Columbia Journalism Dean Says His Comments on Self Censorship Were Meant to Protect Foreign Students
In a statement Thursday night Jelani Cobb, dean of Columbia Journalism School, said that comments he made this week that critics blasted as effective surrender to Donald Trump’s war on immigrants and the press were taken out of context by the New York Times. They were intended to protect foreign students, he says, and not intended as a directive to journalist.
On Wednesday, the New York Times published an account of an off-the-record meeting held Tuesday at Columbia with journalim students, where Cobb and adjuct professor Stuart Karle addressed concerns about Trump’s attacks on the university, and his administration’s detainment of recent Columbia grad Mahmoud Khalil.
During the meeting, Karle warned students with foreign visas, “if you have a social media page, make sure it is not filled with commentary on the Middle East.” According to NYT, when one Palestinian student objected, Cobb said, “Nobody can protect you. These are dangerous times.”
This sparked criticism from some journalists who accused Cobb of advising students to “obey in advance.” Cobb disputed this in his statement Thursday night, asserting that as he told NYT, “those words were technically accurate but practically misleading.”
“My words about protection came in response to a question about what the school was doing to protect via-holding students from potential arrest and deportation I went on to say that I would do everything in my power to defend our journalists and their right to report but that none of us had the capacity to stop DHS [Department of Homeland Security] from jeopardizing their safety,” he continued.
“It was important to speak directly to the threats journalists were more likely to confront in reporting on the situation on campus not to dissaude students but to give them a honest rendering of the risks it entailed,” he continued. “The Times story nonetheless presented my quotes in such a way as to convey the exact opposite sentiment.”
Cobb also said quotes attributed to Karle “do not reflect the spirit of his comments either.”
“These are, in fact, dangerous times. They require as much caution as they do courage. It is my responsibility to lay out this fact as clearly as possible for the journalists in my charge. That is what I did on Tuesday and what I will continue to do for as long as it remains necessary,” he concluded.
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