If Nemat Shafik, the president of Columbia University, has convinced the world of anything during these last several calamitous days, it is almost certainly that there is no position in American executive life as thankless, as depleting or less enviable than running a major academic institution in an age of chronic, reflexive agitation. Criticized for capitulating to congressional Republicans in a hearing on antisemitism last week, she quickly found she had not been nearly ingratiating enough. “There is a pretty broad consensus that bringing in the police was precipitous and counterproductive,” Christopher Brown, a history professor who spoke at the rally, told me. In the spring of 1968, Columbia’s president, Grayson Kirk, rarely depicted without a pipe, moved in comparatively slow motion in response to unrest that had become an inflection point in the wave of campus activism that was redirecting history. Within days, students had occupied five buildings, seized the president’s office and taken Dean Henry Coleman hostage, holding him in his office for 26 hours.

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Persons: Nemat, capitulating, Shafik, ” Christopher Brown, “, Grayson Kirk, Dean Henry Coleman Organizations: Columbia University, Republicans, Columbia, Barnard, New York Police Department Locations: Vietnam, Harlem