Police clear pro-Palestinian protesters from Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall
NEW YORK — The pro-Palestinian demonstration that paralyzed Columbia University ended in dramatic fashion late Tuesday, when police carrying riot shields swarmed the Ivy League campus, stormed an administration building that protesters had taken over the previous night and made dozens of arrests.
According to a statement from a Columbia spokesperson, New York City officers entered the campus after the university requested assistance. A tent camp on the school grounds to protest the war between Israel and Hamas was cleared, along with Hamilton Hall, where a stream of officers used a ladder to climb through a second-floor window. Protesters took over the venue about twenty hours earlier.
“After the university learned overnight that Hamilton Hall was occupied, vandalized and blocked, we were left with no choice,” the school said. “The decision to contact the NYPD was in response to the actions of the protesters, not the cause they are advocating. We have made it clear that life on campus cannot be interrupted indefinitely by protesters who break the rules and the law.”
NYPD spokesman Carlos Nieves said he had no immediate reports of any injuries. The arrests came after protesters shook off an earlier ultimatum to leave the encampment on Monday or be suspended and unfolded as other universities stepped up efforts to end demonstrations against the Israel-Hamas war led by Columbia were inspired.
A few blocks away at the City College of New York, protesters clashed with police outside the public university’s main entrance. A video posted to social media late Tuesday by news reporters at the scene showed officers knocking some people to the ground and pushing others as they removed people from the streets and sidewalks. Many detained demonstrators were driven away on city buses.
An encampment has been in place at the university, part of the City University of New York system, since Thursday. After police arrived on campus Tuesday, NYPD officers lowered a Palestinian flag atop the City College flagpole, shaped it into a ball and threw it on the ground before raising an American flag.
Police have searched other campuses across the US in the past two weeks, leading to confrontations and more than a thousand arrests. On rarer occasions, university officials and protest leaders entered into agreements to limit disruption to campus life and upcoming commencement ceremonies.
Brown University, another member of the Ivy League, reached an agreement with protesters on its Rhode Island campus on Tuesday. Protesters said they would close their encampment in exchange for administrators voting in October to consider divestment. The compromise appeared to mark the first time a U.S. board voted on divestments in the wake of the protests.
Columbia’s police action came on the 56th anniversary of a similar action to overturn the occupation of Hamilton Hall by students protesting racism and the Vietnam War.
Police said earlier Tuesday that officers would not enter the site without a request from the college administration or an impending emergency. Now, law enforcement will be on site through May 17, the end of the university’s commencement events.
Fabien Lugo, a freshman accounting student who said he was not involved in the protests, said he opposed the university’s decision to involve police.
“This is too intense,” he said. “It feels more like an escalation than a de-escalation.”
In a letter to senior NYPD officials, Columbia President Minouche Shafik said the administration made the request for police to remove protesters from the occupied building and a nearby tent camp “with the deepest regret.”
Shafik also supported the idea, first raised earlier in the day by New York City Mayor Eric Adams, that the group occupying Hamilton was “led by individuals not affiliated with the university.”
Neither provided specific evidence to support this claim, which was disputed by protest organizers and participants.
NYPD officials made similar claims about “outside agitators” during the massive popular demonstrations against racial injustice that erupted in the city following the death of George Floyd in 2020. In some cases, top officials incorrectly labeled the peaceful marches organized by well-known local residents. activists as the work of violent extremists.
Before officers arrived in Columbia, the White House condemned the standoffs there and at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, where protesters had occupied two buildings for more than a week until baton-wielding officers intervened early Tuesday and arrested 25 people.
President Joe Biden believes students occupying an academic building is “absolutely the wrong approach” and “not an example of peaceful protest,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said.
Later, former President Donald Trump called into Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News Channel to comment on the unrest in Columbia as live footage of police clearing Hamilton Hall was broadcast. Trump praised the officers.
“But it should never have gotten to this point,” he told Hannity. “And they should have done it a lot sooner than before they took over the building because it would have been a lot easier if they were in tents instead of in a building. And enormous damage has also been caused.”
The nationwide campus protests began in Columbia in response to Israel’s offensive in Gaza after Hamas launched a deadly attack on southern Israel on October 7. Militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took about 250 hostages. Israel vowed to eradicate Hamas and has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the local health ministry.
As ceasefire negotiations appeared to gain momentum, it was not clear whether these talks would lead to an easing of protests.
Israel and its supporters have branded the university protests as anti-Semitic, while Israel’s critics say it is using the accusations to silence the opposition. Although some protesters have been caught on camera making anti-Semitic comments or violent threats, protest organizers, some of whom are Jewish, say it is a peaceful movement aimed at defending Palestinian rights and protesting the war.
Protesters first set up a tent camp on Columbia’s campus almost two weeks ago. The school sent police to clear the tents the next day, arresting more than 100 people and allowing students to return — sparking a wave of similar encampments on campuses across the country.
Negotiations between the protesters and the college came to a standstill in recent days, and the school set a deadline for activists to leave the tent camp Monday afternoon or be suspended.
Instead, the protesters defied the ultimatum and took over Hamilton Hall early Tuesday, complete with furniture and metal barricades. The protesters named the building Hind’s Hall, in honor of a young girl killed under Israeli fire in Gaza, and called for demands for divestment, financial transparency and amnesty.
Columbia’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors said faculty efforts to defuse the situation have been repeatedly ignored by the university’s administration, despite school bylaws requiring consultation.
Ilana Lewkovitch, a self-described “left-wing Zionist” student at Columbia, said it has been difficult to concentrate on school for weeks. Her exams were disrupted by chants of ‘Say it loud, say it clear, we want the Zionists out of here’.
Lewkovitch, who identifies as Jewish, said she wishes the current pro-Palestinian protests would be more open to people like her, who criticize Israel’s war policies but believe there should be an Israeli state.
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Dazio reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press journalists from around the country contributed to this report, including Cedar Attanasio, Jonathan Mattise, Colleen Long, Karen Matthews, Jim Vertuno, Hannah Schoenbaum, Sarah Brumfield, Christopher Weber, Carolyn Thompson, Dave Collins, Makiya Seminera, Philip Marcelo and Corey Williams.