Tuesday morning update: Columbia University locked down its Morningside campus Tuesday morning, after pro-Palestinian student protestors occupied Hamilton Hall near the center of the campus. The occupation, carried out after midnight Tuesday, continued this morning, with an unknown number of protestors inside the building and a dozen or so outside, blocking entrances.
In an email to the Columbia community sent a little before 6:30 this morning, President Nemat Shafik said the university was indefinitely limiting access to the Morningside campus to students living in campus dormitories and to those essential staff needed for services, such as dining, public safety, and building maintenance.
“This access restriction will remain in place until circumstances allow otherwise,” Shafik wrote.
Tuesday marks the end of the second week of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, set up by pro-Palestinian protestors, which has sparked similar protests at campuses across the country. Shafik’s decision last week to call in New York City police to arrest protestors drew strong rebukes from some faculty, alumni, and current students, and instead of ending the protest, the police action appeared to make some double down on the protest.
By late morning today, reporters on the scene described the campus as “eerily quiet.” Monday was the last day of classes for undergraduates, who are now meant to be preparing for final papers and exams. Those who are continuing to protest – demanding that Columbia divest itself of any financial ties with Israel – are now mainly concentrated in and around Hamilton Hall; by late morning Tuesday, a tent encampment remained on Columbia’s West Lawn but few people could be seen there.
Here’s more on the overnight occupation:
By Claire Davenport
Dozens of student protestors occupied Hamilton Hall, a building near the center of Columbia University’s campus, early Tuesday morning, blockading entrances and ratcheting up their confrontation with the school’s administration.
The occupation came almost 12 hours after a deadline set by Columbia, which warned students they would be suspended unless they abandoned their Gaza Solidarity Encampment by 2 p.m. Monday. The university said Monday evening that it had begun issuing suspensions. But no immediate action was taken to remove students, many of whom remained at the encampment.
Then, a little after midnight Tuesday morning, protestors from the encampment donned masks and black-and-white checkered keffiyehs before marching to Hamilton Hall on the southeast side of campus, where they entered the building.
A contingent of protestors went inside, carrying metal gates that had surrounded the encampment, while hundreds clapped outside, chanting “Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest.” Columbia Spectator, the campus newspaper, reported that the students had the building locked down within five minutes and allowed no one else to enter.
Once inside Hamilton, protestors barricaded
Hamilton Hall is the same building students occupied in 1968 during the anti-Vietnam War protests.
After about an hour, protestors could be seen in the windows on the upper levels of the building. Someone draped a Palestinian flag out of one window and a sign that reads “Hinds Hall” out of another. “Hinds Hall” is a reference to Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old Palestinian girl who emergency services tried to reach when she was stranded in a car in Gaza. Twelve days later, her body was found in the car, and the ambulance that had come to try to rescue her lay destroyed nearby.
During the occupation, two young men stood in front of Hamilton doors, facing the protestors and attempting to stop them from placing a metal table to block the entrance. “What you’re trying to do is tear down an American university,” one of the young men said to the protestors. When someone from the crowd responded, the young man spoke back: “We have more of a right to do what we’re doing than any of these people have to do what they’re doing to this building.”
“Settlers, settlers, go back home,” protestors chanted back at them. As the young men tried to push back the makeshift metal table blockade, a protestor told them: “You’re gonna hurt people.”
After the occupation, some protestors remained inside Hamilton, while others stood guard outside. Other students continued to chant while circling the encampment. By 3 a.m. the administration had made no response to the occupation, and the streets around campus were quiet, with little police presence.
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These protesters have exposed themselves to be a bunch of hate filled violent thugs.
I believe the general population is outraged over their actions and a backlash is inevitable.
If anything, their tactics will likely lead to more sympathy for Israel.
Ignorant cowards wearing masks. I hope the university identifies as many as possible and expels them.
Seriously. If you are going to protest own it. Don’t be a chicken hiding behind a mask. How does the school even know if are a student?????
The students in Hamilton Hall are trying to force Columbia to call in the police. I do not think the students will go peacefully this time. I think they will fight the cops like back in 1968.
Why do they want the police to come, do you think? Because they think I will gain them more student and outside sympathy?
