Third time is not a charm—calling the NYPD to arrest the Butler protesters was wrong - Incite at Columbia University

Yesterday around 100 student protesters occupied one of the Butler library reading rooms to call attention to Columbia investment policies and for the on-going tragedy in Gaza.

In less than two hours the University had declared that: “These disruptions of our campus and academic activities will not be tolerated”. Fifteen minutes later faculty mediators were barred from entering the library. Shortly thereafter, Public Safety Officers dragged an individual down a hall, pinned him to the ground and led him into an unmarked vehicle; NYPD had begun to gather on 114th street, and student protesters were blocked from leaving the building. Out on the street, hundreds of police who had arrived with at least 1 prison bus, 11 paddy wagons, 6 police vans on 114th street, and multiple vans on 116th street, accompanied by at least 39 SRG officers (riot police), all of whom were armed, had amassed. Four hours after the initial disruption, 78 students had been arrested, handcuffed and led into police vans, transported to one Police Plaza where they were held overnight and into the morning. The next day, our interim President distributed a video, where she thanked the NYPD, and repeated that we have no tolerance of such disruptions. 

What is wrong with this picture?

First, the haste. The speed of the University’s reaction bespeaks panic, fear of some danger grave enough to justify truncating the usual process of negotiation and compromise. What were they afraid of? It strains credulity to think that the protesters themselves represented a grave danger. They occupied one room in the building. They carried no weapons. They mainly wanted to chant, disrupt, and then leave. No, university officials were acting under a different fear. We know what this fear is, because just today the New York Times published an essay by Steven Levitsky, Lucan Way and Daniel Ziblatt. “How will we know whether we have lost our democracy,” they asked. They proposed “a simple metric: the cost of opposing the government.” It is the fear of paying that cost which justified the hasty reaction. We should not be so afraid. As Levitsky et al say, the costs of opposition are surmountable and worth paying. .

Second, the language. Since when is it that “we” have no tolerance? And since when is it that the absence of tolerance is something that a great liberal arts university is proud to announce? We teach the values of tolerance in our Core Curriculum, because tolerance for other opinions, even when they chafe and rub us the wrong way, even when they are loud and disruptive, is at the core of liberal education and a liberal polity.

Worst of all, calling the police in, now for the third time. Columbia announced with great fanfare the training of its own public safety officers. Couldn’t they have handled the situation, albeit with less haste? Since when do we need hundreds of heavily armed police to take down a protest of our own students who have had the temerity to “take over” a single reading room in Butler library to draw attention to their critiques? 8 years ago, members of the Columbia University Marching Band defied an explicit prohibition by university administrators, snuck into Butler and held their Orgo Night performance in Room 209. Nobody called the NYPD. 

And did anybody stop to consider the implications of these arrests? Predictably, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that he will “review” and no doubt cancel the visas of those among the arrested who are international students. Last month, Acting President Shipman spoke in eloquent terms about the University’s duty to defend its international students, and to her credit put some resources behind this pledge. But now the very same university has exposed the identities of protesters, with predictable consequences.

Sure, one can object and say that the protesters could have acted differently. Sure, they could have chosen less disruptive ways to communicate their message. One could even say that the protesters were wrong to do what they did, but there is an old saying that “two wrongs don’t make a right.” What does make a right—right-wing that is—is excessive police force deployed unnecessarily on young, unarmed, students. It is happening elsewhere in the country and on other university campuses. It is motivated by the same fear of the costs that authoritarians impose. Has Columbia fully embraced an intolerant right-wing spirit according to which protest “is a privilege, not a right”? Not in our name, that’s for sure.

Peter Bearman
Jonathan R. Cole Professor of Sociology
Director, Incite Institute

Gil Eyal
Professor of Sociology
Director of the Trust Collaboratory at Incite Institute