An encampment in support of Gaza at Columbia University continued into its seventh day, with administrators struggling to maintain control of the campus with student protesters vowing to demonstrate until their demands — that the university disclose its financial investments, divest from companies that support Israel and grant amnesty to suspended students — are met.
Speaking to reporters at a virtual press conference Tuesday afternoon, Ben Chang, Vice President for Public Affairs at Columbia, said the administration was in discussions with student organizers until 2 a.m. this morning, aiming towards a resolution.
“We have our demands and they have theirs,” Chang said. “President [Minouche] Shafik is focused on de-escalating the rancor on Columbia’s campus.”
On Tuesday evening Shafik sent out an email to faculty and students warning that if an accord was not reached by midnight, she would have to “consider alternative options for clearing the West Lawn.” The notice prompted scores of students to return to the green late Tuesday night into Wednesday morning to protect the encampment. But several hours later, Shafik extended her deadline another 48 hours, citing “important progress” with student organizers, the Columbia Spectator reported.
Calls have mounted for Shafik’s resignation from all sides, including from Congressmember Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and all other GOP members of New York’s House delegation, who were apparently unswayed by testimony last week at a House hearing where Shafik was grilled on her efforts to clamp down on antisemitism.
Meanwhile, one of the university’s major donors, alumni Robert Kraft, announced Monday through his Foundation to Combat Antisemitism that he was pulling his financial support for the school citing the “virulent hate that continues to grow on campus.”
In the days since Columbia students started camping out on the campus green, similar pro-Palestinian encampments have swept New York University, Yale, Harvard, MIT, Emerson, the University of Michigan, the New School and others.
Last Thursday, Columbia administrators called in the NYPD to break up the encampment and police arrested more than 100 demonstrators who were charged with trespassing. Many students were subsequently suspended, and some attending Barnard College were kicked out of their campus housing, according to student organizers.
Police officials have insisted they were called in at the behest of Columbia administrators. At a press conference outside the Columbia campus Monday, NYPD’s Deputy Commissioner of Public Information Tarik Sheppard said that “there has been no credible threats to any particular group, or individual coming from this protest or any other.”
Hours later, New York University officials called on the NYPD to break up a similar pro-Palestinian encampment, with scores of NYPD officers in riot gear arriving at Gould Plaza on West 4th Street Monday night as Muslim students kneeled for the Maghrib prayer. Police tore down tents and arrested 120 students and faculty, charging the majority with trespassing.
“It was demonstrably peaceful,” said a 26-year-old student Abdulaziz Aleisa, shaken after the crackdown. “Honestly, I feel it’s clear evidence that they’re taking a pro-Israeli stance and refusing to listen to the student voices.”
Following the arrests, Kaz Daughtry, the NYPD’s Deputy Commissioner, said on X, the agency stood ready to break up additional encampments if need be.
“There is a pattern of behavior occurring on campuses across our nation, in which individuals attempt to occupy a space in defiance of school policy,” he wrote. “Rest assured, in NYC the NYPD stands ready to address these prohibited and subsequently illegal actions whenever we are called upon.”
Charges of Antisemitism
As the demonstrations have grown, so have allegations that the protests are antisemitic, with the viral circulation of a video of someone outside Columbia campus yelling “go back to Poland,” and an account of Jewish students getting Israeli flags stolen and water thrown on them.
Both the White House and Mayor Eric Adams, among other political leaders, have denounced what President Joe Biden called “an alarming surge of antisemitism.”
Jewish groups on campus have also called on Columbia to do more to protect Jewish students, while a campus rabbi, Elie Buechler, the director of the Orthodox Union-Jewish Learning Initiative, wrote that events have “made it clear that Columbia University’s Public Safety and the NYPD cannot guarantee Jewish students’ safety in the face of extreme antisemitism and anarchy,” the Columbia Spectator reported.
Jessica Weinfeld, an 18-year-old Jewish Columbia student, said hearing her fellow classmates chanting, “from the river to the sea,” among other slogans, was jarring for her.
“That’s death threats to Jews in Israel,” she said.
University officials insisted they’ve ramped up security, adding more guards and supervisors and extra campus patrols, as well as tightening security around the campus’s perimeter.
But hosting a press briefing of their own outside Shafik’s house on Morningside Drive, several pro-Palestinian Jewish students and faculty said they’ve felt unsafe on campus for months. Soph Askanase, a Jewish student at Barnard College, said they were among the students allegedly sprayed with a chemical during a demonstration on campus earlier this year and spent several days sick in bed afterwards. They were also arrested and charged with trespassing, as well as suspended, for their involvement in the protest last week.
“Being uncomfortable is different than being unsafe,” they said.
Columbia professor Marianne Hirsch, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, joined the student press conference and had been among the American Association of University Professor faculty members to walk out of classes a day earlier calling for amnesty for the suspended students.
“I’m extremely distressed right now to see how antisemitism is being weaponized and misused under the guise of safety and security, but actually in the interest of shutting down academic freedom, free debate, and critical thinking,” she said.
120 Arrested at NYU
NYU spokesperson John Beckman sent out a statement Monday saying students were given multiple warnings to disperse before the university called in the NYPD. “Many refused to leave. We also learned that there were intimidating chants and several antisemitic incidents reported,” he said. “Given the foregoing and the safety issues raised by the breach, we asked for assistance from the NYPD.”
But faculty and protesters disputed the administration’s account. Jewish professor Zach Samalin said he’d spent several hours in Gould Plaza, including the moments before arrests began, alongside his five-year-old daughter.
“I would reject that forcefully,” he said. “What I instead saw was a Passover Seder being conducted in the center of the plaza. I was given a piece of Matzo with Charoset on it minutes before the evening prayers were called.”
As police penetrated the plaza during Muslim students’ prayer, Samalin was among a row of faculty who rushed to the back of the plaza, linking arms with the hope of protecting students from police officers. He was among the first faculty members arrested and spent the night in jail, charged with trespassing.
All told 120 students and faculty were arrested, 116 of whom were given summons for trespassing, according to an NYPD spokesperson. Four students were hit with additional charges of obstructing governmental administration and resisting arrest, according to the NYPD.
Several reporters on scene described police officers using mace on demonstrators who’d tried to block buses of arrested students and faculty from leaving the area.
A day after the crackdown, NYU had erected plywood walls around the plaza gates to prevent students from re-establishing another encampment there, though hundreds of ousted NYU students rallied in Washington Square Park across the street Tuesday afternoon vowing to keep pressuring the administration to disclose and divest from Israeli interests.