Pro-Palestine Students Take Over a Columbia University Lawn

In the early hours of Wednesday morning, hundreds of Columbia University students set up tents on a university lawn in support of Palestine, and they're not planning to decamp until they get what they want. According to a report from the Columbia Spectator, the Gaza Solidarity Encampment has already voted to spend another night on the lawn in spite of disciplinary threats from their school and a heavy NYPD presence on and around campus.

"The anti-apartheid movement and student organizing struggle at Columbia has been alive and well for over 60 years, and we carry all of those organizers with us as we come here today,” Catherine Elias, a student protester, told the Spectator. The history Elias is referencing includes a 1968 student uprising in protest of the Vietnam War which led to the occupation of campus buildings, as well as a 1985 blockade, the culmination of three years of student organizing, that eventually forced Columbia to commit to become the first university in the U.S. to divest from apartheid South Africa. Columbia University Apartheid Divest, one of the groups leading this week's encampment alongside the campus's Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace chapters—which are currently suing the university after being suspended from campus in November—positions itself as an explicit continuation of this history.

"Despite the administration’s best attempts to punish student activism, CUAD organizers have succeeded in passing divestment referendums and resolutions at Columbia College, Barnard College, the School of Law, and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Student consensus in support of Palestine has never been more clear," student protesters wrote in a release about the action.

The pro-Palestine student groups are demanding that Columbia divest from companies profiting from the Israeli occupation of Gaza, the cancellation of a dual-degree program with the University of Tel Aviv, and the firing of a business school professor accused of bullying pro-Palestine students, The university has already (partly) acquiesced to one demand: The administration has agreed to provide transparency on its investments with the University Senate executive committee, according to the Spectator.

The timing of the encampment coincides with an appearance on Wednesday by Columbia University President Minouche Shafik at a hearing ostensibly on antisemitism in front of the Republican-led House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce. Shafik apparently performed better, at least in the eyes of the committee, than former Harvard University President Claudine Gay and former University of Pennsylvania President M. Elizabeth Gill, who both resigned from their roles following backlash to their testimony for being insufficient in its condemnation of supposed antisemitism on their campuses. Shafik told the committee that 15 students have been suspended—including four who hosted an unauthorized "Resistance 101" event on campus in March—and a visiting professor has been permanently barred from teaching at Columbia, and that there are currently disciplinary cases ongoing at the university against individuals who've used the phrase "from the river to the sea," a ubiquitous slogan among pro-Palestinian activists.

U.S. Representative Ritchie Torres, the Bronx Congressman who's gained a reputation as a rabid supporter of Israel, tweeted a clearly doctored photo of the encampment from his personal account on Wednesday featuring two parachute emojis—an apparent attempt to frame student protesters as pro-Hamas by invoking the October 7 attacks on Israel. "Anti-Israel activists have set up at Columbia University a 'Liberated Zone' and a 'Gaza Solidarity Encampment,'" Torres wrote alongside the fake photo. "The only thing that needs liberating is Columbia University from the stupidity of its most rabidly anti-Israel students and faculty." The tweet has since been deleted.

Meanwhile, the student encampment has received support from at least one federal elected official—U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar, who is also a member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce and grilled Shafik on Wednesday, tweeted in support of the protesters. "Columbia has always had an incredible history of students fighting for a more just world and it’s good to see that tradition continue. As NYPD surrounds young activists, I hope their concerns are heard by school administrators and they not be criminalized. In solidarity," Omar wrote.

The university has reportedly locked down its campus and leveled suspension threats at the students currently participating in the encampment. Around 7 p.m. on Wednesday night, according to the Columbia Spectator, the university handed out paper notices ordering protesters to decamp by 11 a.m. on Thursday lest they face sanctions. Participating Barnard students were reportedly handed a separate notice, threatening interim suspensions for protesters.

But the student activists in their tents do not appear to be moved. A few hours after Columbia handed out warning letters, just before 9 p.m., they voted unanimously to continue the occupation into Friday. At 4 a.m. on Thursday, hundreds more students flooded to the site of the encampment to protect their peers from mass arrest by the NYPD, locking arms and encircling the South Lawn, while more supporters gathered outside the school groups in solidarity. 

According to reporter Talia Jane, arrests began around 8 a.m. this morning.

UPDATED (4/18/24, 12:06 p.m.) : According to a press release from Columbia University Apartheid Divest, at around 10:30 a.m. three Barnard College students—Isra Hirsi, Maryam Iqbal, and Soph Dinu—were suspended for participating in the Gaza Solidarity Encampment. Two of those students, who live on campus, have been locked out of their housing.

Some links to watch carefully today: 

• Sammy's Law has reportedly been omitted from the state budget, and so has the HEAT Act, but hey—at least there's a weed bodega crackdown in there!
• "Bodega worker Trump went to visit in Harlem was with family in Dominican Republic, instead"
• Google fired 28 of its employees after they protested in various cities, including New York, against the company's involvement with the Israeli government via Project Nimbus.
• Finally, New Yorkers can flush their normal money down the toilet at the members-only NFT restaurant.
• There can be 100 people in a room, and 99 of them don't want you to host your sister's bachelorette party at a nightclub that's getting sued by a former employee for alleged sexual coercion.
• The fire alarm system in a new 400-bed migrant shelter in Gowanus is not currently up to fire code, but the FDNY okayed opening it because the provider—currently the subject of two different Department of Investigation probes—promised to keep an eye out for fires. Meanwhile, chaotic waiting room conditions in two migrant shelters in Manhattan and the Bronx raise their own alarm bells.
• Yep, people are still fighting about the new Tony Hawk-backed skatepark proposed for Brooklyn.
• Do you think this second lawsuit marks the first time Timothy Pearson found out that his coworkers call him "Crumbs"?
• Mayor Eric Adams's legal defense trust fired Bo Dietl after Dietl told a POLITICO reporter to "go suck dick somewhere."
• What is this world coming to when a four-year-old boy can't pee outside without his mom being fined $50?
• And finally, goodbye Sherita. You'll be sorely missed by anyone who ever gazed upon your strange and lovely form while walking to that Atlantic Avenue McDonald's.