On Columbia

Over the past two weeks my employer has called on the NYPD twice to suppress the free speech of its students and assault and arrest peaceful protesters.

From the Columbia Spectator.

Footage of an unending troop of NYPD officers entering campus.

What is there to say when the institution you work for has unleashed what is essentially a military troop onto a group of peacefully protesting college students–the very group of people that you are told, again and again, that it is your job to serve? When you are asked to work overtime without extra pay, the underlying reason is so that this group of people can receive their paychecks on time. When you screw up at your job, frequently the direct result is a student or faculty member coming to your desk in a panic because they have not been paid on time, and despite your institution’s reputation for only serving the privileged, in NYC the direct result of a missed paycheck is often a threat to their ability to stay housed. 

For years now, these interactions have been my motivation to work long hours without breaks, contrary to my doctor’s orders for my chronic condition. It might not be visible to my co-workers, friends, or anyone except for my wife who sees how much time I spend sitting with ice packs wrapped around my wrists the second I get home, but I have put my body on the line for this job again and again for over five years, and it’s not because I care about Columbia. It is because Columbia–through its policies and procedures and endless bureaucracy, through the refusal to hire more than a bare-bones administrative staff which results in overwork for my entire department, and through its unstated but omnipresent office culture–demands that its workers give as much as we possibly can, and then even more, for the sake of the student body. For their education, for their health, for their wellbeing and safety. It is a similar manipulation to the one I felt while working at a non-profit: that you should be glad to work overtime, because you are working for a righteous cause.

If there was ever any doubt that this manipulation was a sham, the past two weeks have seen this doubt crystallize into fact. I and my individual colleagues might care about the students, but the institution does not. Columbia the institution, with its current president and Board of Trustees, is a corporation disguised as a university, a corporation tied chiefly to its investors and its bottom line. And today I am supposed to do my job, processing payments for students and faculty and working to prepare for an upcoming summer semester, as if I have not been locked out of my own office all week so that the NYPD can tear gas and taser the population that I am supposed to serve. 

I tried to write an essay about the student encampments two weeks ago, after the first round of NYPD arrests that I personally witnessed, after I had been visiting the encampment that sprang up after that first round of arrests. I felt more hope then, buoyed by the students’ resilience and by the revolutionary and joyous mood in the encampments. I did not publish that essay because I wanted to tinker with it, make it something “well-written,” something that I felt was worth contributing to the discourse. I don’t care about that at the moment. My platform may be tiny, may be hardly a platform at all, but I can’t be silent. I have never felt rage and shame at an employer the way I feel now. This is more of an impotent scream than anything of substance. 

Apparently President Shafik has invited the NYPD to stay on campus through May 17–just after the University’s graduation ceremonies. By all accounts, construction for commencement on the lawns is still underway. If the University proceeds to hold commencement ceremonies as usual, I wonder how many students and families will show up for the events, and how many protesters will be locked outside the gates at the mercy of the NYPD. How many faculty and staff will decline to participate in the ceremony itself? How many students will refuse to walk? How joyous an occasion can it possibly be, to receive your congratulations from a police state? To benefit from the pomp and circumstance of the institution that brutalized your classmates?

If commencement is canceled or held virtually this year, President Shafik will blame the protesters. I have received so many mealy-mouthed emails from her over the past two weeks that I could probably predict the language of this announcement in advance. But no amount of careful wording or advice from General Counsel can save Columbia’s reputation now. In their incompetence and cowardice, they have radicalized a generation. If this current wave of protest does not force universities to immediately give in to their demands, just as it might not force the Biden administration to cease its support of Israel, the seeds of change have been planted. 

What began in Columbia has spread all over the world. Refugees in Gaza and protesters in Yemen have painted signs of encouragement for student activists. This is not something that the NYPD, the LAPD, or the US military or the IDF can disperse. We are experiencing global solidarity, and the mass recognition that what is happening in Palestine is tied to the myriad ways that every authoritarian government maintains power. If we can defeat them here, there is hope for a livable climate, affordable healthcare, police abolition, and LGBTQ rights. The reason that the authoritarian backlash has been so swift and powerful is that our leaders recognize that if they listen to our demands for a free Palestine, they will have to listen to us going forward. The people recognize this, too. We are swimming in the middle of a sea change.