I have to keep reminding myself that I DO care about Palestinian civilians (as well as Israelis) despite the repugnant college “protests”.
Who is in charge of Columbia?
Is it the president who needs to be replaced?
Or the entire board of trustees?
This has nothing to do with Gaza and it provides no benefit to the Palestinians. By engaging in actions like this, the protesters are shedding any moral agenda they claim to be promoting. This is just petulant rage and it reflects terribly on the Palestinian cause. It is also the height of privilege to endlessly disrupt the lives of other non-involved students based on your own political priorities. Not to mention the Columbia cleaning staff who were literally held hostage in Hamilton Hall while they were trying to clean up the mess left by students.
One of my friends has a niece who is among the protestors (mind you who is not a Columbia student and did not attend Columbia) asked her niece what she expected to accomplish. Her niece said she needed to support the Palestinian people. My friend asked her “have you set up a table to register students to vote, raised money for World Central Kitchen or Doctors Without Borders? How do you really think your actions will make any meaningful change?” She had no answer…. These kids just want an excuse to make noise and are not really thinking about ways to really help the people in Gaza.
Agree. However, they are not kids they are adults. I do get flummoxed when they are called kids. Other young adults same age are fire fighters, studying to be police officers, signing up to be soldiers/sailors/Air Force personnel. The protesters are adults, not kids. A kid is my 14 year old nephew.
Hard to believe Columbia issued the 2 pm deadline without a plan in place to clear the encampment. You need to leave by 2:00 or else….
They say they are suspending some students but are all the protesters even students? The media leads me to believe some are professional protesters.
This is increasingly embarrassing for Columbia. They finally seemed to be doing the right thing and set a deadline. But they did not enforce it. Now these protestors (unclear how many are actually students) destroyed property. Go in there, remove them, and lock them up.
Other schools (Princeton, Washington U, etc.) have dealt with the situation. Columbia’s administration is truly awful. They have managed to alienate everyone. Aren’t there any alums who work in crisis management and strategic communications who can tell them what to do?
And if they want Columbia to divest, I can think of a number of countries that are a lot worse than Israel. And how about complaining about Hamas, which killed, raped, and took hostage hundreds of civilians.
Now that there is property damage, it is no longer a protest, but a riot. Riots are not peaceful assembly and so do not have First Amendment free speech protection.
If their goal truly is to stop bombing in Gaza, the students should de-occupy, finish the semester, and spend the summer in D,C, protesting U,S, military aid to Irsael. The U, S, government has more influence on Israel government policy than does Columbia’s endowment.
Property damage? The homes of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians lie in ruins, but what should really be the issue is minor vandalism?
— “Now that there is property damage, it is no longer a protest, but a riot. Riots are not peaceful assembly and so do not have First Amendment free speech protection. ”
A (continuing) failure to arrest and prosecute these rioters will completely de-legitimize the arrest and prosecution of those who invaded and occupied the Capitol on January 6, 2021. There is no material difference between the events, other than the politics of the invaders.
Actually no, because the Capitol Building is government, therefore public property, and a national landmark, and Columbia is private property, and Hamilton Hall is most likely not a landmark. HUGE difference.
Actually there is a big difference, besides the politics. One occupation was attempting to delegitimize a lawful election result and potentially foment a coup. The other occupation is a private educational institution and the resulting damage or stoppage will only affect a relatively small number of individuals. I’m confused about how you see these as similar.
It’s a complete joke at this point. Apparently people banned (suspended) from Columbia’s campus can not only remain there, but also destroy property at will – without being arrested. So much for “public safety.”
So the anti-occupiers are now occupiers.
This is the best and the brightest?
Violence on all fronts never achieves anything…
How were the students able to enter the building more than 12 hours after the deadline? Wouldn’t they need working ID to get inside, or is the building always open? Regardless it is smart for the school not to say anything. These kids who broke iwindows should face extra long suspension. But the school should just suspend them. The students will find out when they try to enter a building for finals.
For breaking and entering? I think they should be arrested and face expulsion.
They are adults. They are no longer Columbia students (if they ever were). It’s now trespassing, and a riot. Their names should be made public, and they should be arrested.
At least half the board should resign, as should the President.
