Task Failed Successfully: The Cracked Columbia Takeover and Expulsion

The sputtering 18-hour barricade-aided takeover of Columbia University by Hamas supporters ended last night faster than Humpty Dumpty falling off the wall; of course, the occupier’s task failed successfully only after being rightly pushed from the second story ledge of Hamilton Hall by NYPD riot officers. As a graduate of Columbia University, I was chagrined for the students who occupied Hamilton, and who are now about to learn the hard way why — the university does not not belong to the student — and those failed occupiers can now successfully weep into their expulsion letters.

If you know anything about the history of protest on campus at Columbia University — especially the 1968 riots — you know this 2024 protest was nowhere near the urgency or human need of the preceding protests. The ’68 riot was about the Vietnam War, Columbia taking over the neighborhood of Morningside Heights by removing minorities from their homes to build student housing and a new gymnasium, and fighting racism on campus.

The 1932 Columbia Strike was about the unfair treatment and expulsion of a student journalist who had criticized the university in the student-run newspaper.

In those two examples, something was directly wrong on the actual Columbia campus, and the protests, and the subsequent actions, were answers to those direct inequities.

Yesterday’s 2024 takeover was vaguely about military defense investment, an end to the Gaza war — a war that was started by Hamas — and amnesty for the students who were protesting. In short, nothing of direct value, or urgency, to the campus was at stake. Sure, you can protest in the faraway abstract, but the ramifications of that behavior will be specifically local, directly inflicted, and painfully inescapable.

The 2024 Columbia failures were shared all around. The tent encampments never should have been allowed by university leaders to interfere with daily learning and the students should not have been so bored with their lives that they allowed their futures to be duped into following disinterested activists and disgruntled students who actively advocated for the end of Israel and Jews. Did any of the students even bother to learn the real meaning of “From the River to the Sea?”

As a Columbia University grad, the takeover of Hamilton Hall was a fatal move. Now who are the occupiers? Now who are the terrorists? The 1968 riots had a purpose and an intention. The idea of this new, rude, foolishness is just to punish Israel and Jews. https://t.co/Mokpj6MwRt

— David Boles (@DavidBoles) April 30, 2024

Because of all those dramatic errors in judgment, nobody was safe on campus and that’s why the police action should’ve happened sooner to avoid the takeover of Hamilton and the ongoing disruption of study during reading week.

Watching the NYPD take action last night — streamed on live television — was a fascinating experience. There was no pushback from the occupiers. Witnessing all the handcuffed occupiers being perp walked through the campus gates to get on the NYPD bus for booking was just sad. There was no real reason or actual passion behind any of it. The whole sit-in episode from beginning to end was performative, unreal, dull, and unbelievable.

Now we must ask if the whole, hysterical, episode was worth it?

I doubt the student occupiers will think so in a few weeks when the reality of their behavior sets in to the new discomfort of their lives.

That said, if you believe in something, stand up for it, use your real name, don’t cover your face and hide! Own your behavior. Your actions matter. Now with their arrest mugshots in the public record – the occupier’s only tangible proof of their failed coup – their behavior, and arrest, will rightly follow them like a shadow of tar for the rest of their lives.

The occupiers were not helped by the media, or some of the Columbia faculty, or activist politicians like, disappointingly, AOC and the rest of “the squad.” The media require attention, and covering the occupiers was great for live television but an awful outcome for those caught protesting for nothing.

Some of the Columbia faculty should be ashamed of their compliance with the Hamas campus occupiers. Some faculty did not feel the need to protect all students — especially Jewish students — and one faculty member said on live television last night that the university should have “continued to entertain” the outrageous demands of the students in a never-ending dialogue and, they added, that the NYPD re-taking Hamilton Hall from the occupiers was not necessary because Hamilton hadn’t “even been taken over for 24-hours.” No university needs that sort of ridiculously woke faculty so disengaged from the reality of the world spinning around them.

Students often don’t know what they need to know. That’s why they attend a university. It is the duty and the obligation of the university to educate all students in all the ways in which they do not believe they need understanding, leadership or correction; and the fallow lesson of the failed 2024 coup of Columbia University is that too many students were too easily fooled by the cause of an idea rather than by the consequences of their actions. Bad behavior leads to bad reactions, and perhaps that’s the most valuable lesson soon to be learned.