Dear friends,
School is out in NYC and I am hopelessly out of step!
Yesterday, I brought you Frank Bruni’s lesson of humility. Today, I am happy to present Robert Reich’s lesson on how to learn by engaging in discussion with people who disagree with you.
Robert Reich called for the removal of Columbia’s president. His reasoning:
The faculty of Columbia University has every right — and, in my view a duty — to protect peaceful free expression at Columbia with a vote of no confidence in Shafik’s leadership, and seek to end her presidency.
My first reaction to Reich’s piece was to wonder if the best course of action is to keep firing people who fuck up. I mean, who among us does not?
Then, I read this blog post by Hank Reichman, which points out that
the arrests were but an escalation of a largely one-sided effort to silence student protest and even student debate and discussion that began last Fall with the swift banning of two pro-Palestinian student groups and the adoption of overly repressive new student conduct regulations at Barnard and Columbia, implemented with no faculty or student input.
Shafik didn’t just give “craven” testimony to Congress, in which she accepted false and defamatory allegations against a professor and
agreed on the spot to remove him from a committee chairmanship and initiate an investigation.
She didn’t just call the police on students. She made a long series of missteps that failed to address credible charges of discrimination and harassment against pro-Palestinian students and faculty.
Members of Congress have been calling for Shafik to step down for entirely different reasons. Nicole Malliotakis echoed the criticisms of Elise Stefanik when she said that Shafik is
“unable to stop the antisemitic activity on her campus & keep her students safe.”
Reichman directed readers to a great piece called “What I wish President Shafik would tell Congress,” which was published in the Columbia Spectator on April 17. Here is what Katherine Stern would have had Shafik say:
[Y]our real goal is not to protect Jewish lives. Your targets are free speech and academic freedom. I refuse to play along. And I regret now that I ever showed more concern for favoring one side of the debate than for protecting free speech, as that would have better secured the safety of all. I censored the Columbia chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace when I might have better protected those students by commending them for their civility. Instead, my administration’s bias emboldened two students who allegedly deployed a chemical weapon at a pro-Palestinian protest, injuring 10 students.
None of us, including Shafik, are irredeemable, though I expect she will have to redeem herself in her next job. It would have been wise of her to accept Professor Stern’s offering. I wonder if she realizes that yet.
I still believe we’re in a teachable moment. Call me crazy.
With that in mind, I’m going to discourage you from yelling “You disgust me!” at people with whom you disagree. Note: I did try to speak with the angry man on the street, but he was not open to a dialogue.
I usually publish good news on Tuesday. To my mind, good teaching is always good news. Still, I owe you. I’ll be back on Thursday with only the good stuff.
with love,
L