Columbia University Displaces Harlem Residents and Attempts to Punish Critical Student Voices

“If you don't understand white supremacy/racism , everything that you do understand will only confuse you..”

Neeley Fuller Jr.

Those of us NYC residents who stand for social justice are aware of Columbia University’s insidious agenda to gobble up Harlem territory like Pac-man ghosts. For those of us who are unashamedly Black and who fight for Black liberation on all fronts, this agenda is nothing more than an attempt to colonize historically Black areas for middle class whites at the expense of displacing Black people, businesses, historical memory, and political strength.

This is why we fought the university’s attempt in 1987 to demolish the Audubon Ballroom – where Malcolm X was assassinated – as part of its plan to build a biomedical research center in Washington Heights. Famous poets, actors, leaders – and ordinary community residents, organizers, and Columbia’s own students led this over 5-year wave of protests, which included appeals to then mayor David Dinkins, Community Board 12, and even the New York State Court of Appeals. Activists stopped the building’s demolition and forced the creation of the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center on site, but Columbia University ultimately purchased the entire property as the crown jewel of its $400 million “Columbia University Audubon Research Park.” In 1993, Columbia University ordered 4 of its student protesters suspended for a semester.

Apparently, some things never change… As you read this, several Black and other Columbia University students face possible “sanctions” next week. These sanctions could include suspension for a semester, removal of student organization status, or even expulsion from the university Why? Because they protested and ultimately prevented a Skype presentation from Tommy Robinson whose actual name is Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon. Robinson was the co-founder and former spokesperson of the English Defense League. He is a documented Islamophobe who scapegoats Muslims for the decay of European civilization (rather than European “civilization” itself). His street rallies often include slurs and physical attacks against Muslims and Islamic sympathizers.

They shut down his speech (really a Skype teleconference). No one was injured and the university suffered no property damage (God forbid). The students protested because Robinson represents an ever-emerging tendency toward white supremacist, xenophobic, intolerant ideas and practices, which substitute slurs, scapegoating and intimidation for critical analysis, progressive policies and social justice. Columbia University is by all accounts, an economic, academic and cultural Goliath of global magnitude. It produces thought leaders in addition to domestic and foreign policy advisers who shape global policies and practices.

Among other things, if Columbia allowed to persecute these students for protesting repressive individuals and ideas, it manages to stifle and intimidate voices of resistance and conscience - the type of voices that have traditionally advocated for Black, Brown, workers, tenants and marginalized and exploited people in this country. If permitted to do this, they also get a license to continue facilitating white supremacist ideologies responsible for untold murders, and human and civil rights violations here and abroad.

Neither Harlem, Washington Heights nor New York residents in general, should allow this Ivy-League Goliath to continue displacing and neglecting local residents. Nor can we allow them to displace students who represent the political voices of their kinsfolk who constitute a significant percentage of these residents.

For these reasons, I call on all Harlem residents, elected officials, and sympathizers to join me in supporting these students’ right to peacefully protest, right to prevent white supremacists from spreading their vitriol on campus, and right to be fully exonerated from all penalty or punishment by the university.

In its Standards and Discipline statement, the university expects students “to conduct themselves in an honest, civil, and respectful manner in all aspects of their lives. Students who violate these standards of behavior interfere with their ability, and the ability of others, to take advantage of the full complement of University life, and are subject to Dean’s Discipline.”

Perhaps community residents should hold Columbia University to the same expectations, for their Harlem gentrification agenda and its callous disregard for its own tuition-paying students.

*Sign a petition supporting the students!