Same song, second verse. Columbia University and its leadership have learned absolutely nothing from their experiences with the pro-Hamas encampments of last spring, which are likely to make a big comeback very soon.

Our readers will remember that Columbia tried to clear out their encampment after national attention was drawn to it, and then students decided to “occupy” Hamilton Hall and make insane demands. The university had to bring in the NYPD in order to clean up the mess that the administration had allowed to grow and fester. Of course, only a tiny handful of non-students involved actually faced consequences once District Attorney Alvin Bragg got involved, and patted the little intifada LARPers on their heads and told them to not get in trouble again.

In the wake of all the chaos, which made an encore appearance over the summer, Minouche Shafik resigned as president this last August. While her departure was necessary, because she was terrible at her job, it was pretty apparent that there would be no change of attitude at the top of the administration simply because someone new was taking over.

That was confirmed by the interim president, Katrina Armstrong, in an interview to the school newspaper, the Columbia Spectator. In September, right as classes were beginning, Armstrong announced an update to the university’s codes of conduct and rules surrounding protests.

Armstrong wrote that she supports the right to free expression at Columbia and believes “deeply in the values of free speech, open inquiry, and rigorous debate.” However, she also wrote that “those rights cannot come at the expense of the rights of others to live, work, and learn here, free from discrimination and harassment.”

“Our rules have been devised with this balance in mind, and we are committed to applying them fairly and to responding to issues in the moment with thought and care,” Armstrong wrote. “We are also committed to evolving our approach over time as we learn and develop as a community.”

The University Senate passed revised guidelines to the Rules of University Conduct at its August plenary session. The revised guidelines and its new FAQ page—drafted by the senate’s Rules of University Conduct committee—include information on “how to report alleged Rules violations, policies on encampments, and the obligation to unmask and identify oneself when appropriately asked,” Armstrong wrote.

After everything that has happened over the last year at Columbia, does anyone truly believe that there will be real, actual, lasting consequences for those who break the updated code of conduct? Remember Khymani James, Columbia student who declared on camera that “Zionists don’t deserve to live,” and only got suspended from campus once those comments came to light? As of mid-August, he was still listed as a student at Columbia. If there were no consequences for him, or for Johannah King-Slutzky, the hapless grad student who demanded “humanitarian aid” for her fellow protesters (she’s back to teaching classes this fall!), then do you really think Columbia is going to enforce their newly revised behavior rules?

The final straw was interim president Armstrong’s recent interview. She’s “sorry” that the protesters got “hurt,” and she just wants to “work with” the “community” to make sure that they are one big happy campus who stays out of the national headlines from now on, pretty pretty please.

Spectator asked Armstrong whether she agreed with former University President Minouche Shafik’s decision to authorize the NYPD to enter campus twice, which resulted in the largest mass arrests at Columbia since the University’s protests on campus in 1968.

“I know that this is tricky for me to say, but I do understand that I sit in this job, right. And so if you could just let everybody know who was hurt by that, that I’m just incredibly sorry,” Armstrong said. “And I know it wasn’t me, but I’m really sorry. … I saw it, and I’m really sorry.”

Echoing her previous messages, Armstrong emphasized in the Tuesday interview her commitment to ensuring a balance between freedom of expression and the University’s academic mission. Armstrong announced updates to the University’s procedures for handling protests in a Sept. 5 email to the Columbia community, pointing to the Rules of University Conduct as the policy governing on-campus demonstrations.

“As we face anything, we have to be very committed to the principles, and our principles are our students and are enabling an environment where people can have freedom of expression, and we support debate, and we do those things,” Armstrong said. “We have to be committed to our principles in terms of ensuring that our academic activities can continue. And so I think we have to be very clear about that, because that’s the commitment I made to our students and to our professors.”

Armstrong, who assumed office on Aug. 14 following Shafik’s sudden resignation, underscored the importance of working with the community to “keep this campus peaceful, safe.”

“I want to just say, I see the harm that happened,” Armstrong said. “And I am deeply committed that I work with all of you, I work with all of the community to both address that harm and to understand.”

So, she learned absolutely nothing. Armstrong is presenting her neck to the radicals, and if she thinks that they won’t take a proverbial swing at her, she’s nuts. And yet again, Columbia University’s leadership is willfully ignoring the Jewish students who have been speaking up about the rampant anti-Semitism on campus, especially since there were pro-Hamas protests outside the campus gates on the first day of school.

These comments did not make Jewish students feel like their security issues have gotten any better.

Armstrong’s apology was blasted by Jewish members of the school community.

“Instead of apologizing to the antisemitic protesters, [Armstrong] should be apologizing to the Jewish students for failing to protect them from relentless discrimination and harassment,” student Maya Cukierman, 19, told The Post.

Matthew Schweber, who is part of the school’s Jewish alumni association, said the apology “only dramatizes the moral rot, intellectual bankruptcy, and institutional antisemitism that besets my alma mater.”

Columbia Law School graduate Rory Lancman called Armstrong’s apology an “ominous sign” as the new school is underway.

“It’s an ominous sign for Columbia’s dwindling cohort of Jewish students that its interim president is starting the new academic year by apologizing for Columbia’s enforcement of basic time, place, and manner restrictions on anti-Israel protestors who terrorized Columbia’s Jewish community” and affected other students and staff on campus, said Lancman, who is senior counsel the Louis Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law.

And Ari Shrage, who is the head of the school Jewish alumni association, called Armstrong’s statement “tone deaf.”

“Why is she apologizing? An apology sends the message that there shouldn’t be consequences for breaking the rules,” he said. “This is exactly the opposite of what Columbia needs now.”

Columbia had better figure out, and quickly, exactly what they will do in the days approaching and following October 7th, which will mark the first anniversary of “Black Sabbath,” the Hamas invasion, massacre, and mass kidnapping. They are already strongly signaling that there will be no consequences for whatever happens, and this “apology” is only going to embolden the revolutionary cosplayers. Brace yourselves, everyone, because I don’t think Columbia University is going to be able to keep itself out of the news for much longer.

Featured image: protest at the gate of Columbia University on April 22, 2024, by SWinxy via Wikimedia Commons, cropped, Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED)