For reporters at Columbia University’s independent, student-run paper the Columbia Daily Spectator, covering the chaos flaming the university’s metal gates over the Israel-Hamas war has become both a mission to get the first draft of history right and a quest to make sure the national press doesn’t get it wrong.
“Our reporters have really been working overtime,” said Esha Karam, the 21-year-old managing editor of the Daily Spectator. “We’ve been on the ground, covering protests both inside and outside of campus at all times and all hours. We've faced unique challenges both as students who are living on campus and reporting at the same time. We've tried to gain a diverse array of perspectives.”
Columbia has had to deal with hordes of protestors in and outside its gates, an uprising from its staff and students, a shift to virtual classes, and calls for President Minouche Shafik to join other Ivy League leaders in resignation over her decision to allow the NYPD to clear out a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” that resulted in the largest mass arrests on Columbia’s campus since 1968, when officers used violence to clear out students protesting the Vietnam War. It followed her testimony before Congress to address antisemitic incidents on campus, which a small group of Spectator reporters bussed down to Washington, D.C. to cover.
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The decision sparked a further wave of fervor in local and national circles, with political and media voices across spectrums either criticizing the extremity in Shafik’s response or decrying Columbia as an intolerant space for Jewish students. The White House condemned “calls for violence and physical intimidation targeting Jewish students,” while CNN anchor Jake Tapper boosted a message Rabbi Ellie Buechler sent to more than 300 Orthodox Jewish students that suggested they stay at home as “Columbia University’s Public Safety and the NYPD cannot guarantee Jewish students’ safety.”
A troupe of House Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, have also called for the university to be held “accountable” for antisemitic incidents. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and the entire House GOP delegation from New York also called for Shafik’s ouster.
The Spectator’s deployment of more than 40 staffers from its 250-person newsroom to tackle the uproar at the school is a reflection of how important—and historical—this moment is in Columbia’s history.
Karam said she and her fellow reporters and editors have worked hard to distinguish the faculty and student protests on the campus from the chaos beyond its gated walls, which she said have gotten conflated, often leading to the breathless coverage from outside media..
“It's sort of hard to make that distinction sometimes super clear where these are the protesters who are off campus and might be coming from around the city versus the students who are on campus,” Karam said. “We have seen many arrests off-campus since Thursday, but we have not seen any arrests on campus since Thursday. So the distinction is hard to make sometimes, and I think what can be lost is sort of that nuance.”
The reporters’ contextual knowledge has been put to use, too. The Spectator heavily covered the October protests at Columbia that helped launch the political maelstrom over college campuses, allowing reporters to observe firsthand how overall protest activity has declined, fellow university news editor Sarah Huddleston, 20, told The Daily Beast.
“It hasn't necessarily been a constant upkeep of regular protest activities over the course of this semester,” Huddleston said. “We, as Spectator reporters, have a grasp on [that] because we live on this campus, and we go to class on this campus. We have that access.”
It’s that unique circumstances that’s helped mobilize the Spectator staff. A contingent of reporters have set up shop at the Butler Library, Columbia’s largest and the closest to the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, before moving off campus from 6 p.m. to midnight to the off-campus newsroom. It gives the reporters unique access to on-campus protests, such as a protest on Monday that drew both students and faculty from Columbia and Barnard College.
“Especially this time when Columbia is sort of restricting access to press, we have an especially important job in documenting things going on, and we've tried to,” Karam, the managing editor, said. “We’ve tried to do that in a number of ways, particularly through our multimedia capacities. Our photographers and videographers are on the ground almost just as much as our reporters are, because we have that unique access that we know that no one else has right now.”
The Spectator’s reputation for covering history spans decades. Founded in 1877, the paper documented the NYPD’s violent response to the 1968 protests, which saw students seize five campus buildings and shut the campus down for a week. In its issue following the police raids, a Spectator reporter noted how they were “hit twice in the face” by police officers, prompting a hospital visit.
That importance of getting it right from the front lines isn’t lost on the Spectator, fellow university news editor Shea Vance, 19, told The Daily Beast.
“We are aware that this is reporting that will have a place in the historical record, not just at Columbia, but in the nation in regards to campus protests and activism and, and the history of how police have been brought to college campuses and what that means for a free speech landscape,” Vance said. “We’re definitely feeling the pressure, but I think that we're shouldering it well, and we all feel passionately that this is something we need to do well and need to do right.”
Editor’s note: The Spectator’s editor-in-chief Isabella Ramirez is currently a social media editor at The Daily Beast.
