Embattled House Speaker Mike Johnson was the latest high-profile elected official to visit Columbia University a week after pro-Palestinian students began campign on the West Lawn. After a brief meeting with Columbia President Minouche Shafik, Johnson stood before a horde of reporters, students and professors on the steps of Low Library to denounce reports of antisemitism on campus and call for Shafik’s resignation.
“It is truly outrageous and it’s clear that the president of this university cannot control the campus,” Johnson said.
Met with a crowd of boos, he criticized university officials for failing to support Jewish students, and accused them of allowing hate speech and violence to go unchecked. He was accompanied by a host of Republican House colleagues including Virginia Foxx, Nicole Malliotakis, Mike Lawler and Anthony D’Esposito.
During his meeting with Shafik, Johnson met a handful of Jewish students who shared reports of feeling unsafe on campus due to the ongoing encampment. He said students “have paid a lot of money and worked very hard to get into an Ivy League institution like this,” and they deserve better protection from the administration.
Asked if he thinks the National Guard should step in to deescalate the situation, Johnson said he planned to call President Joe Biden and discuss the matter further. “We have to bring order to these campuses,” he said.
“To every Jewish student listening to us, no matter where you are around the country,” he said, “the U.S. House of Representatives will do everything in our power to ensure that you are safe.”
Earlier in the afternoon, student representatives at the encampment said negotiations with university officials had soured. They claimed the administration had signaled intentions to send in the National Guard to clear the camp.
“In threatening us, the university is negotiating in bad faith,” Khymani James said, despite no official statement on this regard being made.
In an early Wednesday email, officials said conversations with protesters would continue for two additional days and that some progress had been made. According to the email, students had committed to reducing the number of tents on the West Lawn, prohibiting discriminatory or harassing language and expelling non-Columbia affiliates from the camp.
Student organizers said that it is the university’s responsibility to monitor who enters and leaves the campus. “It’s mostly students, we do have guests from the outside, like politicians, and we do have people who come see it and leave,” said Sherif Ibrahim, one of the speakers at the press conference.
Last Thursday, Shafik asked the NYPD to clear the initial camp, an operation that resulted in more than 100 arrests. The encampment was up again the following day. Protestors are demanding full amnesty for those arrested and suspended, and that the university divests from any interests related to Israel.
Ashley was raised in Philadelphia, PA, but soon spread her wings as a college ice hockey player, influencing her start in sports journalism. She most recently lived in Maui, HI, working with the Hawaiian Land Trust, and now thrives in the high-speed environment of New York as a political reporter for City Newsroom.
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