Stop volatile campus protests that are scaring students out of classrooms

Monday began peacefully enough at New York University, where I am a professor at the medical center.

Unlike many other major universities, NYU does not have a central campus. When it comes to the volatile demonstrations here at Columbia University and around the country, not having a central collection point for the camps is really an advantage. Many NYU students consider Washington Square Park to be the equivalent of a green, even though it is public property patrolled by the police. Previous dueling protests in the park for Palestinians or Israelis remained mostly peaceful.

Unfortunately, during the recent protests, the police have had to go to great lengths to maintain order and should be recognized for doing so. The NYU administration should also be applauded for quickly getting the police involved to help keep students safe. The pro-Palestinian protests were held in Gould Plaza, outside the Stern Business School, and initially controlled by barricades. But when they escalated and became more threatening, reportedly driven by professional agitators, the police intervened.

The right to protest is not the issue. The problem is when these protests create a threatening atmosphere, like at Columbia or Yale, where more and more students don’t feel safe on campus. Columbia canceled in-person classes on its main campus last Monday and switched to hybrid remote learning for the remainder of the semester later in the week. It is a sad and disturbing fact.

At NYU, police shut down the campus and arrested more than 100 protesters while throwing bottles at each other Monday night. Classes continued Tuesday morning, even as a group known as NYU’s Palestine Solidarity Coalition led a walkout of classes with no regard for the quality of education students are receiving. Students who desperately want to learn are afraid to go to class, despite police intervention.

Still, classes remain open and in-person for now, which is commendable with the protests and arrests spreading across universities across the country.

NYU has made consistent attempts to push dialogue toward the center and away from hate and intimidation. President Linda Mills has properly kept the Tel Aviv campus open against many protests. This allows students to learn about the reality of life in a war environment, a fundamental type of education. NYU has also announced the opening of a Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism this year to study the causes and manifestations of this hatred and other forms of prejudice. This is crucial, and NYU is well positioned to achieve this because of its history and religious studies departments. The inaugural director, Avinoam Patt, is a renowned scholar of the Holocaust and Israel.

Mills has the tools for these trying times, with a law degree, a doctorate in health policy and a degree in social work. His career as a filmmaker is also notable, especially his moving first film, which retraced his family’s steps to escape the Holocaust, and his award-winning film “Of Many”, which depicted a rabbi and an imam working together to spread acceptance among communities. in New York City.

We certainly need that feeling and understanding right now. As Mills said in a lecture at Hunter College last month, “Really, what this time calls for is that sense of putting our world back together,” and “that path involves opening up a lot of our hearts, our minds and our ability to talk to each other.”

I grew up Jewish in New York City, and I don’t recall encountering this degree of anti-Semitism either here or at Brown University, where I attended grad school. It seems that this rush to judge and dehumanize is increasing now, fueled by agitators, who remember other times in history and other countries, such as the Soviet Union. We can do better here. Our country is built on the principle that we can and must do better.

Education is supposed to give us the tools to understand other people’s points of view. Protests that choose hate and dehumanize others are just the opposite. We must step back now before it is too late and preserve our education system, even if that means using the police and other law enforcement groups to restore order. We need the local leadership that President Mills brings to NYU as well as the national leadership.

Marc Siegel, MD, is Professor of Medicine and Medical Director of Doctor Radio at NYU Langone Health. He is a medical correspondent for Fox News and the author of the new book, “COVID; The politics of fear and the power of science.