On Monday, April 29, Columbia University began suspending students who refused to leave the ‘Gaza Solidarity Camp’ after talks with protesters failed, and students chose to ignore warnings that remaining would result in their suspension and expulsion.
Columbia said the protest, which lasted nearly two weeks, violated university policies, created an unwelcoming and “intolerable” environment for Jewish students, and that “external actors” contributed to a “hostile atmosphere” around the university’s gates and was a “noisy disturbance.” ” for students.
‘Free Palestine’
Tensions have risen at universities across the US with Columbia since its leadership called on the New York Police Department to break up camps of anti-war protesters. Camps and sit-ins at universities across the country expanded after the arrests in Colombia 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 canceled its main commencement ceremony, citing safety concerns amid protests. On Monday, chaos erupted at the University of Texas at Austin, as law enforcement moved to arrest and forcibly demolish a pro-Palestinian protest camp amid chants of “Free Palestine.”
On Monday morning, around 10 a.m., Columbia University administrators distributed a notice to the camp stating that talks with student protest leaders were at an impasse.
‘Reveal! divest’
The notices, seen by this reporter, asked protesters to identify themselves to a university official and sign a form agreeing to an alternative resolution to the violations of university policy the camp posed. The university ordered student protesters to vacate by 2 p.m. or be “suspended pending further investigation” and not complete the spring semester.
Students continue to protest at a pro-Palestinian camp at Columbia University despite a midday deadline by university officials to disband or suspend amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in New York City, U.S., April 29. 2024. | Image Credit: Reuters
At the camp, now in its second week, students voted almost unanimously as participants chanted: “The more you try to silence us, the louder we get.”
The students at the camp, along with several supporters including fellow students, staff and faculty, spent a tense afternoon marching around the venue in a show of solidarity to prevent the forced removal of the tents. Around 2:45 pm – after a 2 hour warning time to leave – protesters marched around the camp and chanted “Expose! Divest! We will not slow down, we will not rest!'” and “Free Palestine.”
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Outside the camp, about a dozen faculty members in yellow and orange safety vests also stayed behind, many saying they planned to stay the night to ensure their students’ right to protest was respected. As the deadline approached at 2 p.m., the faculty linked their arms in front of the camp.
Jennifer Lina, an assistant professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College, said students came to make sure they were safe from the threat of expulsion. “I’m here to make sure our students can safely speak their minds on campus … and I’m here to make sure they can continue to do so as safely as possible.”
On April 18, University President Minouche Shafiq’s decision to authorize an NYPD sweep of the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” that led to the mass arrest of more than 100 protesters stunned many community members. On April 22, more than 100 university faculty gathered on campus for a walkout to condemn the suspensions and arrests of students and call for amnesty and protection of academic freedom.
File photo of Columbia University President Nemat Shafiq | Image Credit: AP
However, by 4 p.m., as uncertainty appeared, with no signs of police intervention, most of the protesters began to disperse, while some students and about 80 tents remained inside the camp. Around 5:30 p.m. Columbia University suspended students who defied orders to vacate their pro-Palestinian protest by 2 p.m.
“We started suspending students,” Ben Chang, vice president for communications and university spokesman, said about three hours after the deadline. The university did not say how many students were suspended.
Mass arrests
Hundreds of students across the US have been arrested in the past two weeks for participating in anti-war protests. Protesters in Columbia have inspired similar demonstrations on campuses across the country.
Columbia University has doubled down on its stance on Israel, making it clear that it will not ‘withdraw’ from Israel – a key demand of students protesting at the camp.
State troopers arrest pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Texas in Austin, Texas, Monday, April 29, 2024. Image Credit: AP
Sueda Polat, a student organizer with the encampment, said the university has not made significant concessions to the protesters’ main demand: divestment from companies linked to the Israeli occupation of Gaza. Colombia also stopped the talks. As a result, students inside the camp “cannot be moved unless forced,” he said.
Ms. Polat said university officials had “shown a clear disregard” for the protesters’ demands.
The university has been trying to avoid calling back the police, whose intervention at the request of administrators on April 18 drew heavy criticism and attracted a wave of angry protests.
“We once called the NYPD to clear the camp,” Ms. Shafiq, the university’s president, wrote in a statement to the community co-signed by the co-chairs of Columbia’s Board of Trustees last Friday. “But we all share the opinion, based on discussions within our community and with outside experts, that bringing back the NYPD at this time would be counterproductive, further exacerbating what’s happening on campus.”
Although Columbia previously suspended approximately 50 students for participating in the initial encampment on an adjacent lawn, the move did not deter a broader coalition of protesters from setting up the current encampment.
Columbia University Associate Professor Joseph Howley said, “First, for six months, the university capitulated to the extremist ideological position that political discourse on behalf of Palestine is anti-Semitic. This is not true and is an extreme position, and the university leadership has adopted it again and again for no good reason.
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“Secondly, the only thing that has increased in terms of anti-Semitism and other forms of prejudice harassment on and around this campus is the university, which last week called the police and made the campus a flashpoint attracting bad actors and radicals from all over the city. We said ugly things off campus… while on campus, the camp Peacefully and calmly and on message. So if there’s a problem here, it’s created by the university leadership and the political pressure from the outside,” Mr. Howley added.
‘intimidation strategy’
Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student and lead consultant on behalf of Columbia University Racism Divest, the student union that organized the camp, called the deadline “another intimidation tactic by the university.”
Columbia was the first institution to be hit by protests supporting the Palestinian cause, with students demanding that the school divest from arms manufacturing and investments supporting Israel in the wake of the war on Gaza, which has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians.
The Columbia University Center on Racism, the coalition organizing the camp protest, said in a statement on Monday: “These back-and-forth scare tactics mean nothing compared to the deaths of 34,000 Palestinians. We will not move until Colombia meets our demands or forcibly evacuates us.
The group criticized the university’s “threat of en masse suspension, expulsion and possibly expulsion of students” with only hours’ notice as a violation of school 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 protest on campus,” the group said.
A Columbia University spokeswoman did not respond to questions about whether the administration would allow the NYPD back on campus to disperse students from campus.
Anisha Dutta is a freelance journalist based in New York.