By Claire Davenport
Columbia University continued to severely limit access to its Morningside campus Wednesday, hours after hundreds of New York City police entered the university and arrested dozens of pro-Palestinian protestors who had occupied the school’s Hamilton Hall.
The police, some in riot gear, came at the request of Columbia President Nemat Shafik, who for two weeks had wrestled with competing demands to respect the protestors’ freedom of speech while heeding the anxieties expressed by some students and the pressure of politicians, including congressional Republicans who grilled her about anti-Semitism on campus last week.
The protest began two weeks ago with tents pitched in the center of campus, dubbed a Gaza Solidarity Encampment, as students pressed demands for Columbia to divest any financial ties to Israel. After negotiations with the university failed and a deadline passed for abandoning the encampment, protestors moved early Tuesday morning to occupy Hamilton, barricading themselves inside with furniture and other items from around the campus, including wooden chairs and trash cans. The occupation occurred on the same day – April 30 – that anti-Vietnam War protestors in 1968 were arrested after occupying Hamilton.
Early Tuesday evening, with the occupation still under way, about two dozen protestors outside Hamilton linked arms and sang: “Your people are my people. Our struggles align. Where you go I will go, my friend.” Police statements appeared to indicate a raid was imminent, and some of the protestors on the outside cried quietly, while others inside the building looked out from upper windows.
Around 8:30 Tuesday night, Columbia emailed the university’s community, warning people to shelter in place and avoid campus until further notice. Access to campus had been limited all day to essential university staff and students who live in campus dorms.
As the warning went out, police moved into the area, cordoning off streets surrounding Columbia, before entering campus at about 9:30 p.m. “We didn’t give in to their bullshit demands!” one protestor yelled in a final, defiant call, as police told reporters, legal observers, and medics to leave the area around Hamilton Hall. Many were pushed into other nearby buildings or off campus, onto Amsterdam at West 114th Street. Student journalists who had been working out of Pulitzer Hall, the university’s journalism school, were told that if they left the building, they could face arrest.
By forcing press and other non-Columbia people out, the police were able to carry out the raid with limited outside observation, though video on social media indicated they used rough treatment during some arrests.
Media outside campus reported seeing dozens of people, their hands cuffed with zip ties, led into several buses, but in the early hours after the arrests, police gave no information on the number detained or the charges they would face.
Two hours later, an email from Columbia’s Emergency Management Operations informed the university’s community: “Heightened activity on Morningside campus concluded. Area is all clear at this time.”
In a Tuesday letter, President Shafik said that she’d had “no choice” but to request police return to campus, even though police arrests of protestors last week only appeared to deepen the mood of defiance. Also in her email, she claimed “we believe that while the group who broke into the building includes students, it is led by individuals who are not affiliated with the university.” New York City Mayor Eric Adams also blamed “outside agitators” for inflaming the protests, though he offered no specific evidence. Student protestors have denied outsiders were involved in directing their actions.
The two-week-long protests “pose a clear and present danger to persons, property, and the substantial functioning of the University and require the use of emergency authority to protect persons and property,” Shafik wrote in her request to police.
In the wake of the police raid, dozens of officers remained on campus early Wednesday morning, and Shafik’s letter asked that police “retain a presence on campus” at least until May 17 – two days after Columbia’s graduation. That request suggests the administration expects more protest efforts, perhaps focusing on the heavy police presence used to dislodge those occupying Hamilton Hall. During Tuesday night’s raid, some students yelled “shame” at police, and after the arrests, knots of protestors remained on streets outside campus.
A little after midnight, campus personnel overseen by police could be seen clearing out what was left of the encampment. An hour later, the encampment was almost fully clear. Sanitation trucks had pulled onto school grounds to dispose of what remained. As of Wednesday morning, campus access continues to be limited to students residing on campus and staff providing essential services.
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This is no longer a freedom of speech issue. These protesters were breaking the law and were repeatedly warned to end their shenanigans.
