As students return to Columbia, the epicenter of a campus protest movement braces for disruption

NEW YORK — As Columbia University resumes classes on Tuesday, students and faculty are bracing for a resumption of the pro-Palestinian protests that rocked the Manhattan campus at the end of the spring semester and ended the protests. a wave of demonstrations at universities rural.

In recent weeks, the university’s new leadership has launched listening sessions to defuse tensions, released a report on anti-Semitism on campus, and distributed new protest guidelines to limit disruptions. But student organizers are undeterred, vowing to ramp up their actions — including potential encampments — until the university agrees to cut ties with companies with ties to Israel.

“As long as Columbia continues to invest and profit from Israeli apartheid, the students will continue to resist,” said Mahmoud Khalil, a doctoral student who represented campus protesters in negotiations with the university. “Not just protests and encampments, the sky is the limit.”

The school year starts less than a month after the dismissal of Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, who twice brought police to campus last spring to clear protest camps. When a small group of students occupied a university building, hundreds police officers stormed the campusarrests were made and the university was put into lockdown.

Since Shafik’s resignation, interim president Katrina Armstrong has spoken to students on both sides of the issue, pledging to balance students’ rights to free speech with a safe learning environment. While the message has inspired cautious optimism among some faculty members, others see the prospect of major disruption as all but inevitable.

“We’re hoping for the best, but we’re all betting on how long it will be before we go back into total lockdown,” said Rebecca Korbin, a history professor who served on Columbia’s anti-Semitism task force. “There haven’t been any monumental changes, so I don’t know why the experience in the fall would look much different than it did in the spring.”

In a report Released Friday, the task force, made up of Columbia faculty, accused the university of allowing “pervasive” anti-Semitism to fester on campus after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. The report recommended that the university overhaul its disciplinary process and require additional sensitivity training for students and staff.

This semester, anti-war demonstrations have already sprung up on college campuses, including one at the University of Michigan resulting in multiple arrestsWhile the few recent protests near Columbia have been limited, there are clear signs of the unrest of last spring.

The university’s tall iron gates, long open to the public, are now guarded. Students must show identification to enter the campus. Inside, private security guards stand at the edge of the lawns that students had taken over for their camps. A new plaque on a nearby fence declares that “camping” is prohibited.

Layla Hussein, a third-year Columbia student who helped lead the orientation program, described the added security measures as an unwanted and hostile distraction.

“We try to create a welcoming environment. It doesn’t help if you look outside and all you see are guards and barricades,” Hussein said.

Others have accused the university of being too lenient with the student protesters, saying a lack of clear guidelines would lead to further unrest this semester. While some of those disciplinary cases are still ongoing, prosecutors have has dropped charges against many of the students arrested last semester and the university has allowed them to return to campus.

“They broke all the rules and they openly state that they will continue to do so,” said Elisha Baker, a third-year student at Columbia who leads an Israel engagement group. She added: “We need to take a serious look at the disciplinary process to ensure that students have a safe learning environment.”

After Jewish students sued Columbia, accusing them of creating a dangerous environment on campus, the university agreed in June to provide a “safe passage liaison” to those concerned about protest activity. In July, Columbia three admins removed who exchanged private text messages disparaging certain speakers during a discussion about Jewish life, in a way that Shafik said tapped into “old anti-Semitic tropes.” One of the administrators had suggested in a text that a campus rabbi could turn concerns about anti-Semitism into a fundraising opportunity.

A Columbia spokesperson said the university has since tightened its guidelines around protests and developed new training for new students on anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

The revised protest rules require organizers to notify the university of planned protests, with the exception of demonstrations that “materially impede the primary purposes of a particular university space.”

“The university may impose restrictions on speech that poses a genuine threat of harassment, that unjustifiably invades an individual’s privacy, or that defames a specific individual,” the guidelines remark.

Like many universities, Columbia is embroiled in a heated debate over the definition of anti-Semitism and whether anti-Zionist statements – common in student protests – should be viewed as a form of discrimination.

At New York University, which also saw large-scale protests and an encampment last spring, an updated code of conduct now warns students that critical statements about Zionism could violate anti-discrimination policies. The move has drawn praise from major Jewish groups but also backlash from student groups and some faculty.

The Columbia task force report defines anti-Semitism as “prejudice, discrimination, hatred or violence directed against Jews, including Jewish Israelis,” “double standards applied to Israel” and exclusion or discrimination based on “real or perceived ties to Israel.”

Eduardo Vergara, a Columbia graduate student who teaches literature in the Spanish department, said many professors entered the semester uncertain about what they could and could not say in class. He said he fully expected to spend much of the semester discussing the war in Gaza and the campus response.

“It feels like everything is calm now,” he added. “I don’t think that will last long.”