Columbia University has turned into ground zero for the anti-Israel protests rocking the country, with the protesters receiving a surprising level of support from some in the Democratic Party. Among those who didn’t condemn the protests was Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, which led to a professor at Columbia attacking her for her comments.
As background, protesters built a camp on Columbia’s campus that was cleared by police on Thursday, April 18, in an incident in which numerous high-profile protesters, including a former intern for New York Attorney General Letitia James and the daughter of Ilhan Omar, were arrested. The protests were not ended by that clearing, however, and have since continued and caused chaos on Columbia’s campus.
Rep. Omar, for her part, wrote on X that she is “proud” of her daughter. She said, “I am enormously proud of my daughter @israhirsi. She has always led with courage and compassion, from organizing a statewide school walk out on the 20th anniversary of Columbine at the age of 15, to leading the biggest youth climate rally at our nation’s Capitol at 16, and now pushing her school to stand against genocide.”
Rep. AOC, a fellow “Squad” member of Rep. Omar, commented on the protests as well. She, in a post on X, said, “Calling in police enforcement on nonviolent demonstrations of young students on campus is an escalatory, reckless, and dangerous act. It represents a heinous failure of leadership that puts people’s lives at risk. I condemn it in the strongest possible terms.”
In a second post on the matter, she said, “Not only did Columbia make the horrific decision to mobilize NYPD on their own students, but the units called in have some of the most violent reputations on the force. NYPD had promised the city they wouldn’t deploy SRG to protests. So why are these counterterror units here?”
After AOC called the protests non-violent in her X post, a Columbia University professor, Shai Davidai, who was barred from campus after hosting a pro-Jewish rally, said, in an interview on Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom,” “AOC is agent of chaos, and I am just looking forward to my kids and grandkids reading about this chapter in history, and the list of all the rabid antisemites, and to see her name.”
Continuing, he claimed that Rep. AOC is lying about the nature of the protest, saying, “This is not a peaceful protest… she is lying to the people just like [Rep.] Rashida Tlaib, just like Cynthia Nixon from ‘Sex and the City,’ just like The New York Times.”
Attacking Columbia’s leadership, he also said, “Columbia has two presidents right now, and it’s Rashida Tlaib and [Rep.] Ilhan Omar, because this is not about Israel. This is about America, and the university just decided that they don’t care about Jewish safety. They don’t care about the Jewish students. They are negotiating with suspended organizations that want to burn everything down.”
Davidai later added, “This is not about Democrats or Republicans. This is about moderates versus extremes. You’ve got extremists on the left and extremists on the right, but moderate Republicans and moderate Democrats, we all understand the same thing. They all understand that this is about America.”
Watch him discuss the matter here:
Columbia University President Dr. Nemat “Minouche” Shafik, for her part, released a statement saying, “Our bonds as a community have been severely tested in ways that will take a great deal of time and effort to reaffirm.” She continued, “Students across an array of communities have conveyed fears for their safety, and we have announced additional actions we are taking to address security concerns. The decibel of our disagreements has only increased in recent days. These tensions have been exploited and amplified by individuals who are not affiliated with Columbia who have come to campus to pursue their own agendas.”
Then, after declaring, “We need a reset,” she went on to add, “To deescalate the rancor and give us all a chance to consider next steps, I am announcing that all classes will be held virtually on Monday. Faculty and staff who can work remotely should do so; essential personnel should report to work according to university policy. Our preference is that students who do not live on campus will not come to campus.”
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