To the Editor:
Re “Colleges Warn of Punishment for Disruptions” (front page, April 19):
I would not want to be a college president these days. In past months, the hot breath of Republican politicians led to resignations at Harvard and Penn. Now, the president of Columbia, Nemat Shafik, has come under congressional fire for being too lenient in answering campus provocations and responds in the next instant with a wave of arrests of student protesters. Damned for doing too little and surely cursed for doing too much.
College campuses are boiling, roiling, with faint echoes of the 1960s being heard in some of the same corridors these many decades later. It is an uncomfortable, uneasy, messy moment as students and administrators grapple with First Amendment claims slamming into sounds of anarchy and total dysfunction.
Democracy at its best is a difficult mixture of controls and freedoms. For those tasked with the fragile balancing act between these two competing tensions, it can sometimes feel like an impossible calculation. Now is one of those times.
Robert S. Nussbaum
Fort Lee, N.J.
To the Editor:
Re “Police Arrest Dozens of Columbia Students at Gaza Protest” (news article, April 19):
It’s about time!
These people were not arrested for being “pro-Palestinian” or even being pro-terrorist. They were arrested for violating campus policies after being warned. They were on private property disrupting the campus where students pay a lot of money to get an education.
The people participating in this illegal encampment target people for harassment based on religion and have a philosophy that celebrates depraved acts of violence. No group should be allowed to violate campus policies nor put other members of the community at risk.
Holly Rothkopf
New York
To the Editor:
As an alumnus of Columbia College and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, I am disgusted by the actions taken Thursday by the president of Columbia University.
I attended Columbia in the immediate aftermath of the Vietnam protests and subsequently participated in actions against the university that resulted in the belated divestment of investments in South Africa, then an apartheid, racist regime.
Yes, we camped on the campus and disrupted administration activities. And I gave up graduation ceremonies for the blockade. But strong medicine was needed to counter wrongheadedness! And strong medicine did indeed work!
It is deplorable that the university has chosen a weak, small-minded approach to dissidence and arrested students who were expressing their constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech and assembly at a university where they are legitimately enrolled.
Columbia University has always been a beacon of free speech and expression, whether artistic or political. It needs the energy and ideals of young students, mixed with the tempered experience and knowledge of faculty, to remain vital and relevant.
Edward Said, the Palestinian American who taught literature at Columbia, would be shocked.
Clovis Lark
Salt Lake City
To the Editor:
Re “Columbia Chief Vows Remedies to Antisemitism” (front page, April 18):
It’s a sad day for academic freedom in the United States. On Wednesday, a major university president told a congressional committee that she intends to punish faculty and students who engage in “antisemitic” speech. But reasonable people disagree about what that term means. And if we impose a singular definition of it, we will not be able to converse across our differences.
Antisemitism is real, and it is increasing. But censorship is not the answer to it. Or to anything.
Jonathan Zimmerman
Philadelphia
The writer teaches history and education at the University of Pennsylvania and is the author of “Free Speech and Why You Should Give a Damn.”
To the Editor:
Members of a congressional committee have been condemning the increasing antisemitism on university campuses. Those committee members have not been condemning the increasing antisemitism throughout America. I can only conclude that the goal of those members is not to prevent antisemitism but rather to condemn universities in any way they can.
Alice L. Givan
Brooklyn
The writer is a former research associate professor at Dartmouth Medical School.
The Airstrikes Between Israel and Iran
To the Editor:
Re “Israel Strikes Iran, but Scope of Attack Appears Limited” (live updates, nytimes.com, April 19):
If Israel has to send drones into Iran again, it should drop leaflets saying, in Persian, English and Hebrew:
“Israel stands with the people of Iran! Overthrow your authoritarian government, stop funding Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and Houthi terrorism, and rejoin the community of nations as our partners in peace.”
Stephen A. Silver
San Francisco
To the Editor:
Israel bombs the Iranian Embassy complex in Syria, killing several senior Iranian commanders. Iran fires hundreds of missiles toward Israel but warns Israel and the West ahead of time. There is minor damage, and a young Bedouin girl is wounded.
Iran says it considers the matter closed, and Western countries plead with Israel not to respond. Israel shrugs off the advice and attacks an Iranian military base.
Israel suffers no consequences, as the U.S. will continue the flow of arms to Israel — unless Congress shows some moral courage and stops feeding Israel’s war machine.
Tom Miller
Oakland, Calif.
To the Editor:
“How Israel Miscalculation Poked at a Hornet’s Nest” (front page, April 18) describes the various miscalculations by Israel in its airstrike that killed several senior Iranian commanders in Syria. That may well be.
On the other hand, there could hardly have been a better calculation for distracting attention away from the war in Gaza, and for ensuring greater U.S. support for Israel given that Iran was sure to retaliate, and did just that.
Peter Schmidt
Newton, Mass.
The ‘Ludicrous’ Impeachment of Mayorkas
To the Editor:
Re “Senate Rejects Push for Trial of Mayorkas” (front page, April 18):
It is gratifying to note that the ludicrous effort to impeach and convict the homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, has quickly fallen flat on its face upon presentation to the Democratic-controlled Senate, which appropriately dismissed it as unconstitutional.
The vote by the Republican-controlled House to send this matter to the Senate for a trial was a dangerous misuse of the impeachment process. It conflates policy differences with crimes, and no evidence whatsoever has been presented that the secretary committed a crime.
If Congress does not like the way that Mr. Mayorkas is performing his job, by all means bring him before the body to testify, excoriate him if you wish, and/or legislate changes to law and policy in his department.
It becomes increasingly clear that today’s Republican Party is one whose priority is to sow chaos and to blow things up. The farthest thing from the G.O.P.’s mind is to govern with the interests of the American people at heart.
Oren Spiegler
Peters Township, Pa.