Exactly 56 years since the New York City Police Department violently dispersed anti-Vietnam War protesters who'd taken over a campus building, Columbia University administrators called on police to break up pro-Palestinian encampments and clear out protesters who had occupied the same building Tuesday night.
More than 100 people were arrested, according to the NYPD. Police in riot gear used ramps and broke windows to enter Hamilton Hall, where protesters had taken over the building earlier that day. They renamed it "Hind's Hall" after Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old girl in Gaza who had begged for help from first responders from inside a car as an Israeli tank closed in. She and the first responders who were deployed to save her were found dead days later.
An NYPD official had said earlier that evening that those inside Hamilton Hall would be charged with third-degree burglary, criminal mischief and trespassing. School and city officials said that “outside agitators” had been involved, but they have not identified those individuals, said how many non-students were detained or provided credible evidence for the claim.
Students and faculty members have criticized the police operation, carried out at Columbia President Nemat Shafik’s request, as a huge escalation. In a letter to the NYPD, Shafik wrote that the administration had been left with “no choice” after discussions with organizers of the encampment broke down, and that they called the police to campus "with the utmost regret."
The university's chapter of the American Association of University Professors said its faculty offered to help defuse the situation on campus but had been "shut out by senior University leadership."
Shafik said in a statement Wednesday morning that she was "filled with deep sadness" at the turn of events and thanked the NYPD "for their incredible professionalism and support." She also acknowledged the school’s “long and proud tradition of protest” before justifying the police intervention by calling the occupation of Hamilton Hall one of several “acts of destruction, not political speech.”
Shafik's decision to call the cops on protesters in mid-April helped to set off string of pro-Palestinian protests and Gaza solidarity encampments at other college campuses across the country. University administrations have handled protesters and their demands in drastically different ways, ranging from negotiating to the most draconian tactic of calling in the police or state troopers.
After arresting protesters at Columbia, the NYPD carried out a similar operation at City College of New York near midnight, clearing out an encampment and arresting protesters at the request of the university's president. Mayor Eric Adams said Wednesday morning that a total of about 300 protesters had been arrested at CCNY and Columbia.
On the other side of the country, the Daily Bruin reports that the University of California, Los Angeles, called police onto campus as counterprotesters carrying Israeli flags tried to tear down a pro-Palestinian encampment, throwing a metal fence and lit fireworks into the encampment.