Columbia University’s Minouche Shafik was a casualty of our take-no-prisoners political moment

In 1968, Republican strategist Kevin Phillips coined a catchy phrase that captured the essence of his profession. “The whole secret of politics is knowing who hates who,” explained Phillips, who died last year.

So who hated Minouche Shafik, the Columbia University president who resigned on Wednesday?

Pretty much everyone, unfortunately. They also hated on each other, with each faction insisting that it held a monopoly on truth and justice. So anyone who disagreed with them was stupid or evil, or both.

You can’t have a university — or a democracy — on those terms. Our systems of knowledge and governance are premised on the principle that reasonable and decent people can come to different conclusions from the same set of facts. You and I might disagree, but that doesn’t mean either of us are horrible individuals. It means we are humans, who try to make sense of the world as best we can.

But all of that has gone out the window in our take-no-prisoners political moment. And that’s the real story behind the downfall of Shafik, who lasted just over a year in office. According to her critics on the right, she enabled antisemitism and failed to protect Jews on campus. Meanwhile, her left-leaning foes said she was an apologist for Israeli atrocities and an enemy of free speech.

Both sides couldn’t be right at the same time. But they thought they were, of course, which is why they’re both taking victory laps now.

Witness the statement by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.), who already helped force the resignations of University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill and Harvard president Claudine Gay. “THREE DOWN, so many to go,” Stefanik wrote. “We will continue to demand moral clarity, condemnation of antisemitism, protection of Jewish students, and stronger leadership from American higher education institutions.”

You can hear a similarly gleeful tone in the post on X by Columbia’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, which called on the university to divest from Israel during last spring’s protests. “After months of chanting ‘Minouche Shafik can’t hide’ she finally got the memo,” the group declared. “Any future president who does not pay heed to ... the demand for divestment will end up exactly as President Shafik did.”

Let me be clear: It’s both proper and necessary to criticize Shafik and other university leaders. And I’ve done a whole lot of criticizing myself, from my student days 40 years ago at Columbia — where I edited the campus newspaper — right up to the present.

When Shafik told Stefanik’s congressional committee that she intended to punish faculty members who engaged in antisemitic speech, I called it a dark day for academic freedom. Put simply, people disagree about what constitutes antisemitism. To me, the idea of a university leader imposing her definition — and sanctioning people who diverge from it — violates our fundamental traditions of free and open exchange.

And when Shafik authorized the New York Police Department to sweep away student protest encampments, leading to over 100 arrests, I was critical of that, as well. I also opposed Penn’s decision to remove its own encampments later that month. Penn president Larry Jameson said the encampment was “causing fear,” but I thought the police action was much more frightening — and radically more violent — than anything the students were doing.

But I don’t think Shafik or Jameson are bad people. Far from it. Facing extraordinary challenges and pressures, they were trying to do the right thing. I believe they were wrong, but I also know there are lots of informed and good-hearted people who disagree with me.

I also realize I’m swimming against the political tide, which encourages all of us to drown our opponents in hatred and invective. So if you don’t like Shafik’s decisions, you’ll call her a fascist. Or a coward. Or a pig.

Sound like anyone you know? Since 2015, when he launched his first presidential campaign, Donald Trump has demeaned his critics as losers, dummies, and idiots. And the rest of us are imitating him, whether we voted for Trump or not. Why take the time to engage someone in conversation, when it’s so much easier — and, let’s face it, a lot more fun — to call them a name? Why converse at all?

Minouche Shafik couldn’t go on like that, and I can’t say I blame her. “It has been distressing ... to find myself, colleagues, and students the subject of threats and abuse,” she wrote, announcing her resignation. But she concluded on a positive note, insisting that “differences can be overcome through the honest exchange of views.”

I believe in that ideal, as deeply as I believe in anything else. But we need to pause and ask ourselves how we strayed so far from it, and how we might get it back. We can’t go on like this.

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of “Whose America?: Culture Wars in the Public Schools” and eight other books.