Any arrested student should be immediately expelled.
Suspension is temporary. Expulsion is permanent and sends a message.
Seems pretty disingenuous of you to refer to the “pressure of politicians, including congressional Republicans who grilled her about anti-Semitism on campus last week” without also mentioning the fact that 21 Congressional Democrats sent a letter to Columbia’s board earlier this week urging the university to take action against the encampment.
https://www.axios.com/2024/04/29/house-democrats-columbia-university-resign
It’s sad that Columbia’s leaders and trustees refused to even consider divesting from any companies. Divesting from weapons manufacturers — especially General Dynamics which makes the 1,800 MK84 2,000-pound “dumb” bombs that have killed tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza – would be a good first step. Columbia can stand firmly in support of defensive weapons for Israel but it is heartbreaking that they support indiscriminate killing with these barbaric weapons.
In reality college endowments are a drop in the bucket and already have very little invested in weaponry. There are much bigger people and companies to go after than tiny college endowments that don’t even register on the national investment radar.
For the fiscal year ending June 30, 2023, the total value of Columbia’s endowment was $13.64 billion. That’s some drop in the bucket. Students at Columbia are stakeholders in their university just as investors in corporations are stakeholders and all of us as citizens are stakeholders in government. Was it wrong to pressure for divestment in apartheid South Africa? In private for-profit prisons? Are students only supposed to be interested in these issues when the endowment is big enough? Some believe it’s a matter of principle, not principal.
Your equating students to shareholders as stakeholders is utter nonsense.
You switched from weapons divestment to other investments including South Africa during apartheid. I assume that was to confuse the issue away from explicitly demanding all divestment of companies associated financially with Israel. Obfuscate all you want – the fact is that Israel’s military is defensive. It is designed to protect Israel from attacks like Iran’s failed missile strike that was fortunately quashed by iron dome. The war in Gaza was perpetrated not by Israel, but by Hamas in a terrorist attack that, had it been directed at a US target, would have resulted in a military response far greater than Israel’s response. Hamas sent years and billions of dollars creating a network of tunnels specifically designed to maximize civilian casualties during a military response to the Hamas attack. So why is Israel the only combatant that you protest about? How about divestment from all Arab countries who support Hamas and all other related terrorist groups?
The school is almost three hundred years old. These students ae passing through for four years. Naaaaw. No one can tell me what to do with my money. It’s a matter of principal. They have zero right to “demand” anything. Had they made a case through proper channels,letter writing, discussion, lectures, etc., then they can talk. Not this way. This was violent blackmail. It didn’t work.
I agree there’s a way and channels to approach change, not by demands and destruction of property, while usurping the rights and endangering the security of the majority of students on campus.
This whole fiasco could been prevented by applying sound judgement on the part of Columbia, but sound judgment seems to be a rarity in the halls of academe.
“Your people are my people”.
Yeah, until they arrest, beat, and imprison you for being gay, trans, a woman who had an abortion, etc.
Oh, and let these identity-hiding protesters try an anti-government or anti-police protest in any Arab country.
Be sure to buy a one-way ticket because your chance of returning home is remote.
So becoming more like those authoritarian countries is the goal? “It could be worse” is not something to aspire to.
Had Columbia been smart about limiting protesters to students & engaging in dialogue with them, then this whole episode could have been avoided. People in their 20s will protest & sometimes misjudge the impact of their actions – so much for a teachable moment.
Hopefully all these students will be expelled, and their parents will get bills for all the property damage that they caused.
When the dust clears we will learn who is actually funding and organizing these protests. I promise you it’s not the students. And may I ask where were these people when genocide was conducted in Sudan, Iran, Syria? Where were these kids and why weren’t they marching and protesting the destruction of reproductive rights,? The only thing they felt worthy of this level of destruction and protest was Israel? Really?
Yes. I think there were protests in Europe when Russia invaded Ukraine, but I don’t remember any protests on college campuses in the US anything like what we’ve seen re Gaza.
