Minouche Shafik resigns – it shows the brutalization of the debate

Opinion

This morning I was jogging with Deutschlandfunk in my ears when it was reported that the president of the elite US university Columbia, Minouche Shafik, had resigned after months of wrangling over pro-Palestinian protests on campus. That’s true, of course. But it’s not even half the story.

Between the news on the radio and my arrival at my own front door, I did not think about Israel’s war in Gaza, nor about the anti-Semitic agitation of now-fired Columbia professors, nor about whether it is right – as Shafik did – to call the police when there is trouble at the university.

But rather about what it means when people like Minouche Shafik are humiliated and abused, injured and driven away. That is when we really have to worry about open society.

Minouch Shafik was caught between the fronts

I met Shafik for an interview exactly once in my life. It was in a luxury hotel in Munich, where the then head of the London School of Economics moved in such a way that everyone could see that this was her territory. More elegance and sovereignty were hard to imagine. The economist, born in Alexandria in Egypt, has had a breathtaking career at the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Bank of England. As Baroness Shafik, she was a member of the British House of Lords. She spoke about what holds societies together and how this cohesion can be strengthened. The only radical thing about her was her belief in exchange, understanding and reason.

The next time I saw Shafik was on television in April. There were images of her hearing before a committee of the US Congress, which was more of an interrogation. She had to defend herself against the entirely understandable accusation that Columbia had become a breeding ground for anti-Semitism. She was aggressively questioned about whether she thought slogans like “Form the river to the sea” were anti-Semitic. “I understand them that way, others don’t,” she told her interrogators, visibly unsure. She seemed small, vulnerable, almost stuttering.

What she said was too hesitant and too indecisive for me. But the way she was questioned was unbearable. It was full of hatred and with the intention of bringing her down. It was not about having a debate, but about excluding her from participating in it.

The agitators on both sides celebrate

When Shafik announced her resignation, pro-Palestinian students celebrated at her university – and, as a precaution, threatened Shafik’s successors in case the university did not cut all ties with Israel. At the same time, Republican congresswoman and Trump supporter Elise Stefanik, who had been so critical of Shafik in Washington, celebrated her success. “So many to go,” she wrote, referring to all the other dissidents she still wants to bring down.

What remains is a really bad feeling. Namely, that those who should be arguing in a democracy are at each other’s throats. And in doing so, they are doing the work of those who want nothing to do with this democracy. As soon as she resigned, Shafik announced that she would now head a commission of the British Foreign Office, return to the House of Lords and continue her fight against poverty and for development. She is not gone. Nor is she someone who needs or deserves pity. But perhaps she is a reason to pause for a moment.