The end of the 2023-24 academic year came to a dramatic close for the scores of colleges challenged by widespread anti-war student protests over the Israel-Hamas war. But one institution, Columbia University, found itself at the epicenter of the movement, eliciting echoes of the Ivy League institution’s complex history with campus activism.

Long home to countercultural ideas and demonstrations, higher education institutions grappled with pro-Palestinian demonstrations and counterprotests following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel that reignited the calamitous war. Students — sometimes with support from faculty — built encampments, demanded a cease-fire and called upon their institutions to divest from companies with ties to Israel.

With the war raging on, student anti-war protests are likely to erupt again this fall. In turn, policymakers and the public will likely continue to scrutinize college leaders for how they handle these demonstrations. Former Columbia President Minouche Shafik recently resigned amid backlash to her decisions, as did the leaders of Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania.

“Columbia has not been a very good school for free speech — not historically, not currently,” said Zach Greenberg, faculty legal defense and student association counsel at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. “Especially not in recent months.”

When asked about its free speech culture and policies, Columbia directed Higher Ed Dive to a recent statement by Dr. Katrina Armstrong, the university’s new interim president.

“We must continue Columbia’s long history of rising to meet the moment, of educating and training the world leaders of tomorrow,” Armstrong said in an August statement. “Freedom of inquiry, speech, and debate are essential to that mission. We must take care to bridge divides, find common ground, define our rules and their consequences, and reach understanding based on our shared values.”

Battles over free speech are not new to the 270-year-old university. Columbia faced similar uproar in 1968, when student anti-war protesters held extensive demonstrations and sit-ins to protest the Vietnam War and call for civil rights.

Read the full article about student anti-war protests by Laura Spitalniak at Higher Ed Dive.