Columbia University on Monday, April 29, began suspending students who refused to leave a ‘Gaza Solidarity Encampment’ after negotiations with protesters failed and the students decided to ignore a warning that remaining would lead to their suspension and eviction.

Columbia said the nearly two-week-long protest violated university policies, created an unwelcoming and “intolerable” environment for Jewish students and that “external actors” have contributed to a “hostile environment” around university gates and it had become a “noisy distraction” for students.

‘Free Palestine’

Tensions have escalated at universities across the U.S. with Columbia under the spotlight since its leadership called the New York Police Department to break up anti-war protesters’ encampments. Encampments and sit-ins at universities across the country expanded following the arrests at Columbia earlier this month. Police have arrested students at top American universities including Harvard, Yale, New York University, and Columbia amid widespread protests in solidarity with Palestine amid Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza.

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Meanwhile the University of Southern California cancelled its main commencement ceremony, citing safety concerns amid the protests. On Monday, chaos erupted at the University of Texas in Austin as law enforcement moved in to make arrests and forcibly dismantle a pro-Palestine protest encampment amid chants of “Free Palestine”.

On Monday morning, around 10 a.m., Columbia University administrators distributed a notice to the encampment stating that negotiations with student protest leaders were at an impasse.

‘Disclose! Divest’

The notices, viewed by this correspondent, asked protesters to identify themselves to a university official and sign a form agreeing to an alternative resolution for the university policy violations that the encampment posed. The university had told student demonstrators to vacate by 2 p.m. or else “be suspended pending further investigation” and barred from completing the spring semester.

At the encampment, now in its second week, students voted nearly unanimously to stay put as participants chanted: “The more you try to silence us, the louder we will be.”

Students at the encampment, accompanied by numerous supporters comprising fellow students, staff, and faculty, spent a tense afternoon gathering around the location in a display of solidarity aimed at preventing the forceful removal of the tents. Around 2:45 p.m. — after the 2 p.m. warning time to leave — protesters marched around the encampment and chanted “Disclose! Divest! We will not slow, we will not rest!’” and “Free Palestine.”

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Just outside the encampment, about a dozen faculty in yellow and orange safety vests also stayed behind, with several saying they planned to remain overnight to make sure their students’ right to protest was respected. As the 2 p.m. deadline neared, faculty members stood in front of the encampment linking their arms.

Jennifer Lena, an Associate Professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College, said she came to ensure that the students were safe from threats of eviction. “I am here to ensure that our students can speak their minds safely on campus… and I am here to make sure that they can continue to do that as safely as possible.”

On April 18, University president Minouche Shafik’s decision to authorise the NYPD’s sweep of the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” which led to the mass arrest of over 100 protesters, had left many community members stunned. Over 100 faculty members from the University on April 22 gathered on the campus for a walkout to condemn the suspension and arrests of students and call for amnesty and protection of academic freedom.

However, by 4 p.m., as uncertainty loomed while there were no signs of police intervention, majority of protesters started to scatter while some students and approximately 80 tents remained within the encampment. Around 5:30 p.m. Columbia University began suspending students who defied orders to vacate their pro-Palestinian protest by 2 p.m.

“We have begun suspending students,” Ben Chang, vice president for communications and a spokesperson for the university, said about three hours after the deadline passed. The university did not say how many students were suspended.

Mass arrests

Over the past two weeks hundreds of students have been arrested across U.S. for taking part in anti-war protests. The protesters at Columbia have inspired similar demonstrations on campuses across the country.

Columbia University doubled down on its stance regarding Israel making its position clear it ‘won’t’ divest from Israel’—a key demand of the students protesting in the encampment.

Sueda Polat, a student organiser with the encampment, said the university had not made significant concessions to the protesters’ main demand: divestment from companies with links to the Israeli occupation of Gaza. Columbia had also stopped negotiating. As a result, she said, the students inside the encampment “will not be moved unless by force.”

Ms. Polat said university officials “have shown a clear disregard” for the protesters’ demands.

The university has been trying to avoid calling back the police, whose intervention on April 18 at the request of administrators came under heavy criticism and attracted a wave of angry protests.

“We called on NYPD to clear an encampment once,” Ms. Shafik, the University president, wrote in a statement to the community last Friday co-signed by the co-chairs of Columbia’s board of trustees. “But we all share the view, based on discussions within our community and with outside experts, that to bring back the NYPD at this time would be counterproductive, further inflaming what is happening on campus.”

