COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IS: PERSECUTING JAILING HARASSING SURVEILLING INTIMIDATING PRO-PALESTINIAN STUDENTS
April 22, 2024Columbia University Professor James Schamus asserts, “”Columbia University is persecuting, jailing, harassing, surveilling, and intimidating Jewish and all other students, faculty, and staff””.
Schamus, a Professor of Professional Practice in Film and Media Studies and former CEO of Focus Features, criticised President Baroness Shafik’s decision to involve the police in removing over 100 students who were protesting peacefully against the ongoing war in Gaza.
The multiple Oscar-nominated and Golden Globe and BAFTA-winning filmmaker argues that the Columbia administration can no longer claim to protect Jewish students, faculty, and staff from an undefined notion of anti-Semitism. As a Jewish faculty member, he believes the university employs this definition solely to serve those in power.
**This is an outstanding move on the part of Professor Schamus to speakout on behalf of the students but more importantly to expose the truth of the people behind the scenes pulling the strings to stifle and prohibit free speech, inquiry, and individual expression as it relates to Palestine and the genocide being committed in Gaza.**
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English Script:
James Schamus: Look, I think today’s events show that the charade is over, the masks have come off and the Columbia administration can’t any longer pretend that it’s protecting Jewish students, faculty and staff from some undefined idea of anti-Semitism. They use these scare quotes there because they use them too. They are persecuting, jailing, harassing, surveilling, intimidating Jewish and all other students, faculty and staff who are seeking to exercise not only their freedom of speech and inquiry, but their very obligations as scholars and citizens. Baroness Shafik’s email this morning announcing today’s massive crackdown comes hot on the heels of her grovelling performance before the Maga McCarthy inquisition in Washington, D.C. yesterday. It could not be more transparent or more dangerous. She claims that she consulted with the academic senate’s executive committee before calling in the police to haul off over 100 and counting of our students. That committee unequivocally rejected her call to confrontation and violence, but she proceeded anyway, opening the campus to the NYPD’s notorious Strategic Response Group who set themselves upon our students. Students were sitting on a lawn peacefully protesting, posing no hazard, no threat, not even an inconvenience to anyone, except, of course, to those in power who want nothing more than to punish anyone who would remind us that not only the vast majority of Americans, but the majority of young American Jews, and I’m speaking now, of course, as a Jewish faculty member, are sick of our government’s support for the ongoing slaughter in Gaza and the West Bank. The events unfolding on the Columbia campus are part of a broad national movement of brave, truth-speaking young people. So when you coverage on these events, don’t for a minute pretend that at this point those young people sacrifices can be honestly framed as a chapter in some kind of Jewish versus pro-Palestinian political conflict. The hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of signatures garnered just this past week in support of the Columbia Barnard Jewish faculty letter rejecting the weaponization of antisemitism attest to this truth. And while some Jewish faculty and students and, of course, trustees and just like some fundamentalist Christians and far right among other folks, might want you to believe otherwise, the facts are the facts and it’s time to report them. Jews of America are rising up to say “Not in our name” more loudly, more clearly, and more fearlessly than ever and they’re proud to join fellow humans, such as our students who are willing to risk so much to make their voices heard.
