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NYPD officers arrive at Columbia University on April 30, 2024, to clear demonstrators from an occupied hall on campus.
Chaos erupts overnight on US campuses. What’s next for student protesters?
The crackdown at Columbia came alongside chaos at other campuses. There was a round of arrests at City College in Harlem late Tuesday, and police were responding this morning to clashes between pro-Palestinian and counter-protesters at UCLA. On Monday, demonstrators at The New School took over Parsons School of Design. Meanwhile, police cleared an encampment at Yale that protesters have vowed to reoccupy, and an NYU student has reportedly chained themself to a bench and begun a hunger strike, vowing to continue until the demands of student protesters are met.
Nationwide, more than 1,000 students have been taken into police custody since the original encampment began at Columbia on April 18.
Protesters in support of Palestinians in Gaza at UCLA help one another get their eyes rinsed at an encampment on May 1, 2024. REUTERS/David Swanson
What are the protesters’ demands? The movement aims to isolate and put pressure on Israel to stop its bombing campaign in Gaza by forcing universities to divest from companies with ties to the Jewish state or that profit from the war. While protests on US campuses are being driven by the war in Gaza, their impact is transcending the conflict. Some of the demonstrations have featured antisemitic and intimidating chants and posters, while politicians on both sides of the aisle have made visits to college campuses to either support or condemn them.
Schools are striving to restore order before commencement season to avoid becoming the next University of Southern California, which canceled its main graduation ceremony after arresting more than 90 students last week. Columbia has asked the NYPD to stay on campus until at least May 17 to ensure there are no more demonstrations until after graduation.
But protesters aren’t concerned about graduation ceremonies. At Columbia, a new chant “no commencement until divestment” was heard yesterday from the occupied building. Ali, a senior at The New School who was involved in the takeover of Parsons and requested anonymity, laughed when I asked if he was worried about missing graduation. “We are all pushing as hard as we can to get divestment before the end of school. That’s the priority,” he said.
He was optimistic they would succeed, at least on his campus. But the overarching goal of getting the largest university endowments to divest from Israel is certainly not going to happen before students go home for summer.
So what comes next?
Hamilton Hall, the building Columbia protesters occupied Monday night, was also taken over exactly 56 years ago to the day, in the spring of 1968, during the Vietnam War. Demonstrators back then went home for the summer, only to resurface in the thousands at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and, long story short: Things gotugly. The gathering erupted into violence, leading to the activation of the National Guard and the arrest of hundreds of protesters.
This August, the DNC is also in Chicago, so could history repeat itself? When I asked students whether the movement would shift from university endowments to political events, the question took them off-guard.
“People aren’t really talking about what this is going to look like during the 2024 election," said Ali. “But what I do know is that people in this movement aren’t committed to voting for a certain party.” His statement echoed the disillusionment with political parties that I have heard again and again from student protesters.
“I don’t know how Joe Biden doesn’t realize he’s lost us,” said Julia Ye, a senior at NYU.
Cornel West and Jill Stein, two left-leaning third-party candidates, have both visited the Columbia University encampment in hopes of picking up the liberal youth vote. But it remains to be seen whether students will vote for either of them, especially if doing so makes it more likely that Donald Trump wins.
What’s clear is that students are confident the movement isn’t going on vacation. “Right now, all our focus is on university divestment,” said Ye, “but this energy isn’t going anywhere. It will just take a different shape over the summer.”
Students reported that throughout this year of university protests, they have seen their activist networks strengthen and expand, especially between schools. They have coordinated sending excess food donations between encampments in New York City, live-streamed the programming from different encampments across the country on their own, and been catalyzed by each other’s encounters with law enforcement.
“It was cool to see us moving in sync with the Columbia protests yesterday, even if it wasn’t officially organized,” said Gabriella, another senior at The New School who requested anonymity. “We are all watching each other on social media. We all want the same things. This movement is exploding, whether one person is calling for it to or not.”
Pro-Palestine protesters hold a sit-in on the West Lawn of Columbia University.
Crisis at Columbia: Protests and arrests bring chaos to campus
But as she spoke, that progress began to unravel, leading to the Thursday arrests of 108 students – all of whom have been suspended and kicked off campus – and subsequent protests by students and faculty across the ideological divide. Many of the young people, especially Jews, fear for their safety, while professors are wondering if their jobs are at risk. The growing demonstrations, and the threat of further arrests, have only worked to inflame tensions – so much so that the only thing all sides agree on is that the campus is unraveling into distrust, dysfunction, and fear.
