Mob Rules (#429)

Leadership that refuses to enforce its own stated rules and values has no legitimacy

Over the past week, the campus of Columbia University descended into chaos as administrators and protesters continued to create an environment filled with vitriol and antisemitism. Classes were moved online, and parents of Jewish students started taking their kids out of school early for the semester.

Rather than delving into the political undercurrents of these events, I’d like to explore the leadership failures and lessons that can be extrapolated to any organization.

Strong organizations have values, rules, and codes of conduct that members voluntarily agree to when they join. These are created and shared upfront so that enforcement of these norms can be handled objectively. In the context of a university or workplace, these rules exist so people are free to go about their work or studies without being subject to unilateral demands, harassment, or bullying.

For months, leadership at Columbia stood idle as students openly violated existing policies and codes of conduct on multiple occasions, while escalating their behavior with no visible enforcement or accountability. Protestors also frequently hid their identities with masks.

Students were emboldened to keep testing how far the line could be pushed, eventually building an unauthorized encampment in the middle of campus. Regardless of the original intent of the demonstration, outside agitators also noticed the inaction by Columbia’s leadership and descended on the campus to add their virulent hate.

By last weekend, mob rule took hold at the encampment and around campus, requiring the NYPD to intervene once Columbia tried to actually enforce its own policies. Here is one video that summarized some of last weekend’s events, and you can likely find similar ones elsewhere. Yet leadership’s response was to move classes online and extend multiple ultimatum deadlines for the encampment to dissolve, which can only be seen as capitulating to the mob.

While there have been pivotal moments in history where it was necessary to counter grave injustices with civil disobedience, when a mob starts to take over unchecked, several concerning behaviors tend to emerge. These include undermining the law, fomenting violence, encouraging intimidation, social contagion (especially with youth) and groupthink.

Here are a few examples of these behaviors clearly on display at the protests: 

• This disturbing scene from Columbia’s encampment, where the group leader manipulates a large group into repeating, zombie-like, everything they instruct verbatim to intimidate a student.

• These students, who openly admit they don’t know the specific actions they are protesting.

• Groups forming human chains to block the movement of Jewish students in scenes that are eerily reminiscent of European universities right before the holocaust.  

Columbia University is not unique in the various beliefs or make up of its students. The reason its campus has fallen into uncontrolled chaos, while other schools have maintained more respectful discourse and behavior, is that Columbia’s leadership, notably its president, repeatedly failed to enforce their stated values and norms. Students noticed and acted accordingly.

Recently, Google had a similar disruption on its hands, as a group of employees mounted a protest that involved occupying office spaces and refusing to vacate.

In contrast to Columbia, Google’s reaction was swift and decisive: they fired 28 employees within a day of the event. They followed the firing with an internal memo that made it crystal clear which lines cannot be crossed.

After outlining what happened and actions taken, Google’s head of safety shared the following companywide:

Behavior like this has no place in our workplace and we will not tolerate it. It clearly violates multiple policies that all employees must adhere to – including our Code of Conduct and Policy on Harassment, Discrimination, Retaliation, Standards of Conduct, and Workplace Concerns.

We are a place of business and every Googler is expected to read our policies and apply them to how they conduct themselves and communicate in our workplace. The overwhelming majority of our employees do the right thing. If you're one of the few who are tempted to think we're going to overlook conduct that violates our policies, think again. The company takes this extremely seriously, and we will continue to apply our longstanding policies to take action against disruptive behavior – up to and including termination.

You should expect to hear more from leaders about standards of behavior and discourse in the workplace.

Whatever you think of Google, they got this one right with an unambiguous leadership response. Similarly obstructive behavior has not occurred at Google in the weeks since.

Other campus leaders who have taken a similar approach—enforcing their own rules, setting clear boundaries, and holding students accountable for their actions—have overseen safer, less chaotic environments without infringing on rights to protest and free expression. Leadership that refuses to enforce its own stated rules and values has no legitimacy.

I hope that, not too far in the future, college students will be studying case studies about leadership failures from this fraught moment, learning how they can do better in the future.

Quote of The Week

"In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever character composed, passion never fails to wrest the scepter from reason." - James Madison

Have a great weekend!

-Bob
www.robertglazer.com

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