Columbia Law Professors Condemn Suspensions, Police Raid on Campus
Columbia Law School professors have sent a letter to university leadership condemning the school’s decision to summarily suspend student protesters and to authorize a police raid on campus. The procedural irregularity of the mass suspensions, the lack of transparency about how decisions were made, and the involvement of the New York Police Department threaten the university’s legitimacy internally and in the eyes of the public, the faculty charge.
A spokesperson for the university declined to comment on the letter, which was sent to Columbia President Nemat Minouche Shafik, the board of trustees, deans, and other administrators.
The arrests and suspensions impacted students at both Columbia and its women’s school, Barnard College. In their letter, the law school faculty said that ‘the University has offered very little public information about the rules invoked, processes used, and facts found to support the blanket suspension of over one hundred students.’
The legal scholars also noted that it was not clear that Columbia had followed its established procedures for rule enforcement, including content-neutral regulations of speech, and harassment and discrimination protections.
The law school faculty letter follows mass dissent in other channels. After an emergency faculty meeting last week, for instance, the Barnard and Columbia chapters of the American Association of University Professors circulated a petition condemning the mass arrests. Organizers say they have more than 1,000 signatories on the petition.