Though Columbia had previously suspended approximately 50 students for participating in the initial encampment on an adjacent lawn, the action did not dissuade a broader coalition of protesters from establishing the current encampment.

Joseph Howley, Associate Professor at Columbia University, said, “first, for six months, the university has capitulated to the extremist ideological position that political speech about Palestine, on behalf of Palestine is anti-Semitic. It’s not true and is an extreme position and the university leadership keeps adopting it over and over again for no good reason.”

Mr. Howley was part of the faculty who joined members in encircling the encampment to protect the students on Monday.

“Second, the only thing that has increased in terms of anti-Semitism and other form of prejudicial harassment on and around this campus has been the university, calling the police last week making the campus a flashpoint attracting bad actors and radicals from all over the city. We have had ugly things said outside campus… while on campus, the encampment has been peaceful and calm, and orderly and on message. So if there’s a problem here, it’s being created by the university leadership and NYPD and political pressure from outside,” Mr. Howley added.

‘Intimidation tactic’

Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student and the lead negotiator on behalf of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the student coalition that has organised the encampment, called the deadline “just another intimidation tactic from the university”.

Columbia was the first institution struck by protests in support of the Palestinian cause, with students demanding that the school divest from investments that support weapons manufacturing and Israel amid the backdrop of the war on Gaza, in which more than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed.

Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the coalition organising the encampment protest, said in a statement on Monday: “These repulsive scare tactics mean nothing compared to the deaths of over 34,000 Palestinians. We will not move until Columbia meets our demands or we are moved by force.”

The group criticised the university’s “threat to mass suspend, evict and possibly expel students” with just hours’ notice as a violation of the school’s rules.

“We have paused negotiations until Columbia comes to the table in good faith, without the threat of violence. If the university does not come forward with real, concrete proposals that address our demands, we will have no choice but to escalate the intensity of protest on campus,” the group said.

Columbia University spokesperson did not respond to queries on whether the administration will allow NYPD on the campus again to disperse the students from the encampment.

Anisha Dutta is a freelance journalist based in New York.

New York:

Student demonstrators at Columbia University, the epicenter of pro-Palestinian protests that have erupted at US colleges, said Monday they would not budge until the school met their demands, defying an ultimatum to disperse or face suspension.

More than 350 people were arrested at campuses across the United States over the weekend, with the White House calling on the demonstrations to remain peaceful.

Authorities at Columbia in New York issued a statement on Monday saying the protestors’ encampment must be cleared, and rejecting a call to divest financial holdings linked to Israel — a key demand of demonstrators.

But student protestors pushed back, vowing to defend their camp on the prestigious institution’s main lawn, despite threats of suspensions and disciplinary action after a 2:00 pm (1800 GMT) deadline.

“These repulsive scare tactics mean nothing compared to the deaths of over 34,000 Palestinians,” said a statement, read out by a student at a press conference.

“We will not move until Columbia meets our demands or… are moved by force,” said the student, who would not give his name.

Protests against the Gaza war, with its high Palestinian civilian death toll, have posed a challenge to university administrators trying to balance free speech rights with complaints that the rallies have veered into anti-Semitism and hate.

For almost two weeks now a wave of protests against Israel’s war in Gaza has swept through US university campuses from coast to coast, after around 100 protesters were arrested at Columbia on April 18.

Footage of police in riot gear summoned at various colleges to break up rallies have been viewed around the world, recalling the protest movement that erupted during the Vietnam War.

At Virginia Tech, more than 90 people were arrested late Sunday after refusing an order from campus police to disperse, while at the University of Texas state troopers in riot gear clashed Monday with protestors who attempted to set up an unauthorized encampment on the campus.

“No encampments will be allowed,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott said on social media.  

“Instead, arrests are being made,” he added.

– Talks break down –

Columbia University president Minouche Shafik, in her statement announcing talks had broken down, said that “many of our Jewish students, and other students as well, have found the atmosphere intolerable in recent weeks.

“Many have left campus, and that is a tragedy.”

“Anti-Semitic language and actions are unacceptable and calls for violence are simply abhorrent,” she said.

Protest organizers deny accusations of anti-Semitism, arguing that their actions are aimed at the Israeli government and its prosecution of the conflict in Gaza.

They also insist some incidents have been engineered by non-student agitators.

With the school year wrapping up, administrators are also pointing to the need to maintain order on campus for exam studies.

“One group’s rights to express their views cannot come at the expense of another group’s right to speak, teach and learn,” Shafik said.

One graduate student protester, who asked to be identified only as “Z,” said: “It’s finals week, everyone is still working on their finals, I still have finals to do.”

