Officials at Columbia University, facing surging tensions on campus that raised safety concerns, have announced all classes will be virtual on Monday as Passover begins.
Columbia President Minouche Shafik said in a statement the decision was made to “deescalate the rancor and give us all a chance to consider next steps.”
The move underscores how tense the situation has become at the Ivy League school and the enormous challenge facing Shafik to get the situation under control.
It could be that. But it could also be slant from both the administration and the media, who have been downplaying Israel’s actions since the genocide in Gaza started and have painted Iran as an aggressive war-mongering nation when Israel attacked the Iranian consulate first, and then continued to attack Iran while they tried to deescalate. The Passover justification could simply be a convenient excuse, and there’s no way to know for sure that any antisemitism isn’t from bad faith actors rather than the original protestors. It happened with the BLM movement, and there were even reports of undercover cops trying to incite violence amongst the protestors then, like the FBI did when they radicalized the man who would later go on to bomb the Boston Marathon. The NYPD does not have a good reputation, and the administration and the cops have been acting aggressively against the protestors. It could have something to do with: