Recently, Columbia University has been rocked by protests with the addition of an encampment that has been set up.
Columbia President Minouche Shafik has moved classes online to keep students safe, and said that school officials are working in groups to try and “bring this crisis to a resolution.”
A tent at the Columbia ‘Liberation Zone’ encampment features a sign reading:
‘Trans People 4 Palestine.’
In Palestine, anyone suspected of being Trans or LGBTQI+ can receive 10 years in jail and face street mob lynchings.
📸 @RIKKISCHLOTT pic.twitter.com/Kmt4NjmL0N
— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) April 23, 2024
Not only is the campus in trouble, but so is the President of the University after her words just two months after 9/11 have come to light.
At the time Shafik was a vice president at the World Bank and was asked about the economic roots of terror in third world countries during an event that took place (of all places) the University of Berkley’s Institute of Internation Studies.
In a recently discovered video, she said that terrorism is a “form of protesting against a system” while also condemning those “extreme views.”
“You’ll always have individuals who will have extreme views,” Shafik said at the November 2001 event, “but what’s really troubling in the region is that there’s actually quite a broad base of society which has some sympathy for the terrorists, not so much because they approve of their methods, but it’s a form of protesting against a system which is not delivering for them on the economic or the political front.”
FLASHBACK: At an event just two months after 9/11, Columbia University’s current president Minouche Shafik remarked that terrorism “is a form of protesting” pic.twitter.com/UkSP4iqDZu
— Brent Scher (@BrentScher) April 22, 2024
She also added that “economic stagnation and political authoritarianism” create “fertile ground on which terrorist seeds can flourish.”
Rep. Elis Stefanik (R-NY) is calling for Shafik to resign over the fact that she appears to have lost control of the school.
“This video of Columbia University President Dr. Minouche Shafik saying she can understand why people sympathize with terrorists right after 9/11, and calling it a form of protest, is just further evidence that placating the pro-Hamas unsanctioned mob currently taking over Columbia is part of her core beliefs,” Stefanik said.