Students hold hands and circle the lawns in solidarity with the pro-Palestine protesters.Will Hull
Breeding mistrust and anxiety
On Wednesday, Shafik faced three hours of questioning before the Republican-led Committee on Education and the Workforce. Questions focused on how administrators were protecting Jewish and pro-Israel students on campus amid frequent pro-Palestinian protests.
Shafik focused her testimony on disciplinary matters, noting the increased police presence, stricter policies, and the November suspension of the campus’s two main pro-Palestine student groups for not following the rules.
The committee honed in on individual Columbia professors like Joseph Massad, who described Hamas’ temporary takeover of Israeli settlements as a “stunning victory” in a highly controversial article after the Oct. 7 attack. Shafik told Congress that Massad was under internal investigation – something the professor himself had not known.
Shafik’s answers seemed to satisfy the committee. But on campus, students and faculty are far from satisfied – and the resulting demonstrations, some in solidarity with the arrested students, and some pro-Israeli versus pro-Palestinian protests, are again making campus feel more like a battleground than a safe space for learning.
“[Jewish students] appreciate all the concern about our safety, but the congressional hearing only further cleaves apart our campus and escalates tensions,” says Alina Kreynovich, a junior at Columbia’s School of General Studies.
Defying to voice dissent
After police cleared the encampment with their arrests on Thursday, other protesters reorganized on the adjacent lawn, and over 100 students began a sit-in and prepared for a second round of arrests. Organizers told them what to do if detained, wrote lawyers’ phone numbers on their arms, and voted to expand their demands beyond divestment, adding amnesty for the suspended students to their list.
Presidential candidate and progressive activist Cornel West witnessed Thursday’s arrests as he sat cross-legged among the students nearby. “Shame on the Columbia University administrators,” he said. “It's very important to protect every student.”
Many students joined the demonstrations because of the police action. “I think a lot of us came out here because of the arrests,” said a junior at Columbia College who requested anonymity. “Students shouldn’t be arrested and suspended for peacefully protesting on campus.”
Pro-Israel protesters carrying Israeli and American flags gathered together nearby holding pictures of hostages taken by Hamas and singing “God Bless America.”
Fears of violence rise
Yoseph Haddad, an Arab-Israeli journalist who was scheduled to speak at Columbia’s chapter of Students Supporting Israel, was assaulted by a protester while trying to enter campus. A man was attacked as he held a ripped, red-stained, Israeli flag. Multiple Jewish students said they were disturbed to see protesters defacing posters of hostages on the street.
Danny Gold, a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia’s Jewish Theological Seminary, said he doesn’t feel like protesters recognize how many students at Columbia – where 22.5% of undergraduates and 15.5% of graduate students are Jewish – have connections to people who were killed or kidnapped by Hamas. “One of my students has two cousins who were hostages. How does that make him feel seeing these protests where people deface hostage posters?”
Another student told me he felt like many of the protest chants were intimidating for Jewish students. “A lot of us have family in Israel, and hearing a chant like ‘from the river to the sea’ – that doesn’t call for a regime change, which would be an acceptable criticism of Israel, but for the total annihilation of the state – is frankly terrifying to many students who feel like it is a safe place for them.”
Students on both sides say they are afraid — of the university, which they believe has done too much or too little to crack down on the protests, and above all, of each other.
“It was crazy how quickly the community just turned upside down in terms of how we treat each other,” said Noa Fey, who has been a victim of bullying, online and on campus, after sharing her thoughts about the right to self-determination of both Israel and Palestine. “I’ve lost friends,” she said. “I barely made it out of the semester academically and emotionally.”
Faculty members join the fray
Many professors fear that free speech and academic freedom are under attack on campus. They are also concerned about being investigated by the university without their knowledge.
On Thursday evening, faculty members held a press conference outside of the President’s House. “The attack on students today violates fundamentally a core component of academic life,” said Joseph Howley, a classics professor. “This has not happened since 1968. And in the last 50 years, Columbia has been extremely careful about these extreme measures, and that care was violated today.”
As of the weekend, the protests have only grown, faculty members are boycotting graduation, and Jewish students increasingly still feel unsafe on campus.
“This national attention has only fueled the fringes of Columbia’s community and invites the entire country into our emotionally exhausted campus. If anything, the campus is less safe than ever,” says Kreynovich.