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Riley Callanan
Riley is a recent graduate of Barnard College of Columbia University. When she's not writing about global politics for GZERO, you can find her conducting research on American elections, making crossword puzzles, and manning the grill.
The view Thursday night from inside the Columbia University campus gate at 116th Street and Amsterdam in New York City.
Special report by Riley Callanan and Alex Kliment
Late Thursday night, the words “New Shafik email drop” rippled through the protest site known as the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on Columbia University’s lawns.
The protesters had been waiting to hear whether the New York Police Department was on its way, knowing that the deadline for negotiations with the administration of university President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik was rapidly approaching.
The police would not, in fact, be coming, the email said. Shortly after that news broke, student negotiators returned from talks to report that while there had not been progress on their demands to divest from Israel or give amnesty to the suspended students, they had had a small win: No new deadline to end the protests had been set. The encampment’s leaders continue to demand that Columbia’s endowment divest from any Israeli-related holdings and offer amnesty to students suspended over the protests last week.
The agreement to continue talking, disagreeing, and protesting – without divesting or policing – came in stark contrast to the images of hundreds of students and professors being arrested on several other US college campuses on Thursday.
But what seemed like a de-escalation inside the Columbia campus gates also came after an evening in which tensions were still high outside of them. As in, right outside of them.
Starting around 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, a United for Israel March drew several hundred protesters, and almost all involved were non-students. They came in part because of media and social media coverage of the harassment and attacks that several Jewish students faced last week, in the first days and nights of the pro-Palestinian encampment.
“It’s like 1939 Germany in there,” said Amber Falk, 37, as she handed out free packets of pastel-colored 4x6 inch stickers that said “F*ck Hamas” or “From the River to the Sea, TikTok is not a College Degree!”
That idea echoed comments made the day before by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said the atmosphere for Jewish students on American college campuses recalled Nazi-era discrimination. Also on Wednesday, US House Speaker Mike Johnson came to Columbia’s campus to suggest sending in the National Guard “if these threats and intimidation are not stopped.”
“You know, if they don’t handle this, it might be time for us to form a new JDL,” said pro-Israel protester Joey M, 36, of Brooklyn, referring to a violent Jewish extremist group, originally formed to protect Jews in New York in the 1960s. “If the government can’t protect Jews, we have to,” said Joey.
Meanwhile, across campus on Broadway, a different group of non-Columbian protesters in keffiyehs and masks chanted, “There is only one solution! Intifada Revolution!”
There’s no doubt that tensions at Columbia were immensely high last week when Riley reported that “the campus is unraveling into distrust, dysfunction, and fear.” But in the days since – which have seen one round of police arrests, the closure of campus to non-students, and the encampment itself pledging to weed out external agitators – tensions have come down noticeably.
“It's much more calm now,” said David Lederer, a sophomore wearing a kippah and waving a large Israeli flag just inside the gates. If that name rings a bell, it’s because David and his twin brother Jonathan were attacked on campus last week, supercharging concerns about antisemitism on campus.
“People will still say ‘sweep the camp,’ ‘arrest all of them.’ But I'm not like that,” said Lederer. “Free speech is free speech, just don’t harass us. I feel safe walking on campus again. Even if the change is just for the media to see, I appreciate that.”
Whether this new, relative calm can hold is an open question of huge importance – the deadlock between the encampment and the university is testing the respective limits of free speech, safe spaces, and campus rules, all in the eye of a furious national storm.
Pressure from beyond the gates – which remain closed to outsiders – is still immense. At least 10 GOP lawmakers have called for Shafik’s resignation. Vice President Kamala Harris’ husband Doug Emhoff held talks with Jewish Campus leaders on Thursday. Ilhan Omar, of the “squad” faction of progressive Democrats, has visited the encampment, where her daughter was arrested last week. And adding further fuel to the fire, Hamas itself has expressed support for the student protests.
Meanwhile, as Thursday’s campus arrests elsewhere in the country threatened to inflame protests further, the basic standoff at Columbia remains unresolved.
As the Shafik email drop put it: “We have our demands; they have theirs.”
Haiti's new interim Prime Minister Michel Patrick Boisvert holds a glass with a drink after a transitional council took power with the aim of returning stability to the country, where gang violence has caused chaos and misery, on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, Haiti April 25, 2024.
