Columbia University was the epicenter of nationwide campus protests after the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks in Israel and during Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza.
Now, as the deadly war hits its two-year anniversary, a professor is trying to heal the divided campus through a simple concept: inviting students and staff to come to the table and listen to one another.
But as Columbia faces intense scrutiny from the Trump administration, some participants are questioning whether honest dialogue is still possible.
”The objective is to create a space to have a meaningful conversation, to talk to people who are very different from you, may hold very different positions and opinions from you, [and] perhaps put yourself in the other person's shoes,” said Gil Eyal, a sociologist who studies trust.
Eyal launched the weekly Listening Tables discussion series through the university’s Trust Collaboratory about a year ago. He said the decision to hold this week's session on the anniversary of the attacks is deliberate, because it is when “dialogue is most precarious, and potentially most transformative.”
The Listening Tables began after months of fraught clashes between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups, after police were called in to break up a protest encampment, and as allegations of antisemitism and Islamaphobia thrust Columbia into the national spotlight as a symbol of campus unrest.
But over the summer, when Columbia agreed to more oversight from the federal government in a sweeping deal with the Trump administration, Eyal said he questioned whether the Tables were even possible.
”I tell people, ‘This is an open conversation, you can say what's on your mind.' Now, I'm not sure that I can really protect people if somebody decides to report them,” Eyal said.
He decided to proceed, saying the goal to foster “dialogue across differences” is especially important now.
“ Columbia is polarized,” he said. “Our student body is divided. There are divisions between the administration and the students, between the faculty and the administration, among the faculty. Those are real divisions. You're not going to eliminate them. But the ability to sit together and to feel that you are listened to is a way of creating trust.”
One of the earliest Tables was exactly a year ago, on Oct. 7, 2024 to coincide with the first anniversary of the attacks.
There were dueling protests on the quad: Students had made large milk cartons with pictures of Israeli hostages and played Hebrew songs; others read the names of Palestinians who have been killed in the bombing and chanted “Free Palestine.”
The session was between the two.
“ I really appreciate what the initiative is trying to do on campus,” said Beck Sappington, a junior. “I was a freshman when Columbia had the big protests, and it felt like there were no valid outlets to speak about what's on your mind.”
He said the Tables provide “a pressure release point for all of the turbulence on campus.”
Sappington is part of a team of undergraduates and graduate students who have been working on the initiative, hosting more than 150 Tables and 2,000 participants since the sessions began.
The conversations at the Tables are not wholly focused on Israel and Gaza.
Gothamist was recently invited to observe the Tables. The conversations hit on a range of topics, including the recent killing of Charlie Kirk and debates over his legacy, and student-life issues like gym hours or cafeteria food. While the gamut is encouraged, some students and staff say the thornier issues are becoming harder to discuss.
In March, the federal government froze $400 million in research funds at Columbia citing what it called “relentless intimidation, harassment and antisemitism” on campus.
A university task force had highlighted reports of on-campus antisemitic incidents, which administrators said they were taking steps to address. Many faculty members accused the Trump administration of using antisemitism as a pretext for exerting control over higher education.
Then in June, the administration and the university struck a deal: Columbia agreed to pay $221 million in fines and consented to more oversight from the federal government.
The deal enshrines a slew of changes Columbia had already announced involving its disciplinary process, new limits on protest rules, additional security and the adoption of a controversial definition of antisemitism.
The definition calls “antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews,” but its examples include some criticism of Israel, such as “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”
Some Columbia professors have said that definition chills discourse, and several have decided not to teach the courses they planned this semester.
The Trump Administration is also still trying to deport Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdwawi, pro-Palestinian activists who recently graduated from Columbia.
Columbia administrators insist free speech still exists at Columbia.
“It absolutely does, and the moment it doesn't, then we've lost our way as a university,” said Amy Hungerford, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
At the same time, she said, speech on campus should also be respectful.
In a survey released over the summer, a majority of Jewish and Muslim students said they felt excluded at times because of their religions, and endangered by speaking their political views.
Hungerford calls the Tables a perfect example of how the university can tackle difficult issues in a respectful manner.
“ Education absolutely requires that you be able to ask hard questions and pursue them wherever the evidence takes you,” she said. “I think that the listening Tables provide a place where respect is really foregrounded and people can speak without self-censoring.”
But according to Eyal, relatively few pro-Palestinian students have shown up at the Tables. “I think at the beginning they were a little skeptical,” he said. Then, under the microscope of the Trump administration, he said, “they were scared.”
Professor Hamid Dabashi — who is Iranian-American, teaches Iranian studies and is a cofounder of the Center for Palestine Studies — has begun facilitating some Tables as well. He said he understands the reluctance of many pro-Palestinian, Arab and Muslim students to come to the Tables, citing an “anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab and Islamophobic element.”
He said he’s participating because he believes in the mission, and he hopes his presence as a leader of the Middle East studies department will pave the way for more Muslim and pro-Palestinian students to join.
“I am very critical of our upper administration,” he said. “I no longer trust in leadership, but I believe in citizenship. … Our campus has been through a lot. I think our campus is wounded and needs healing.”
