NEW YORK
\nNew York City police arrested dozens of pro-Palestinian demonstrators holed up in an academic building on Columbia University campus late on Tuesday and removed a protest encampment the Ivy League school had sought to dismantle for nearly two weeks.
\nShortly after police moved in, Columbia University President Minouche Shafik released a letter in which she requested police stay on campus until at least May 17\u2013two days after graduation\u2013\u201cto maintain order and ensure that encampments are not re-established.\u201d
\nWithin three hours the campus had been cleared of protesters, said a police spokesperson, adding \u201cdozens\u201d of arrests were made.
\nAt the start of the police operation around nine pm throngs of helmeted police marched onto the elite campus in upper Manhattan, a focal point of student rallies that have spread to dozens of schools across the US in recent days expressing opposition to Israel\u2019s war in Gaza.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re clearing it out,\u201d the police officers yelled.
\nSoon after, a long line of officers climbed into Hamilton Hall, an academic building that protesters had broken into and occupied in the early morning hours of Tuesday. Police entered through a second-story window, using a police vehicle equipped with a ladder.
\nStudents standing outside the hall jeered police with shouts of \u201cShame, shame!\u201d
\nPolice were seen loading dozens of detainees onto a bus, each with their hands bound behind their backs by zip-ties, the entire scene illuminated with flashing red and blue lights of police vehicles.
\n\u201cFree, free, free Palestine,\u201d chanted protesters outside the building. Others yelled, \u201cLet the students go.\u201d
\n\u201cColumbia will be proud of these students in five years,\u201d said Sueda Polat, one of the student negotiators for Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the coalition of student groups that have organized the protests.
\nShe said students did not pose a danger and called on police to back down, speaking as officers shouted at her and others to retreat or leave campus.
\nProtest demands
\nProtesters were seeking three demands from Columbia: divestment from companies supporting Israel\u2019s government, greater transparency in university finances, and amnesty for students and faculty disciplined over the protests.
\nPresident Shafik this week said Columbia would not divest from finances in Israel. Instead, she offered to invest in health and education in Gaza and make Columbia\u2019s direct investment holdings more transparent.
\nIn her letter released on Tuesday, Shafik said the Hamilton Hall occupiers had vandalized University property and were trespassing, and that encampment protesters were suspended for trespassing. The university earlier warned that students taking part in the Hamilton Hall occupation faced academic expulsion.
\nThe occupation began overnight when protesters broke windows, stormed inside and unfurled a banner reading \u201cHind\u2019s Hall,\u201d saying they were renaming the building for a 6-year-old Palestinian child killed in Gaza by the Israeli military.
\nThe eight-story, neo-classical building has been the site of various student occupations dating back to the 1960s.
\nAt an evening news briefing held a few hours before police entered Columbia, Mayor Eric Adams and city police officials said the Hamilton Hall takeover was instigated by \u201coutside agitators\u201d who lack any affiliation with Columbia and are known to law enforcement for provoking lawlessness.
\nPolice said they based their conclusions in part on escalating tactics in the occupation, including vandalism, use of barricades to block entrances and destruction of security cameras.
\nOne of the student leaders of the protest, Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian scholar attending Columbia\u2019s School of International and Public Affairs, disputed assertions that outsiders led the occupation.
\n\u201cDisruptions on campus have created a threatening environment for many of our Jewish students and faculty and a noisy distraction that interferes with the teaching, learning and preparing for final exams,\u201d the university said in a statement on Tuesday before police moved in.
\nProtests across country
\nThe October 7 attack on southern Israel by Hamas militants from Gaza, and the ensuing Israeli offensive on the Palestinian enclave, have unleashed the biggest outpouring of U.S. student activism since the anti-racism protests of 2020.
\nPro-Palestinian demonstrators also gathered at City College New York in Harlem late Tuesday, with the university ordering individuals off the campus, New York Police Department Deputy Commissioner Kaz Daughtry said in an X post. Dozens of protesters were arrested, the New York Times reported.
\nDaughtry also said the university had requested police presence to assist in dispersing trespassers.
\nThe Chancellor at the University of California in Los Angeles said late Tuesday that law enforcement was engaged to investigate \u2018recent acts of violence\u2019 by a group of demonstrators and increased security in the area.
\nMany of the demonstrations across the country have been met with counter-protesters accusing them of fomenting anti-Jewish hatred. The pro-Palestinian side, including Jews opposed to Israeli actions in Gaza, say they are being unfairly branded as antisemitic for criticizing Israel\u2019s government and expressing support for human rights.
\nThe issue has taken on political overtones in the run-up to the US presidential election in November, with Republicans accusing some university administrators of turning a blind eye to antisemitic rhetoric and harassment.
\nWhite House spokesperson John Kirby on Tuesday called the occupation of campus buildings \u201cthe wrong approach.\u201d
\nNew York Police Department officials had stressed before Tuesday night\u2019s sweep that officers would refrain from entering the campus unless Columbia administrators invited their presence, as they did on April 18, when NYPD officers removed an earlier encampment. More than 100 arrests were made at that time, stirring an outcry by many students and staff.
\nDozens of tents pitched on a hedge-lined grassy area\u2013beside a smaller lawn since planted with hundreds of small Israeli flags \u2013 were put back up days later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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