The New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-NY) today welcomed the resignation of the Columbia University president Dr. Minouche Shafik in the wake of the university authorizing a violent law enforcement crackdown on students during the anti-genocide protests that took place on its campus last semester.
Shafik has resigned from her position, four months after she called on law enforcement to disband diverse and largely peaceful protests against the Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza and Columbia’s alleged financial connections to the Israeli government.
As part of the NYPD crackdown, officers violently cleared an encampment on campus, leading remaining students and protesters to occupy a university building that they renamed Hind’s Hall in honor of a six-year-old Palestinian girl who was murdered by the Israeli military in Gaza while waiting alongside the bodies of her dead relatives for paramedics to rescue her.
SEE: Columbia University president resigns after Gaza protests turmoil (bbc.com)
In a statement, CAIR-NY Executive Director Afaf Nasher said:
“We welcome the resignation of Dr. Shafik, who repeated the worst mistakes of the Vietnam era by unleashing law enforcement on Columbia students instead of giving serious consideration to their more than reasonable demand that the school disentangle its finances from the far-right, openly genocidal Israeli government.
“Dr. Shafik also failed to take incidents of anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia seriously enough, including the chemical weapon ‘skunk spray’ attack that pro-Israel students launched against students peacefully protesting the genocide.”
“We call on Columbia University new interim president Katrina Armstrong to protect the free speech rights of students, meaningfully engage with students regarding their reasonable demands, and take steps to sever the university’s financial relationship with human rights abusers.”
Nasher noted that CAIR-NY previously denounced Columbia University a multitude of times for endangering student protesters condemning the ongoing genocide in Palestine.
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CONTACT: Afaf Nasher, Esq., Executive Director, anasher@cair.com, 917-669-4006
Lamya Agarwala, Esq., Supervising Attorney, LAgarwala@cair.com
Saira Amar, MPA, CAIR-NY, Communications Coordinator, SAmar@cair.com