift.
“The leadership is (now) much better,” he told Fox News. “We have a terrific president at Harvard, Alan Garber, he’s a very strong and very sensible guy, and he’s actually enforcing the rules.”
Brooks indicated that Harvard, at least, is prepared to make and commit to rules around the freedom of speech.
“You don’t have to take a position on the particular type of protest, you just have to have rules about how people can protest and whether or not they can disrupt a campus, and the answer is they cannot,” Brooks told Dana Perino. “You actually have to call in the police when it is appropriate and expel people as is appropriate to the rules.”
When asked about Harvard’s battle with President Donald Trump over antisemitism and DEI, Brooks said he does not believe Trump will necessarily follow through on his threats.
When the university said it would not adopt Trump’s demands, he withheld $2 billion in research grant funds and threatened the school’s tax exempt status.
“The truth of the matter is that the first bid with Trump tends to be extremely pugilistic — he’s a fighter, so the result of it is that he goes in hot, and then generally speaking there’s an accommodation," Brooks said. “I’m pretty confident that Harvard and the federal government are not going to be at war forever.
“We have an administration now that’s completely dedicated to following rules. I mean, there are rules, and you’re going to pay a price if you do something. The problem is that when you don’t follow your own rules you get more of the behavior that you don’t like,” he said.
The future of Columbia University and the rest of the collegiate landscape
Columbia University’s swift and absolute condemnation of Wednesday’s riot aligns with its recent agreement with the Trump administration over matters of antisemitism and protests.
In March, the administration cancelled $400 million in research grants over Columbia University’s “fail(ures) to address antisemitism.” After a short-lived struggle with the administration, during which the university went through two presidents’ resignations, Columbia agreed to implement a whole host of policy changes, including investigating its Middle Eastern studies department and rewriting rules for public protests.
Such rules no longer permit students to wear face masks “for the purposes of concealing one’s identity.” Protests are also no longer permitted inside academic buildings.
The Wednesday library riot saw both those rules broken.