Dozens of students at Columbia University in New York City stormed across the campus and took over a building early on Tuesday, just one day after the school began suspending students who defied a deadline to disperse from a pro-Palestinian encampment, according to multiple reports.
Students began barricading themselves inside Hamilton Hall—a building near the South Lawn where the office of the dean is located—at around 12:35 a.m., The New York Times reports.
The protesters linked arms and blocked off the main entrance to the building at the Ivy League institution after previously marching around campus to chants of “free Palestine,” according to the publication.
A statement shared on the social media platform Instagram by student groups said the protesters had “taken matters into their own hands,” and would remain in the building until the university “divests from death.” Protesters have been urging the university to pause its investments in companies that, they claim, are profiting from Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
The statement included video footage that appeared to show the students carrying metal barricades into Hamilton Hall as other students cheered them on.
“This escalation is in line with the historical student movements of 1968, 1985, and 1996 which Columbia repressed then and celebrates now,” the statement read. “This action will force the university to confront the blood on its hands.”
In the statement, the student group further accused the university of having been “complicit” in “Israel’s ongoing genocidal assault on the Gaza strip” for the past seven months.
“The students are on the right side of history,” the statement continued. “We know that the university will remember them as anti-apartheid, anti-genocide activists with moral clarity.”
Protesters Make Demands
According to Politico, protesters hung a sign reading “intifada,” which is Arabic for uprising, from the front of the building.
A spokesperson for the New York Police Department told Politico that law enforcement officers were outside the university campus as of Tuesday; however, they declined to elaborate further on exactly how many officers were on site or whether they had authorization to enter the school grounds.
The Epoch Times has contacted a spokesperson at Columbia University and the New York Police Department for further comment.
The takeover of Hamilton Hall occurred just hours after the university confirmed that it had begun suspending some students. The pro-Palestinian students failed to disband before Monday’s 2 p.m. deadline.
Students have occupied the lawn in the middle of campus—in which graduation ceremonies are scheduled to take place for roughly 15,000 students on May 15—for nearly two weeks while calling on the university to disclose and divest from any of its financial ties to Israel.
They are also calling for an end to alleged “land grabs” in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City and Palestine, no more policing on the university campus, and no academic ties with Israeli universities.
However, negotiations between university officials and student protest leaders broke down earlier in the day when the university rejected their demands, prompting officials to issue the 2 p.m. deadline.
In a statement, Minouche Shafik, Columbia’s president, said that ultimately, the university will not divest from Israel, adding that the school is committed to maintaining its core principles and shared values, which include ensuring no students suffer from harassment and discrimination and no anti-Semitic language is used.
School, Students Fail to Reach Agreement
“Both sides in these discussions put forward robust and thoughtful offers and worked in good faith to reach common ground,” Ms. Shafik said. “We thank them all for their diligent work, long hours, and careful effort and wish they had reached a different outcome.”
While the University will not divest from Israel, it has offered to “develop an expedited timeline for review of new proposals from the students by the Advisory Committee for Socially Responsible Investing, the body that considers divestment matters,” Ms. Shafik noted.
“The University also offered to publish a process for students to access a list of Columbia’s direct investment holdings, and to increase the frequency of updates to that list of holdings,” she added.
Ben Chang, vice president for communications at Columbia University, confirmed the suspensions had begun in a press conference late Monday, USA Today reports.
He added that students had been notified in advance that they would face disciplinary action, including suspension if they did not vacate the encampment by 2 p.m. ET and sign a form committing to abide by student politics until either June 30, 2025, or until their graduation, whichever came first.
The site of the protests has created an unwelcoming environment for many Jewish students and faculty members, he said. It has also been a source of loud noise.
“We’ve been suspending students as part of this next phase of our efforts to ensure safety on campus,” Mr. Chang said.
Mr. Chang did not provide further details regarding how many students from Columbia and its affiliate Barnard College have been disciplined. However, he confirmed that those suspended would not be able to finish the semester or graduate, Axios reports.
They will also be banned from entering any campus housing or academic buildings, he added.
Juliette Fairley contributed to this report.
What do these self righteous radicals expect to accomplish by taking over a building in NYC ? How does this in any way change anything that is happening in the Middle East ??? This is nothing more than unimportant people desperately trying to be relevant.
No coincidence that Columbia University first fostered, raised, and endowed Obama (AKA fake foreign exchange student Barry Soetoro) with the same taught American madness that now comes back upon Columbia and us all. The faces have changed but the weak foreign loser ideology remains the same. You can take the man out of the failed Muslin Middle East, but you cannot take fake failed middle East out of the man.
“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.” – Winston Churchill
Maybe rabies shots should be a prerequisite for Student enrollments! Hydrophobic Fear of being stuck in a Hamas ruled Gaza city within the area of the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
I wonder, HAD THIS BEEN Trump supporters OR just generally white male conservatives, who had done ANY OF THIS.. HOW SWIFTLY Punishment would have come to them?!
Just a prelude to a bigger outbreak of lawlessness the Chicago Obama Community organized and trained Alinsky misfits will create during the upcoming Democrat Chicago Convention. You just gotta love it to see them cast their Falafels upon that waters only to see them return back upon them after many confused decades. The 1968 Demonstrators killed Hubert Humphrey’s chance to be President like these are killing Biden’s, but had the guts to hit the streets without wearing masks of cowardice. That was back then when men were men and sheep were not nervous, like these Marxist useful idiot students about to kill any chance to use their degrees for employment, making all those Biden forgiven student loans not only useless, but stolen and thrown away, like what democrats do with most of our money we entrust to them. This Robinhood wanna be democrat party robs not from the rich to give to the poor, but takes from the cogent successful and gives to the naïve and stupid. Privileged Party leaders these days become the new nobility, pretending to play the noble role of Richard the Lionheart, returning from a Jew killing crusade in the middle east, only to come off as the weak socialist “mouse that roared” redistributors of stolen American taxpayer wealth, most time in the figures and images of weak miseducated emotionally controlled students.