Obviously this isn’t the most urgent feature of this story, but I thought it was interesting to note Columbia University moving classes online following the mass arrests by police invited onto the campus:
Columbia President Minouche Shafik said in a statement Monday that while online classes are being held, a working group of deans, university administrators and faculty members “will try to bring this crisis to a resolution” by, among other actions, speaking with student protesters.
Most classes at Columbia will be hybrid for the rest of the spring semester, the university announced Monday, as students grapple with tensions over the war. All courses on the college’s Morningside main campus will be hybrid, the college said, except for art or practice-based programs. The Medical Center and Manhattanville will also remain in-person.
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/04/22/columbia-university-pro-palestinian-protests-israel-updates/73409061007/
The article is unclear about whether this is ‘online’ or ‘hybrid’ which would have different connotations: shutting down the face-to-face versus making it optional. If it’s the latter, the move is less striking than I initially thought, but it still shows how online pedagogy is now tied up in university politics in a way that would have been difficult to imagine a decade ago.
See also
Meanwhile, the campus of Cal Poly Humboldt, a public university on California’s northern coast, has been closed through the weekend, with classes being held remotely after pro-Palestinian protesters barricaded themselves in a building for a sit-in.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/24/palestine-protests-columbia-nyu-mike-johnson
Mark Carrigan 