Wonderful… I support the Columbia University students protesting. the last time Hamilton Hall was taken over was during Vietnam protesting in 1968 and I member it well ….
I was there!!!!✌️
Good for them! 👍
*Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Many of us share your nostalgia — or at least, we did until today. These former (now suspended) students currently include outsiders who were let into campus through the windows of one of the dorms that faces the street. The resulting group has now broken windows, destroyed property, and physically assaulted facilities workers who were inside the building that they intended to seize. What began with good intentions has now become something else.
Have you seen the image of a man with a hammer breaking the glass in a door at Hamilton Hall? That is not peaceful assembly. That is breaking and entering
That’s exactly what we did back in 1968!
Bravo!
During those protests did they also fight for the death and violence against American soldiers? Did they chant “death to soldiers” and block out all males of army-admittance age or spit at families who had sons (and some daughters) who were drafted into the war?
If not, then please stop comparing these ignorant, unresearched, hateful protests to the Vietnam ones. You can be proud of what you did and recognize the difference with these protests. Many protesters don’t have a clue what they are even fighting, and so many Palestinians have spoken out begging students to stop, claiming they are inflating the power of Hamas and other Islamic extremists who are hurting and oppressing their people.
Also-they COULD simultaneously call for the release of hostages, and for Hamas to surrender. But, they DON’T.
Exactly. I compare these “protestors” to those during the Vietnam era who were nasty towards returning soldiers, most of whom were poor kids who were drafted and unlike Trump and others like him, had no way to avoid serving. They were not evil – they were just doing what they had to do.
But also, don’t insult those who were peacefully protesting in the 60s to these clowns. There is no comparison.
Similarly, what does targeting American Jews accomplish? There is no defending their actions. And I suspect many of them are not even Columbia-affiliated – just whiners with nothing better to do.
Every minute that passes makes Columbia look worse and worse.
Isn’t it yet clear that Netanyahu is the one holding the hostages by now? All of this has always been in his hands and in the hands of similar-minded individuals.
This is ridiculous. They have now lost all credibility. Remove all of these students, expel them, charge them, and jail them.
If you have such convictions, what’s up with the face mask? I find it so revealing that these protesters almost universally refuse to own their beliefs outside this tiny town square. The obvious answer is because deep down they know how hate filled and despicable their actions are, but don’t want to face the consequences of being a known bigot to the world at large. Let me see your face if you are so righteous!
I hope that this message reaches at least one protester somewhere:
TALK TO PEOPLE WHO TRY TO INTERACT WITH YOU RATHER THAN BOUNCE THEM TO P.R. REPS.
Your goal should be to educate people, to shine light on an issue, to gain understanding about and support of issues you care about and to be persuasive about your perspectives. Your lack of engagement with anyone who is not already in your protesting-club is casting a shadow on your relevant message.
How disappointing that you are not welcoming dialogue and the opportunity to engage about complex issues. How disappointing that these protests are merely performative snippets of shallow social-media clips.
If these protesters sincerely cared about the deaths of Gazans, the protesters would be screaming for Hamas to surrender as loudly as they are for the University, by divesting investments, to pressure Israel to cease fire. Surrender by Hamas and the turnover of all hostages would lead to an immediate ceasefire. The conclusion is therefore inescapable that the protesters support Hamas and its claim that all of Palestine should be controlled, “from the river to the sea”, by Palestinian Arabs and no part of Palestine by Jews.
Now the “protestors” can add breaking and entering to their resumes. If the police are called in to get them out of Hamilton Hall and they don’t cooperate, resisting arrest can be another resume highlight. Instead of peacefully demonstrating, they turned into a mob, preventing others from accessing the school’s facilities that their parents paid a mountain of money for them to attend. And the school’s executive and administrative staff appear clueless as to how to effectively handle the situation. Of course, it isn’t easy to deal with immature, out of control students and likely professional activists, but that’s what they are paid to do. They should have strategic plans in place for these kinds of situations plus a list of crisis control management consultants they can call on for advice since they lack the clarity to handle this very sad situation, which is growing worse every day.
So those whose protests claim others are ‘occupiers’ who practice apartheid, are now essentially the ones doing the occupying and who limit who can and cannot enter or use spaces depending on their definition of who is ‘worthy’ of entry and who is not. Interesting.
