By Ann Cooper
After a dramatic nighttime police raid Tuesday, ending with arrests of dozens of pro-Palestinian protestors, Columbia’s campus appeared eerily quiet. On Wednesday afternoon, a few dozen TV crews set up cameras across from the Columbia gates at West 116th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, though there was little to see: no protestors, and only a handful of police and security monitoring the one entrance currently in use for the Morningside campus.
Access at that entrance remained highly restricted on Friday. Media are not allowed in. Students living in dorms on campus may enter, along with Columbia staffers who maintain essential services. Faculty who teach on Morningside campus were allowed in Friday for the first time in several days. A Friday morning note to the Columbia community contained this statement from Chief Operating Officer Cas Holloway on the continued access restrictions:
“We are guarding against further disruptions to our academic mission and carefully weighing the risk that tensions and activities in the City and around the country could spill over onto our campus and threaten the safety of our community. We are also concerned that Columbia remains a target for individuals and groups that do not have the best interests of our students in mind.”
The latter part of Holloway’s statement appeared to allude to Mayor Eric Adams’s assertion this week, that “outside agitators” had co-opted the protests and were among those arrested during Tuesday night’s massive police action to remove pro-Palestinian protestors from in and around Hamilton Hall. The New York Times profiled a “career activist,” who acknowledged doing a safety training session with protestors on Monday and who was outside Hamilton when protestors occupied it early Tuesday morning. The Times said the activist, Lisa Fithian, was not present when police arrived hours later.
Breakdown of Those Arrested Inside the Building
While Adams and police so far have given few details about the 109 people they say were arrested in and around Hamilton, a Columbia spokesman Thursday evening offered a breakdown of the 44 arrested inside the building: 14 Columbia undergrads, 9 graduate students, 6 people from institutions affiliated with Columbia, 2 employees of the university, and 13 with no Columbia affiliation. According to Columbia Spectator, the campus paper that has been closely covering the protests and their aftermath, spokesman Ben Chang referred to the non-affiliates as “outsiders” without labeling them “agitators.”
Also Thursday, THE CITY broke the news that an officer fired his gun inside Hamilton Hall during the police raid. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office confirmed it and was reviewing the incident; a spokesperson said no students were in the vicinity, the gun did not appear to be aimed at anyone, and no one was injured.
Columbia Journalism Review’s Jon Allsop devoted his Friday column to a detailed look at media coverage of the nationwide student protests. While praising some coverage for providing nuance, too many reports have “muddied the actual facts—not least out of Columbia,” Allsop wrote. “Sections of the media amplified the official narrative, including a claim from City Hall that the wife of a “known terrorist” was in the building. (She was not.)” Allsop also noted that police officials “released a four-and-a-half-minute video, set to heart-pumping music, smashing together footage of preparations for the operation at Hamilton Hall and the sweep itself,” but omitting mention of the police gun fired inside Hamilton.
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According to economists, divestment would do nothing. People sell stock, then others buy. It has no real economic effect. I cannot fathom why students think they can issue “demands” on a University, or anyone for that matter. Do they have themselves confused with kidnappers, or are they taking their cue from terrorists or gangsters? The delusion about all these issues runs very deep. It didn’t work out so well for those renegade, right wing, anti-government cowboys who took over a precious game preserve. Why did these kids imagine it would end any differently here?
Because they’re still young and hopeful and idealistic.
If not for people issuing “demands” we’d still be paying the British Monarchy our taxes, we’d still have slaves, we’d still have women at home instead of working and voting, we’d still have kids working in coal mines, we’d still have gay people in the closet, we wouldn’t have unions, we wouldn’t have ADA compliance.
We don’t have to agree with their methods, but people are always going to take action for what they believe in. Not for nothing but these protests really amped up after the Palestinian flour massacre on February 29th.
