"Steering Columbia University through the choppy waters of anti-Israel student protests was never going to be easy for Minouche Shafik, a member of the UK House of Lords who took over as president of the university in New York after a period of relative calm running the London School of Economics.[..] Shafik’s decision to call in the police to break up a student protest camp on the university lawn appalled many on both sides of the dispute. Protesters and their supporters among the academic community complained about police brutality and the targeting of pro-Palestinian campaigners, while Republican defenders of Israel accused Shafik of failing to act quickly enough."