Bowdoin recently had their student union forcibly taken over for days by protesters. Doesn’t seem like a good counter point to the Columbia situation.
Also, the OP stated a couple times above that their student while Jewish is aligned with the protesters. He isn’t trying to get away from a school with protesters like Columbia has had; he is trying to get away from a place that has responded like Columbia has and the general environment created by the current President’s pressure on the school – the use of police on campus, the ICE raids, the student expulsions, the threat of loss of funding and resources, the threats of career blackballing, etc. The President has indicated at least 60 other schools are being scrutinized for similar treatment. The first thing to look at is that list. But basically if there’s a protest that isn’t immediately shut down and results in expulsions, they probably will end up under review. Similarly, any college that doesn’t end DEI programs (already stated as the next phase.)
You use a lot of plurals as if they is the ordinary course at Columbia. To date, one class has been interrupted by protesters in the 18 months since this began. The distribution of hateful fliers (which was undoubtably intimidation and harassment) lasted several minutes. The students involved all turned out to be from Barnard, and were pretty quickly expelled. In fact, it was the expulsion of those students that prompted the two sit-ins at Barnard by a small group of Barnard students this year and led to the only use of police this year on a Columbia-adjacent campus (there has been none this year at Columbia itself). (FWIW, fully half of the ~100 students arrested in the first encampment at Columbia last year also turned out to be from Barnard, a school with less than 2,000 student; and many others were non-students so actual core-Columbia students represented a minority, of which the majority of those were grad or professional program (law school, etc.) students – Columbia undergrads represented a very small number.)
There has been no proven examples of protesters “blocking classes” and the encampment didn’t do that (if you saw it or knew how Columbia was laid out, you would know why the encampment contained to the south lawn didn’t do that). Although the Administration’s response to the occupation of Hamilton Hall last year did result in the last week of spring classes and finals going virtual, so perhaps that should count. And students living off campus this year do need to show ID to get on campus – which is being done expressly to protest students from harassment by non-affiliates).
Besides the two Barnard sit-ins on the Barnard campus this year, the second of which was almost immediately dispersed by police, one building was occupied for one night/day last spring at Columbia. It was a building that had been forcibly occupied (with similar or worse vandalism each time to blockade it) 4 previous times for various causes since 1968 prior to the current protests that started 18 months ago, which is why it was chosen. Prior to the one day occupation last spring, Columbia had a post on its public website discussing, in the light of hindsight, the prior occupations in the positive context as examples of its students history of activism (they took it down quickly after the latest occupation). They interviewed some of the prior occupiers and have invited them as speakers on occasion. Most of the 1968 leaders went on to law school or other careers with no negative consequences. That first 1968 example was also broken up forcibly by police (but unlike the 2024 case had gone on for a week and included occupation of multiple buildings and forcible holding of administrators as hostages – it was far more violent). Following that event, the University changes its rules and pledged not to use police on campus and did not in any of the subsequent occupations until 2024, some of which went on for weeks. This context matters because as they stated at the time and since, the 2024 occupiers believed they were acting consistent with a tradition and established rules of engagement. (The University used a judge to “mediate” demands in a prior occupation over the course of weeks.) To be clear, I am not condoning or justifying what they did. I unequivocally condemn it. But its relevant since you have described it as out of control, and in the context of what Columbia had tolerated and retroactively celebrated, it was calculated and contained. The difference is that Columbia broke with its post-1968 practice and quickly used the police to forcibly end it. Of course the circumstances of the current protests are different and history may not redeem their action in hindsight the same way it did on all those prior occasions, despite what the protesters sincerely believe.
This school year until the recent events was largely quiet on the Columbia campus. There were a couple same-day (no encampment) small peaceful protests (involving dozens of people on a campus with 36,000 students) in outdoor spaces spread out over months, between which there were none. The protestors themselves, through a war of online words only, splintered into factions, with most distancing themselves from CUAD, the group that had been the most vocal in the prior year, when CUAD endorsed Hamas (the rest of the groups have consistently said they are pro-peace or pro-Palestine and did not condone Hamas). For the vast majority of students the only disruption has been the need to go through security to get on campus. The exceptions was the small class that was disrupted by the handing out of fliers and someone pouring cement in the public restrooms of one of the buildings on one occasion. Most students went about their classes, activities, etc., completely ignoring these handful of minor events. It was nothing like last spring, on campus or off (since last spring saw many protesters non-affiliated with Columbia outside of the gates, which is where the vast majority of the media images came from). This changed on Barnard’s campus after the recent expulsions. It sort of changed at Columbia after the ICE raid a week ago, which did prompt a somewhat larger same-day protest (no encampments, no occupied buildings, no physical violence).
Also worth nothing that to date in 18 months there’s only been two incidents of physical violence on campus related to the conflict investigated (not counting protesters who said the police manhandled them during arrested and to distinguish it from verbal harassment), both from the prior school year. The first was a widely reported at the time claim that a Jewish student had been attacked and injured with a club – this was fall 2023, months before the encampment. The NYPD investigated and eventually got videos of the incident. It turns out the student knew the “attacker” (not a current student) personally and they had been cooperating in hanging fliers earlier in the day. They got into a personal argument at which time the student himself in anger tried to grab a stick they had used to press the fliers to the wall from the woman (who was not wielding it at him) and when she released it the recoil caused it to slap back at him. Contrary to original claim, he sustained only a bruise. Pretty much nothing about the original story turned out to be accurate. The police dropped all charges. The second incident was when two Columbia General Studies students who were Israeli harassed a group of protesters by spraying them with a substance that stung their eyes. The protesters quickly called this a “chemical attack” by the IDF. Again, the police investigated and it turned to be an over the counter party-gag stink spray and not a dangerous chemical. The two GS students are now suing the university. In both cases, as is common, there was far less reporting on the eventual resolutions of the facts.
All of this matters because I don’t think it’s accurate to characterize Columbia’s environment as uniquely extreme in terms of protests. Again, the OP’s son is trying to leave because of how the campus and the government are responding, not because of the protests themselves. I certainly appreciate that many Jewish students rightly feel intimidated and scared by the protesters (I say many since not all Jewish students do – about 25% of the encampment members were Jewish as well and a Jewish student group co-sponsored he encampment.) As well, some students aligned with the protesters also feel intimidated based on what they see as harassment by the Administration, police and now the federal government. As do some international students that had nothing to do with the protests, now that they perceive that any student visa holder who has ever liked a pro-protest or pro-Palestine social media post may be targeted by ICE.
So actual protest activity on the Columbia campus has been less than many other colleges this school year. There has been no encampments or occupations (Barnard is a separate institution and campus, though its students are allowed to take classes at Columbia). And the Columbia Administration is acting to prevent those things (thus the security and closed gates) and quickly end them when they occur (which is part of the OP son’s objection). By comparison, Bowdoin let its encampment go on for multiple days while they negotiated with the protesters. Things were pretty quiet and mostly normal for most students until the federal government announced the financial sanctions and arrested the protester spokesperson. Media focus to the contrary. Unclear if those actions may spur more protests or attempts at encampments, etc. But pretty clear that the financial sanctions will affect the vast majority of students previously unaffected by the less than far less than 1% of students involved in the protests.