As seen in the New York Times, Letter to the Editor
By Irwin Redlener
It was a day of protest and confusion at Columbia University, after it set a deadline for students to vacate their encampment. Credit: Bing Guan for The New York Times
Campus protests, some involving violence, are not new. Columbia was one of the centers of student activism during the Vietnam War, peaking in 1968 when protesters seized several university buildings.
But the worst moment was on May 4, 1970, when Ohio National Guard troops killed four unarmed student antiwar protesters at Kent State University.
That was then — when protests were about U.S. government policies around a totally misguided, deadly war.
But now we have a far different reality in which we’re seeing what amounts to an internecine clash of worldviews among different factions of students and faculty.
University leaders across the country are generally unprepared to manage these crises. But why are we surprised? Crisis management is a specific skill set that doesn’t necessarily come naturally to academicians.
What’s needed now is smart, sensitive leadership that understands the dynamics of the intense and dangerous turmoil roiling campuses across the country. Universities must create clear guardrails regarding what is permissible and what won’t be tolerated in terms of actions, speech, and public messages among students, faculty, and staff.
Clear intimations of antisemitism, racism of any kind, violence, or the threat of violence can’t be tolerated. Full stop. Violators of these guidelines need to be dealt with immediately and definitively.
Academic leaders who can’t or won’t step up as effective crisis managers should step down now and make room for those who are prepared to deal with these complex, highly charged situations, which I fear will be with us for the foreseeable future.
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