By Caroline McCarthy
Columbia University on Wednesday will revive its longstanding tradition of holding a university-wide commencement ceremony on its Morningside campus. Last year, the university cancelled the commencement due to ongoing pro-Palestinian protests and escalating security concerns, but the individual schools within Columbia still held ceremonies for their graduates.
Though the campus has been quieter much of this academic year, police were called in earlier this month to end an occupation of Butler Library by pro-Palestinian protestors. Dozens were arrested, and some students got suspensions that will prevent them from participating in Wednesday’s graduation ceremony. Some longtime staff and faculty expressed concerns that the ceremony – which will be addressed by acting Columbia President Claire Shipman, who authorized the police action this month – could be disrupted by protests.
Further political tension comes from cuts in federal funding for Columbia researchers by the Trump administration, which alleges that the university has failed to fight antisemitism. At the same time, many faculty members and students have denounced the university for not taking a stronger stand against the Trump cuts. Despite the tensions, multiple faculty members say they have not been given any information about additional security measures for Wednesday’s commencement.
Sidewalks in and around Columbia this week are filled with graduates in their light blue robes and mortar boards, many of them carrying congratulatory bouquets and accompanied by family and friends who have come to celebrate the students’ accomplishments. They are doing that at ceremonies held throughout the week by individual schools – such as those for law, engineering, business, and public health – as well as at Wednesday’s university-wide commencement.
The street scene is similar to past years, but with an undercurrent of nervous anticipation about possible attempts to disrupt Wednesday’s ceremony.
“I think it’s gonna be similar as to last year. Especially given the fact that you can invite whoever you want,” said Nathaniel Wirth, a senior at the university’s undergraduate Columbia College. “That kind of leaves the door open for inviting people that may or may not be allowed on campus.”
For awhile, Wirth was in danger of missing graduation. When demonstrations broke out earlier this month in Butler Library’s third-floor reading room, Wirth was studying there. He asked public safety officials if he should leave, but they said no, “so I sat back down to do work.”
Later, when Wirth got up to leave, a security guard asked him to show his campus ID – and wondered how he could have been studying amid all of the protest noise. “I told him I turned my techno music up on my headphones,” Wirth said in an interview with the Rag.
The next day, the school’s Rules of University Conduct board sent Wirth a “Notice of Interim Suspension” for allegedly participating “in a disruptive protest in 301 Butler Library.” But he successfully appealed the suspension, using video to show he was not participating in the unrest, and will attend both the undergraduate Columbia College ceremony as well as the campus-wide commencement.
A very different, non-Columbia ceremony, dubbed “People’s Graduation,” was held Sunday for students disciplined by the university for protesting. A statement inviting expelled or suspended students said the event would celebrate the graduation of Mahmoud Khalil, the student activist who was arrested at his Columbia residence by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in March, as well as “honoring every student wrongfully expelled from Columbia for speaking out against the genocide in Gaza.” During the ceremony, at St. Paul & St. Andrew United Methodist Church on West 86th Street, Khalil’s wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, and their newborn child, accepted a homemade diploma, labeled from “The People’s University for Palestine,” on behalf of her husband, who remains in federal detention while lawyers argue in court to try to prevent his deportation.
Not every student entitled to attend Wednesday’s commencement plans to be there. Tamara Turki, a Palestinian graduating from Columbia Journalism School, told the Rag she “doesn’t feel like celebrating” at the university.
“Over the last two years, Columbia has financed a genocide against my people as well as harassed, targeted and surveilled its own students fighting for divestment,” Turki said. “The thought of celebrating my graduation at commencement while my loved ones are either suspended or sitting in a detention center for their pro-Palestine activism, at the hands of Columbia, is hard to digest.”
It’s not known how many other students might boycott Wednesday’s ceremony, but even among the thousands expected to attend, some were wary of commenting publicly about commencement. The situation is just too “politically charged,” one graduate told the Rag.
In an email response to a query from West Side Rag about security plans for Wednesday, the president’s office said: “The University has been preparing for Commencement and taking precautions to ensure safe and successful events. Commencement will honor more than 16,000 new graduates, and our hardworking students deserve a joyful day of celebration with their families.”
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Roar Lions Roar!
Despite various accusations, I still do not buy the claim that Columbia “has financed a genocide.”
I am glad that students and their families and friends can participate in a university-wide commencement ceremony.
Congratulations students! 99.9% of the students have nothing to do with these protests.
But Muslims on the Upper West Side who have nothing to do with these protests are being profiled and made to feel unwelcome on the Upper West Side and no leader in the community stands up for them or empathizes with them, not even privately. If elected and non elected leaders wanted to diffuse any tensions, they would work with the Muslims on the UWS and try to have some sort of understanding that the antisemitism is wrong and interfaith cooperation, but they don’t care. It is almost like elected officials want protests like these so that Trump could react and elected like Brad Hoylman could put out a statement “resisting” Trump while doing nothing to restore the lives of people here back to the way it was for Muslims on October 6, 2023 or September 10, 2001.
Funny how the Left is enraged that Trump may accept a $400 million jet from Qatar, yet they have nothing to say about the billions that Qatar has pumped into US universities to fund their Middle East departments and send their radicalized students and professors here, which is the true wellspring of all the antisemitism and anti-American / Western hate we’re seeing.