“But at the end of the day, school is temporary,” the protester told AFP.

President Joe Biden’s White House has also attempted to walk a fine line of defending the right to protest while condemning reported acts of anti-Semitism.

“We get that it is a painful moment that Americans are dealing with, and free expression has to be done within the law,” Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday.

However, Biden’s Republican opponents have seized on the issue, casting the protests as anti-Semitic and threatening to pull federal funding if they aren’t stopped.

“What continues to transpire at Columbia is an utter disgrace. The campus is being overrun by anti-Semitic students and faculty alike,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said Monday on X, reiterating his call for Shafik to resign.

The Gaza war started when Hamas militants staged an unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7 that left around 1,170 people dead, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Palestinian militants also took roughly 250 people hostage. Israel estimates 129 remain in Gaza, including 34 the military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed almost 34,500 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New York:

Columbia University backed off late Thursday from an overnight deadline for pro-Palestinian protesters to abandon an encampment there as more college campuses in the United States sought to prevent occupations from taking hold.

Police have carried out large-scale arrests in universities across the country, at times using chemical irritants and tasers to disperse protests over Israel’s war with Hamas.

The office of New York-based Columbia University president Minouche Shafik issued a statement at 11:07 pm (0307 GMT Friday) retreating from a midnight deadline to dismantle a large tent camp with around 200 students.

“The talks have shown progress and are continuing as planned,” the statement said. “We have our demands; they have theirs.”

The statement denied that New York City police were invited on the campus. “This rumor is false,” it said.

A student, identifying herself only as Mimi, told AFP she had been at the camp for seven days.

“They call us terrorists, they call us violent. But… they’re the ones that called in the police when students were sitting in a circle,” she said.

“The police are the ones with guns, the police are the ones with tasers, we only have our voices.”

Student protesters say they are expressing solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, where the death count has topped 34,305, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

More than 200 people protesting the war were arrested Wednesday and early Thursday at universities in Los Angeles, Boston and Austin, Texas, where around 2,000 people gathered again on Thursday.

Riot officers in the southern state of Georgia used chemical irritants and tasers to disperse protests at Emory University in Atlanta.

Photographs showed police wielding tasers as they wrestled with protesters on neatly manicured lawns.

The Atlanta Police Department said officers responding to the school’s request for help were “met with violence” and used “chemical irritants” in their response.

The spreading protests began at Columbia University, which has remained the epicenter of the student protest movement.

Free speech?

The protests pose a major challenge to university administrators who are trying to balance campus commitments to free expression with complaints that the rallies have crossed a line.

Pro-Israel supporters and others worried about campus safety have pointed to anti-Semitic incidents and allege that campuses are encouraging intimidation and hate speech.

“I’ve never felt more scared to be a Jew in America right now,” said Skyler Sieradsky, a 21-year-old student of philosophy and political science at George Washington University.

“There are students and faculty standing by messages of hate, and standing by messages that call for violence.”

Demonstrators, who include a number of Jewish students, have disavowed anti-Semitism and criticized officials equating it with opposition to Israel.

“People are here in support of Palestinian people from all different backgrounds… (compelled by) their general sense of justice,” a 33-year-old graduate student at the University of Texas, Austin, who said he was Jewish and gave his name as Josh, told AFP.

US ally Israel launched its war in Gaza after the Hamas attack on October 7 that left around 1,170 people dead, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Hamas militants also took roughly 250 people hostage. Israel estimates 129 remain in Gaza, including 34 presumed dead.

Coast to coast

At the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, 93 people were arrested for trespassing on Wednesday, authorities said, and the university cancelled events at the May 10 graduation ceremony.

The ceremony, which usually attracts 65,000 people, made headlines this month when administrators cancelled a planned speech by a top student after complaints from Jewish groups that she had links to anti-Semitic groups. She denied the charge.

At Emerson College in Boston, local media reported classes were cancelled Thursday after police clashed with protesters overnight, tearing down a pro-Palestinian encampment and arresting 108 people.

In Washington, students from Georgetown and George Washington University (GW) established a solidarity encampment on the GW campus Thursday.

Protests and encampments have also sprung up at New York University and Yale — both of which also saw dozens of students arrested earlier this week — Harvard, Brown University, MIT, the University of Michigan and elsewhere.

California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt said its campus could remain closed into next week due to protesters occupying buildings.

On Sunday, US President Joe Biden denounced “blatant anti-Semitism” that has “no place on college campuses.”

But the White House has also said the president supports freedom of expression at US universities.

 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)