Haiti’s Prime Minister Ariel Henry formally resigned on Thursday to be replaced by Finance Minister Michel Patrick Boisvert, who will work with a newly sworn in transitional council. Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, has been ravaged by gang violence and effectively without a prime minister since March 12.
Get up to speed: Henry agreed to step down last month after gangs blocked his reentry to the country from Kenya, where he was trying to secure a multinational security force to assist him in restoring law and order to the country.
Many of the gangs are led by a man named Jimmy Chérizier, aka Barbecue. They have taken advantage of the power vacuum left by Henry’s absence and are now in control of about 80% of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and large swaths of the country. Barbecue said last month he would consider laying down weapons if armed groups were allowed to take part in talks to establish the new government.
Boisvert and thenine-member council, of which seven have voting powers, have a steep climb to tackle the gang violence. The council will appoint a provisional electoral commission, a requirement before elections can take place, and establish a national security council.Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, has been engulfed in violent gang warfare and without a leader since its former prime minister, Ariel Henry, was barred reentry to the country on March 12. Henry formally resigned on Thursday, and a new transitional government was sworn in.
The chaos has triggered a major wave of internal displacement, putting its border with the Dominican Republic, in a state of crisis. The Dominican Republic has doubled down on border security in response, but relations between the two countries, which share the island of Hispaniola, have long been complex.
Haiti was once the richest colony in the world. But under French rule, the island suffered from severe deforestation, leading to soil erosion, reduced agricultural productivity, and increased vulnerability to natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes. When the Dominican Republic gained independence from Haiti in 1844, it introduced reforestation programs that – along with its mountain ranges – have helped it develop a more sustainable agricultural sector. But Haiti's drier land and less fertile soil have made agriculture more challenging.
While the economies of the two countries were comparable in the mid-20th century, the Dominican economy gradually improved over the subsequent decades, while Haiti, long plagued by political instability, has seen its economy deteriorate.
Chaos on Campus: Speaker Johnson's visit fans the flames at Columbia as protests go global
Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Mike Johnson (R-La.) attends a news conference at Columbia University. April 24, 2024.
“There are so many cameras on campus my mom is going to find out I vape on the cover of the New York Times,” said a senior at Columbia University who I shall keep anonymous for her mother’s sake. But her remark accurately summarizes what it's like on campus these days.
On Tuesday, the cameras were out for House Speaker Mike Johnson and several other GOP lawmakers, who held a press conference about antisemitism on the steps of Columbia’s iconic Low Library.
Johnson demanded that the White House crack down on campus protests and called for the resignation of Columbia President Nemat "Minouche" Shafik.
“If these threats and intimidation are not stopped,” he warned, looking out at the two dozen or so tents of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment erected a week ago, “there is an appropriate time for the National Guard.”
Down below, hundreds of students booed and chanted, “Mike, you suck!”
“All students deserve protection, but Jewish students need to be able to go to class,” said House Education Committee Chair Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., in an interview with GZERO following the press conference. “Congress is investigating to see if further government action is necessary to ensure the encampment is cleared.”
With the end of the semester just days away, many Jewish students have left campus early or are participating in classes online because the protests on and outside of campus have made them feel unsafe.
The night before, the university had, at the last minute, extended by 48 hours a deadline for protesters to clear the encampment or face possible police action after organizers had agreed to take down several tents and remove non-Columbia people from the encampment.
But the protesters continue to demand three things: that the university’s endowment divest from all companies and organizations that do business with Israel or are profiting from the war, that the university publish a list of all its investments, and that the school grant amnesty for the student protesters who have been suspended in earlier crackdowns on Gaza-related protests.
“We need the university to meet our demands. That is the only way the encampment will be moved,” said students representing the protesters during a press conference. The students have vowed to stay at least through graduation on May 15 if their demands aren’t met.
Outside of Columbia, the encampment and arrests have inspired student protests around the globe. Twenty protesters were arrested at the University of Texas campus in Austin, as new protests continued erupting in places like Pittsburgh and San Antonio. Solidarity encampments have sprung up at over 40 colleges in the United States and as far afield as universities in Cairo, Paris, and Sydney, Australia.
Tomorrow brings what could be a sizable pro-Israel protest led by several prominent Christian conservative activists in the early evening and then another tense night of negotiations for the encampment.