Thank you, Ari, for your insight. Until I read your comment, I hadn’t known that the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause applies not only to the POTUS but also to universities.
It’s funny how Magas go crazy when a university accepts a few million dollars to pay for a department, but yet say nothing when the president is bought off by a 450 million dollar Arab plane. Can you say hypocrite.
A few million? Nice try. Add a few zeroes. These universities sold their entire departments out to the Islamist monarchies of Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The devastating consequences of these moves has become quite evident. Well, perhaps not to everyone….
It’s a disgrace that St. Paul & St. Andrew United Methodist Church allowed this “People’s Graduation” ceremony on their property.
The people attending this nonsense are not simply critical of Israel’s actions. Most have praised Hamas and have unambiguously called for the eradication of Israel thru violence (I’ve seen the protests at Columbia).
This is outright antisemitism and the leaders of this church have a lot of explaining to do.
Perhaps if Noor Abdalla had condemned Hamas (after all, it was their atrocities that started this mess) and called for the release of the hostages when she accepted her husband’s “diploma” I might have an iota of empathy for her husband.
But I guess this was too much to ask for.
Will I ever be able to come back to the campus on 116th street and sit, read, eat my lunch & enjoy the weather! I grew up in Morningside and played as a kid on the campus. Played with the snow. Sat on the benches with friends & chatted, enjoyed the fountains on a hot summer day. Brought my daughter to play on the grass with other children. And autumn was my favorite time to sit by the Sun Dial. I miss the campus.
Agreed. Enough with this nonsense. If it is even still an issue (disturbances and protests), it’s an internal one. Not allowed the neighborhood in does nothing but torch town-gown relations.
Does anyone know the status of the lawsuits and requests for them to re-open the campus??
Shocking that St Paul and St Andrew would host such an antisemetic grouping of people in their church and then turn around and host BJ services (a Zionist synagogue) frequently. And to have such evil hosted in a very Jewish UWS neighborhood is downright scary. St Andrews should apologize to the wider community.
What exactly is evil about hosting a gathering for wrongfully suspended students? Many of these students, such as the one referenced in this article, were suspended with no form of due process. They deserve to celebrate graduating. Rhetoric like yours minimizes anti-semitism as you equate it to anything remotely related to protests or Palestine.
Protesting peacefully for whatever one’s cause is, is one thing. Bullying, intimidating, vandalizing, trespassing, and using violence under the guise of ‘protest’ is another matter altogether, let alone on private grounds. I am all for having strong opinions and for using one’s voice – I am quite opinionated and relatively vocal about things that matter to me – but when protests harm others, vandalizes, silences others, and results in harm to security officers, it crosses the line to something else entirely.
What violence?
In the US, that type of behavior (which led to actual deaths) will get people labeled as being “good people on both sides” after a “jews will not replace us” guy killed a lady, or those labeled as “political prisoners” and “patriots” when they tried to stop the certification of a national election–by the President (who then pardoned thousands of convicted criminals to include violent ones). By comparison, nobody has died at a Columbia University protest, Also, there’s no video evidence of protesters using mace, weapons, and mass violence against the police. Hmmm, weird how standards are selective and negotiatiable– is it not?
Columbia should publicly announce before the graduation that anyone who disrupts it in anyway will be prosecuted. Of course, that requires the support of NYPD and the DA to actually prosecute. But there should be consequences. So many students worked really hard and spent a lot of money for that degree, and their special day should not be ruined.
There are plenty of other ways to protest.
I also continue to be amazed that these protestors are so focused on Columbia. Why don’t they head down to Trump Tower and protest the president who is destroying our country and wants to take away all of our civil rights while he profits off of it all.
Agreed. I am more concerned about Christofascist nationalism within our own country. This obsession with the Middle East comes across as “privileged” and is a huge distraction from what is imo the most pressing existential issue of our time – our own Constitutional crisis at home, closely followed by the second most pressing existential issue of our time – worldwide ecological collapse.
Wow. So it’s true.
One can graduate from Columbia and still not know what a genocide is.
How nice that the graduates who prefer a death cult like Hamas can have a special ceremony. How nice that a “Christian” church hosted these people who champion rapists and murderers.
We live in interesting times.
It’s valuable to capture the mood of a Palestinian student. Have you also considered speaking with a Jewish or Israeli student (maybe both?) for a broader perspective?
Kudos to St. Paul’s and st Andrew’s. . Once again I am disgusted by the intolerance and., in some quarters, bigotry of many of the readers. I am sick and tired of the lazy labelling of anti semite for anyone expressing an opinion. I wish WSR would just stop producing articles about Columbia university that gives air to the same miserable comments. Don’t bother responding.
We are at the commencement and could not get in. Wisth only 2 entrances open and there are 1000’s of family’s like ours that could not get in. Shame on the security that so badly planned this!
I live near Columbia and for many years have passed through the campus daily on the way to the 116th Street station on the #1 train. A lot of people don’t remember that last summer, for a number of weeks, the campus was reopened to everyone. I asked a security guard if this would happen again this summer. He said definitely not.