I went to the link in the article that allegedly shows heavy handed tactics. For the sake of clarity, I went directly to the source – FreedomNews.tv – in order to be able to slow it down and rewind as needed.
I fail to see the alleged heavy handed tactics. The social media report states that the video shows NYPD throwing people down the stairs. What I observe in the video is someone rolling down the stairs, but there is no video of a police office being the cause. Now I have seen some incredible dives in soccer and the NBA where people try to play a victim, and have seen video of protesters at Columbia doing the same, such as yelling that they are being assaulted by a Jewish person when they are the ones who are actually and obviously, clearly on video, being the aggressor. So you will have to excuse me when I say that seeing someone roll down the stairs does not prove to me that they were thrown by a police officer without seeing the police officer actually throwing the person down the stairs. In fact, the person rolling down the stairs was not seen in earlier frames interacting with the police.
The rest of the alleged heavy handed tactics were police pushing protesters who refused to move out of their way – and the pushes did not look like anything more than was needed to move them out of the way. The arrests shown had people on the ground and did not show the police hitting anyone. The person they were dragging was on the ground and surrounded by other protesters so they pulled that person out into the clear to make the arrest.
I am NOT a police apologist and am much more of a critic. But it is hard to claim police brutality when the people being arrested are resisting arrest and the police are only using enough force to make the arrest.
Protests of yesteryear implored on protesters to not resist arrest. When the police would tell you they were going to arrest you, you stand still and allow the arrest. Then, any physical violence on the part of the police is then unprovoked and therefore obvious brutality. But these protestors are fighting back, forcing the police to use force, and then claiming police brutality. If you resist arrest and they pin you down to make the arrest, that is not brutality and your own damned fault. If they start punching and kicking you, that is different, but I did not see any of that in the linked video.
NYPD chased out the media from campus before they entered the front entrance of Hamilton which is why there’s no video from the networks. Columbia Spectator has been professional and reliable in its reports. https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2024/04/30/nypd-sweeps-occupied-hamilton-hall-arrests-dozens/
But they have also been biased towards the protestors. And the report you link here uses the same video the Rag did. Video does NOT show a police officer throwing anyone down the stairs. It shows someone tumbling down the stairs, but going down in the exact, safe, way that I would set myself up if I was going to roll down the stairs. So no, still not convinced there was ANY police brutality here.
How disheartening to see anti-semitism rear its head on campus. Students don’t protest when the U.S government forces its will upon other countries. No one took over buildings when 5,000 U.S. soldiers died for no good reason in the Iraq war . But when Israel, a democracy and U.S. ally, is attacked by bloodthirsty religious zealots, and the American government and institutions support retaliation, indignant students rise up. For shame.
I live right in the Columbia neighborhood. I had to pass through 3 checkpoints and show ID at 10pm when I returned home. The interesting thing about the video is that all or nearly all of the protestors who were blocking the police at Hamilton Hall were women. If the protestors are motivated by antisemitism, are the men not antisemitic? The primary motivation of the Columbia kids is not antisemitism, it is the sickening videos out of Gaza. I don’t know who many times I have seen videos of parents wildly screaming over the dead bodies of their children.
You should see the bone chilling, horrible videos of the poor Israelis who were raped kidnapped and murdered by Hamas terrorists, while just attending a concert. These were cell phone videos taken by these bloodthirsty terrorists. Sadly when asked they would do it again and again. Amazingly these videos have not made it to NPR
I find the media comparisons with 1968 way off the mark. Student protests back then were against the US government’s sending thousands of young men to fight a misguided war in Vietnam which ultimately cost over 50,000 US lives, and there was steadily increasing public sentiment against our involvement. Today’s situation is vastly different. No US troops are being sent to their death.
50,000 soldiers were killed in 10 years of war. 30,000 Palestinian lives, mostly women and children, were killed in 6 months. Protesting against death will always be protesting against death.