How should universities handle professor and student demonstrations?
Many American universities are currently having demonstrations by professors and students. Different university administrations have responded differently.
What is the proper way of handling such demonstrations? To answer this question, one has to answer a more fundamental question. What is the university?
The administrators of Columbia University think that they are the university, and that the demonstrating professors and students are intruders that do not belong to their magnificent property. They called in law enforcement to arrest the unruly intruders.
Given that the demonstrations are in American campuses, and that American politicians love to quote Bible passages to guide their actions, it seems fitting to introduce an analogous question from the Bible. What is the church? The Bible gave an explicit and unequivocal answer to the question. The worshipers are the church, not the magnificent temples or cathedrals.
Many years ago, when Dwight Eisenhower was President of Columbia University, he was interrupted in his speech in which he referred to professors as employees of the university. Isidore Rabi, a professor at Columbia University, stopped Eisenhower with the following:
“Mr. President, We are not employees of the university. We are the university."
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The world has changed so much, from “We are the university” to “We are the intruders”.
There should be a serious debate about whether “We are the university” or “We are the intruders”. If we as faculty and students are not the intruders, then who are the intruders?
Isn’t it about time to identify the real intruders and evict them? Isn’t this the right thing to do?
I quickly realized that the right thing is often difficult to do.
In August 2023, a homeowner in suburban Atlanta was arrested after trying to evict squatters from his own property. This sounds intimidating and discouraging. However, the rightful law eventually prevailed.
May the history echo back loudly at Columbia University campus: “We are the university!"
Professor in molecular evolutionary genetics
10 个月The demonstrations reminded me of the Tian-An-Men democratic movement. Originally, it was a student demonstration supported by almost all Chinese people with monetary and material donations. The slogans were "freedom", "democracy", "human rights", "human dignity", "stop government corruption", and "limit government power" that echoed well among people. Then suddenly, the organizers said that they had other sources of money and did not need any more donations. Roughly at the same time, one saw banners with radical slogans such as "overthrow the government", "down with Deng Xiaoping", etc. These radical banners were put up by stealthy individuals. It was not clear, even to this day, if these radical banners were put up by CCP agents or foreign agents trying to subotage the student movement and to increase confrontations between the governmetn and the students. In those hectic days, no one had the legal means of capturing some of these stealthy individuals and interogating their background. Very likely the same thing will replay in student demonstrations in US. There will be some stealthy individuals who will shout radical slogans or put up large banners with such radical slogans to distort demonstrators' efforts towards peace.