One thing is for sure: The cameras will only multiply as this standoff comes to a head — so students who don't want their parents to catch them vaping should probably stay home.
Pro-Palestine protesters hold placards expressing their opinion as they participate in a sit-in demonstration at New York University.
Across the US, college students have been protesting, sleeping outside, and even getting arrested for trying to force their schools to divest from companies with ties to Israel. Meanwhile, it's been business as usual on Capitol Hill, where the Senate approved a $95.3 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan late Tuesday. The bill, which includes $17 billion in wartime assistance to Israel plus $9 billion for humanitarian aid in Gaza, is now heading for President Joe Biden's desk, where it is expected to be signed.
Student protesters have been targeting companies like Hewlett Packard, Lockheed Martin, and Airbnb, identified by the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement as benefitting the Israeli government, which they blame for the 34,183 Palestinians who have died from Israeli attacks on Gaza since Oct. 7. At Columbia College, the oldest undergraduate college at Columbia, 76.5% of students voted this week for the university’s $13.6 billion endowment to divest from Israel. Divestment is being pushed on campuses across the country, from Columbia and Yale to the University of Michigan and Berkeley, to name a few.
Universities appear unlikely to cave to protesters' demands and are instead bracing for chaotic ends to the semester. Columbia has moved to hybrid learning in acknowledgment that many students, particularly Jewish students, report feeling unsafe on campus. Meanwhile, colleges are weighing whether it is possible to hold graduation ceremonies without them becoming high-profile stages for protest.
Yet, despite intense student activism on campuses, there was no sign of public protest against the aid package on Capitol Hill this week.
Biden knows he is facing a possible backlash from Gen Z voters over Gaza and US funding for Israel. The president had hoped tougher talk on Israel would boost his reelection bid, but with less than seven months before Nov. 5, the protests and aid package could make it more difficult for him to get young voters to the polls.
A coalition of Columbia Faculty speak on behalf of Columbia students, in support freedom of expression, and against recent police arrests of students on the Columbia University campus, as protests continue inside and outside the university during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in New York City, U.S., April 22, 2024.
Protests over the war in Gaza were spreading to colleges beyond Columbia University on Monday. At Yale University, 50 pro-Palestine protestors were arrested, while Harvard University shut down its lawns for the week over rumors that an encampment similar to the one occupying the Columbia lawns was being organized.
Meanwhile, pro-Palestine protesters at New York University have breached school barricades and taken over the campus plaza, where they have vowed to stay despite orders from school administrators to vacate.
At Columbia – where unrest has continued to grow over the 108 students arrested last week – classes have gone online, and the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” is bigger than ever on its sixth day. Professors held a rally on the library steps calling for university President Nemat Shafik to resign over concerns about institutional freedom after her Congressional hearing last Wednesday, and outrage over her decision to arrest and suspend students.
And it’s not just the professors. Earlier Monday, all of New York’s GOP House members signed a letter, calling on Shafik to resign. The school also lost the support of billionaire Robert Kraft, who said he’s lost confidence in the university’s ability to protect Jewish students.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak speaks during a press conference at Downing Street in London, Britain, April 22, 2024.
On Monday, Britain's parliament voted to put asylum seekers on one-way flights to Rwanda after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced that the UK would be ready to begin deporting asylum-seekers to Rwanda within the next few months.
Sunak has vowed to put a stop to the some 30,000 refugees who entered the UK by crossing the English Channel last year. The idea to send migrants to Rwanda was first introduced by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson in 2022. Under the plan, regardless of a refugee’s country of origin, they will be shipped to Rwanda and forced to submit their asylum applications there instead of in the UK.
The legislation is a response to a UK Supreme Court ruling that deemed such deportations a violation of international law because of Rwanda’s poor human rights record and because refugees would be at risk of being returned from Rwanda to their home countries, where they could face harm.
The plan is being criticized as a highly expensive gimmick for Sunak, who is facing significant political pressure as his party risks defeat in the upcoming general elections. The UK has already transferred $178 million to Rwanda although no refugees have been sent so far. He remains committed to the plan, asserting that preparations, including chartered jets and an airfield on standby, are complete for the flights expected to start in 10 to 12 weeks. However, UN rights experts have cautioned that airlines participating could face legal repercussions for complicity in violating international law.