Want to Experience Fascism First-Hand? Attend Columbia University
I'm horrified by the actions of Columbia and its affiliates, like my alma mater Barnard College, against students protesting Israel's genocide.
It’s been 25 years since I was a freshman at Barnard College, such a long time ago that much has changed both at Columbia University and in the world – enough perhaps to warrant a look back at the women’s college that advertises itself as “bold,” “fearless,” and the sort of place where empowered young women can “generate new ideas and communicate them in a way that can change how people understand the world.” With Columbia’s innovations of censorship and authoritarianism coming at such breakneck speed, how will prospective students ever be able to keep track of them while deciding where to begin their college experience? It’s springtime, and your son or daughter is receiving envelopes and emails from admissions offices. Will they get into Columbia or its affiliate, Barnard? Should they go? As an alumna, I’m here to help.
Lessons in Getting Arrested, Suspended, and Evicted
As an anxious 18-year-old away from home for the first time, I remember being slightly alarmed by a friendly orientation session on basic self-defense tips, after which we were gifted a rape whistle. But I needn’t have been alarmed; that was the extent of the threats and dangers presented to us. In my time, Columbia University didn’t call the NYPD on its students, inviting them to fly police drones as they did over Hamilton Hall nearly a year ago when students protesting Israel’s genocide in Gaza took over the building, renaming it Hind’s Hall in honor of Hind Rajab, the 6-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed along with her family in their car that the Israeli military shot at over 300 times. Dressed in riot gear, the police used stun guns against the students, arrested 100 of them, and tore down the encampments. Columbia has such a good relationship with the NYPD now that they keep calling them back to campus! Ever wanted to know how you might fare in jail? How many Ivy Leagues give you the chance to find out?
More and more, as it turns out, but let’s remember that CU was a leader in this regard.
The university failed to protect protesters who were sprayed by pro-Israel students with a noxious substance, sending several of them to the hospital with severe nausea, headaches, and abdominal pain. On the contrary, after temporarily suspending one student for the attack, Columbia backtracked when he sued the school and paid out $395,000 in a settlement. Oops, the university said, the substance used in the attack thought to be the notorious skunk water – used by the Israeli military against Palestinians – wasn’t actually a chemical attack. It was something the university said was – I can’t believe I’m typing this – a non-lethal “fart spray” bought on Amazon. Yet, Shay, a Jewish student, was seen at the ER, where the official diagnosis was a “chemical exposure.” In my day, plenty of former Israeli soldiers and reservists roamed around campus, but they didn’t attack other students with impunity then. They just dobbed professors to Campus Watch and launched endless and spurious complaints of harassment against professors critical of Israeli apartheid and occupation.
But there’s more! When I was a student, the university didn’t evict students protesting ethnic cleansing campaigns from their dorms with just a few hours' notice – sending young women out into New York City to fend for themselves. At last count, my alma mater has suspended over 50 students and evicted 46 young women for their participation in the Gaza Solidarity Encampment and political activism. Many of the suspended students were denied due process, and some immediately lost access to their dormitory housing, healthcare, and pre-paid meal plans. I guess the “new ideas” that Barnard hopes to generate to “change how people understand the world” is that genocide is good and admirable as long as Israel is doing it, Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim lives are irrelevant and insignificant, and political activism means you should have no food or housing. That’s the message I certainly take away.
Experience Fascism First-Hand!
I know what you’re thinking, you’re paranoid! Please stop making this about anti-genocide activists. Forget that Israel’s genocide in Gaza killed more women and children in a single year than any conflict in recent memory – including hundreds of newborns under the age of 1 – more importantly, how are Israel’s defenders feeling? Not good, but sad and unsafe. Never mind that none of the students physically attacked by a noxious spray were pro-Israeli, nor were any of the students doxed, nor were any of the students who were suspended, expelled, and evicted out into the dark New York night. Have some sensitivity, for God’s sake. Feelings are important! Everyone has them, but no one cares about yours.
If you’ve ever fancied being up close and personal with deranged politicians whom human rights groups accused of war crimes, think of the opportunities both Columbia and Harvard recently gave their students to listen to former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. At Harvard, he joked about giving anyone who disrupted his talk explosive pagers. Ha Ha, people who feel sad-face unsafe laughed at Bennett’s droll Israeli humor about killing people for fun, according to the Harvard Crimson.
Speaking of safety, Palestinian activist and Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil wrote to the university to say he was fearful for his safety, after which he was arrested by plainclothes DHS officers, spirited to Louisiana, where he remains detained as a political prisoner, and threatened with deportation even though he is a green card holder, married to an American citizen, and committed no actual crimes. His safety and feelings of lack thereof aren’t relevant. Next, the Department of Homeland Security raided two students' dorm rooms – no one at Columbia enquired about how they felt. Then, the Justice Department said it’s investigating whether pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia violated terrorism laws. Trying to prove that they are a university the government can rely on, Columbia has since agreed to ban certain masks, empowering new campus security personnel to arrest students, and appointed someone to oversee the Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies department and the Palestine studies center of study. “Vichy on the Hudson,” Professor Rashid Khalidi called them recently, referring to France’s Vichy regime that collaborated with Nazi Germany.
Think of the exposure your child will have to the finer workings of government at Columbia: raided and detained by ICE, beaten and arrested by the NYPD, investigated for terrorism. Where else can you experience fascism firsthand like this? That alone is worth sending your offspring to Columbia; they will get to live through history – and not the good kind. What an opportunity!
Finally, tuition money. Getting a Barnard/Columbia degree will set you back more than $67,000 a year. You or your child can have an incredible degree, and there’s only a slight chance that the university will revoke it! No, none of this live-action repression is refundable. Keep your feelings in check and remember that Spiderman was filmed on campus, and plenty of other students feel really, really sad when Israel’s feelings get hurt during their active genocide. So you lost some money, put things in perspective. Not everything in life is about you. (It’s about Israel.)
If I could do it all again, would I have spent this obscene amount of tuition money on Barnard, who makes sure to email me endless impersonal spam to ask for yet more money in the form of donations and gifts? Absolutely not. But what do my feelings matter? Happy senior year everyone.
Fatima Bhutto is an award-winning author and journalist. Her most recent books include the novel The Runaways and her non-fiction reportage New Kings of the World. She recently hosted Reframe, a four-part series on the genocide in Gaza, on Al Jazeera.
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The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Zeteo.
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Beautifully written, thank you 🙏🏼
One of my college roommates took a "jr. year abroad," if you will. She went to Barnard (NY was quite different than Massachusetts in 1966). That was 59 years ago. At the time, I was the only non-Jewish person of our roommates, five of us. SDS was active at that time, just beginning, in fact, if I correctly recall. The Free Speech Movement had begun a year earlier at Berkeley, closer to my home in Los Angeles. My roommates were all from MA or NY/NJ.
Life was different then, but I felt smacked in the head by what has happened at Columbia since October, 2023. It was as if I were all of a sudden living in upside-down world. I still have difficulty understanding what has happened to our society. The inability to honor and respect all people who are not seeking the death of others is beyond me. We all deserve to live free lives, to fulfill our potential, to honor our own traditions and respect the traditions of others.
Why is this so hard? My "Barnard" roommate died in December, 2024. I miss her deeply. We came from different backgrounds; and still we loved and respected each other. As we all should. I weep for the pain you have suffered, so unfairly.