Dozens of protesters occupied a building at Columbia University in New York early Tuesday, placing barricades at the entrances and They hung a Palestinian flag in a window in a new escalation of demonstrations against the war between Israel and Hamas that have spread to university campuses across the United States. The school promised to expel the participants.
The occupation at Columbia — where protesters ignored an ultimatum to leave a tent encampment on Monday or be suspended — unfolded as other universities They intensified their efforts to clear the camps. Police stormed some campuses, leading to clashes with protesters and numerous arrests. In rarer cases, university officials and protest leaders have reached agreements to limit disruption to campus life.
Protesters on Columbia’s Manhattan campus linked arms outside Hamilton Hall early Tuesday and They carried furniture and metal barricades to the premises, one of those occupied during a civil rights and anti-Vietnam War protest in 1968. Posts on an Instagram account by protest organizers shortly after midnight urged people to protect the camp and join them at Hamilton Hall.
A sign reading “Free Palestine” hung from a window.
“An autonomous group reclaimed the Hind’s Hall building, formerly known as ‘Hamilton Hall,’ in honor of Hind Rajab, a martyr murdered at the hands of the genocidal Israeli state at the age of six,” CU Apartheid Divest wrote online early Tuesday. social
Hamilton Hall opened in 1907 and is named after Alexander Hamilton, one of the founding fathers of the United Stateswho attended King’s College, the original name of Columbia.
The storming of the building occurred about 12 hours after the 2 p.m. Monday deadline for protesters to abandon a camp of about 120 tents. under threat of suspension.
In a statement Tuesday, Columbia spokesman Ben Chang said that “students occupying the building face expulsion”. He added that those who did not agree to Monday’s terms would be suspended.
“The protesters have chosen to escalate to an unsustainable situation: vandalize property, break doors and windows and block entrancesand we are applying the consequences that we described yesterday,” he added.
New York Police Department Chief Jeffrey Maddrey said at a news conference Tuesday that police will not enter Columbia’s campus without a request from the university administration or an imminent emergency.
The protesters insisted that They will remain in the building until the university accepts three demands: divestment, financial transparency and amnesty.
The clashes have generated concern in the White House. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said President Joe Biden believes students occupying an academic building It is “absolutely the wrong approach” and “not an example of peaceful protest.”
Universities throughout the United States They look for a way to clear the camps before the impending graduation ceremonies. Some remained in negotiations while others resorted to force and ultimatums, which have led to clashes with the police. Dozens of people were arrested Monday in protests at universities in Texas, Utah, Virginia and New Jersey, while Columbia said a few hours before the Hamilton building was occupied that it had begun suspending students.
For their part, police intervened Tuesday morning to dismantle an encampment at Yale University in Connecticut, although there were no immediate reports of arrests.
He Yale Daily News, an independent student newspaper, reported that police from Yale and New Haven had surrounded the encampment on the campus esplanade with tape starting at 6 a.m., and said that anyone inside the perimeter He could be arrested and suspended if he didn’t quit. As of 7:30 a.m., no arrests had been made, said Officer Christian Bruckhart, a New Haven police spokesman.
The origin of the conflict
Protests on campuses across the country began in response to Israel’s offensive in Gaza after Hamas carried out a deadly attack on southern Israel on October 7.
The militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took about 250 hostages. Israel has vowed to eradicate Hamas and killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the local Health Ministry.
Israel and its supporters have described the student protests as anti-Semitic, while critics of Israel say that accusation is used to silence dissenting voices. Although some protesters have been recorded making anti-Semitic comments or violent threats, protest organizers, some of whom are Jewish, say it is a peaceful movement that aims to defend Palestinian rights and denounce the war.
At the University of Texas at Austin, one lawyer reported at least 40 protesters arrested on Monday. The clash represented an escalation of the situation on the 53,000-student campus in the state capital, where more than 50 protesters were arrested last week.
Later Monday, dozens of officers with riot gear at the University of Utah They tried to clear a camp before the office of the president of the university, an operation that lasted until late in the afternoon. Police dragged students out by their hands and feet, broke tent poles, and held back those who refused to leave with zip ties. Seventeen people were arrested. The university said overnight camping on campus grounds was prohibited and that several warnings had been given to students before the police intervention.
At Princeton University, 13 people were arrested Monday night, including 11 students, after briefly occupying a building housing its faculty. They received judicial summons for trespass and they have been prohibited from accessing the campus, according to a statement from the center’s president, Christopher Eisgruber.
Also on Tuesday, police cleared an encampment at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and detained about 30 people. At the University of Connecticut, police made arrests after protesters refused to remove tents.
The plight of the detained students has become a central part of the protests, with students and a growing number of teachers demanding an amnesty for protesters. The question is whether suspensions and court records will follow students throughout their adult lives.
The protests in Texas and elsewhere—including Europe and Canada— were inspired by the first demonstrations in Columbia. On Monday, student activists in Columbia defied a 2 p.m. deadline to leave an encampment. A handful of opposing protesters waved Israeli flags, and one held a sign that read: “Where are the anti-Hamas chants?”
Although the university did not call the police to remove the protesters, university spokesman Ben Chang said that Columbia had initiated the suspensions. Protest organizers said they were not aware of any suspension for Monday night.
In a rare case, Northwestern University said it reached an agreement with students and faculty representing the majority of protesters on its campus near Chicago. Allows peaceful demonstrations until classes conclude on June 1, requires the removal of all but one tent to provide aid, and restricts the demonstration area to allow only students, faculty and other staff to enter unless otherwise approved by the university .
At the University of Southern California, organizers of a large camp met with university president Carol Folt on Monday. Folt declined to give details, but she said she had heard protesters’ concerns and that dialogue would continue Tuesday.
USC sparked controversy on April 15 when it banned the student representative speaker, who has publicly supported the Palestinians, from made an inaugural speech citing security reasons unspecified for his unusual decision. The institution later canceled a speech by filmmaker Jon M. Chu, a former student, and declined to award honorary degrees.
Outrage over those decisions and protests at Columbia inspired the encampment and demonstrations on campus last week, where 90 people were detained by riot police. The university has canceled its main graduation ceremony.
Elsewhere, administrators have tried to save their graduation ceremonies, and several have ordered camps cleared in recent days. When these attempts have failed, officials have threatened disciplinary action, including suspension, and possible arrest.
But students have held firm to their positions at some high-ranking universities, including Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and Yale, among others. Police in riot gear tried to clear an encampment at Virginia Commonwealth University on Monday night and clashed with protesters.