United States | Clumsy college crackdowns

Efforts to tackle student protests in America have backfired badly

Police intervention at Columbia has provoked protests at other universities

A protestor stands in front of dozens of New York City police officers across the street from Columbia University in Manhattan
Photograph: Imagn
|New York and Washington, DC

PART OF THE reason Elisha “Lishi” Baker wanted to go to Columbia University, an Ivy League university in New York, was its Middle Eastern History programme. He loved his first year and says he “felt great as a Jewish student at Columbia”. But since the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7th, the atmosphere on campus has changed. Within days there were protests. He heard students calling for an intifada. He kept being told: “You’re interpreting it wrong”, but this week there was no misinterpreting, he says, the undercurrent of antisemitism on campus. “We’re coming for you,” other Jewish students say they were told: “Get off our campus.”

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This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “A clumsy college crackdown backfires”

From the April 27th 2024 edition

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