Photo: Melissa Bender/NurPhoto via AP
Columbia University could hardly have been more draconian in the last year and a half since students began speaking out against Israel’s assault on Gaza.
In early November 2023, four months before the Columbia Gaza solidarity encampment even began, the university banned its chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. A few hundred students from the groups had had the audacity to walk out from classes and hold a “die-in” protest on campus — some of the most widely celebrated nonviolent protest tactics available.
The crackdown was just getting started.
There is no appeasing a political force like the Trumpian right.
Since then, the university has…