A few broken windows? Please. Compare this “property damage” with the greatest humanitarian crisis of all time–imagine the property damage in Gaza. . Is “property damage” the worse crime for Americans? . I don’t want hostages held or barbarities committed against Jewish people. Nor do I want a devastating war against innocents in Gaza. How many dead children will it take for retribution? Hooray for Columbia students — as with a raisin in the sun, there needed to be something like this. It’s just too bad there is such backlash against the courageous students. inspired to see political passion on campuses–like 68. If Columbia should feel shame, it’s for calling the cops in the first place.
“The greatest humanitarian crisis of all time”? What history have you learned? This is nothing compared to what the world has seen over the past century. If the world truly wanted to save the Palestinian population, they would protest for a regime change in Gaza. But they dont care . This is about a single-minded agenda item that commenced with Arafat in the 1960s, has been carefully cultivated and funded by terror groups and their proxies into our universities and progressive activist groups – that of the demise of the State of Israel. Nothing more, nothing less. This is not about the West Bank occupation. The Gaza Blockade. The Settlements. Things that many Israelis actually protest.
This is all about 1948 and the very existence of Israel. Plain and simple. When groups chant “No Peace On Stolen Land” or “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Arab” (the original Arabic chant) – it underscores their true motivations. Unfortunately, these kids are clueless that they are being used as pawns.
1968 was about peace. About preventing a war on both sides. Flower Power. Making Love Not War. This is all about advocating for the demise of an entire country (and its population).
Perfectly expressed. Amen.
All time? 2 million Armenians and Greeks were killed by Turks a century ago! A few months ago, 150,000 Christian Armenians were expelled from a land that they lived on for three thousand years! The Gaza government started a war by massacring and kidnapping a thousand Israeli civilians! What did you expect? Israel to send flowers?
This has escalated to criminality. Time for the Columbia Administration to develop a spine. Clear the building. Press criminal charges, expel any involved student and terminate the employment of any involved administrator or faculty member.
Finally NYPD called to the rescue!
Let the protesters have Hamilton Hall. Let the building be blocked, and no can leave or enter. If people leave, they should be prevented from returning to campus. At some point 2 days, 10 days, 2 weeks, 2 months – they will give up and return the building to general use. They are NOT helping their cause!
Also, I just love these “brave” protesters who insist on covering their faces!
Columbia’s president will soon be following the presidents of Harvard and Penn in emeritus status.
I think we should airdrop copies of the WSR comments section for these protesters to read since they don’t want to talk with anyone.
Both the Hammas and the Netanyahu-led government of Israel are responsible for this mess. Hammas committed inhuman atrocities on October 7, and the Netanyahu government in return committed inhuman atrocities in Gaza, motivated in large part by Netanyahu’s wish to save himself, personally, from going to jail over corruption charges. The only way to begin to repair things is with immediate elections in Israel.
them as shields so that members of Hamas
can continue to escape capture and,
thereby, to continue their attacks against
Jewish people.
If it can be determined that Palestinians
are willingly serving as shields in support
of the members of Hamas who were the
perpetrators of the October 7th massacre
and who have been and still are willingly to
let themselves, their family members and
even their children die to protect the
members of Hamas from being stopped
from doing their evil deeds, then those
Palestinians are just as guilty as their
Hamas brethren.
All those throughout the world who
demonstrate in favor of the Palestinians are
making a statement. We need to know what
the message of their statement really is.
Is their message that Palestinians are
innocent bystanders and need to be saved.
Or, is their message, stop going after
members of Hamas because they are our
compatriots.
It is important to get these issues
clarified. But, frankly, coming up with the
battle strategy discussed above, to be able
to know who is a Palestinian and who is a
member of or a supporter of Hamas, would
deal with this issue at the very same time.
Words are indeed powerful. Let us
please clarify things as I have requested
and suggested we do and to be exacting in
stating what was done and what is being
done and by whom and let us do what
needs and must be done to bring the guilty
to judgment and to finally and in perpetuity
protect the innocent.
Thank you for your kind attention.
Am Yisrael Chai.
The Nation of Israel Lives.
Why the face masks? Either they forgot it’s 2024 or want to hide. Either way, silly.