The model that proves it works is the divestment from South Africa to protest apartheid. The divestment strategy created a movement that eventually led to poor economic performance and western governments pulling aid. Public perception is already changing and billions of dollars in military and other aid to Israel could be stopped.
Perhaps it could be stopped. But why do you think it would be a good idea to stop aid to our only real friend in the region and the only real democracy in the region? Why would you want to weaken Israel’s ability to defend against terrorist incursions like the one that occurred on Oct 8, or the thousands of rockets that Hamas launched against civilian population centers since?
Why did Black patrons feel entitled to issue “demands” on the proprietors of segregated lunch counters in the south? Why did protesters “demand” disinvestment from South Africa during the apartheid years? Why did people “demand “ an end to the Vietnam War? Tough ones, eh?
If any student really truly feels that the university is responsible for violence or genocide as they say, why do they stay paying tuition? If I felt that was I’d leave.
Whatever they claim to know about Columbia’s investments, they either knew or had the means to find out before they enrolled there.
Actually, no, Boris. Please look into it more. One of their demands (shocking, eh?) is transparency. There is none for large University endowments, not just Columbia.
But your point would be valid anyhow. Students have the right to protest for change,
If the NYPD is to provide further security for Columbia University for the next 2 weeks than Columbia should reimburse the city for this service or hire private security.
Well, that would go for anytime the police are used by anyone. Do you pay them when you call them? This is what they are paid to do.
No, but in this situation the NYPD has solved Columbia’s problem of trespassers and burglars on its private campus. Now is the time for NYPD to withdraw and Columbia to secure its property. Fact is Columbia has its own security department. The NYPD has a program called the Paid Detail Program, which is used by many private institutions and businesses, in which off- duty uniformed NYPD officers are employed to provide security. This enables those organizations to get the highest level security and police officers to have legitimate off duty employment. Also, Columbia University receiving lucrative real estate tax advantages is more than obligated to cover this extra security expense.
Columbia is going to provide some financial reimbursement, not clear how much for the police response.
1/3 of the protestors were found to have no association with Columbia involved in the building occupation. The number at CCNY was 2/3 when the police came in the day they put the American flag back up on campus.
Divestment as proposed would involve Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Airbnb, Mcdonalds, Coca Cola, 100s of companies.
The economic complexity is much different than south africa not to mention the pledged support of the united states and many european countries.
Thank you NYPD. I hope they stay for a long time.
It comes right down to it.
The United States should never gotten involved with anything in the Middle East.
We know nothing about what they do and why they do it so why are we being so “nosy” and trying to get involved! We should stay out and we should’ve never gotten involved in the beginning going back to the “Bush” days.
This is one of the biggest mistakes of The United States of America…. getting involved in things we should not get involved with!!!!!
Last night I took a cab from Amsterdam Avenue and W. 81st Street to my home on W. 119th Street between Amsterdam Avenue and Morningside Drive. W. 119th goes the wrong way so I had the driver turn right on W. 113th Street to go down Morningside Drive. At W. 114th Street and Morningside Drive a police barricade was up. I got out. The driver made a U-Turn and left. I went up to the barricade and had to show ID. Then I walked the 5 blocks home. So for you folks from further downtown, Columbia runs from W. 114th to W. 120th Street so expect problems if you are say going up there to pay a visit to a friend.
Three cheers for America’s finest!
https://www.city-journal.org/article/adults-in-blue?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=cjdaily
There is no reason to divest. We should continue to support Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East as it defends itself from terrorist groups.
Both Lebanon and Turkey are democracies.
Have been for longer than Israel, albeit an US backed junta ran Turkey in the 1980s after a coup.
Yet on the other hand if you’re on the UWS and Muslim and have nothing to do with these protests and get hassled with by the police, none of you regardless of religion or political side understand what its like to feel that you wished that instead of police hassling you on the UWS, they instead hassled you in a Muslim country because at least you don’t get the perception that you’re unwanted on the UWS. Elected officials help reinforce that perception when you call and complain.