Protesters take over Columbia University building

Protesters on the Columbia University campus took control of an academic building Tuesday morning, as pro-Palestinian demonstrations continue to spread on college campuses across the country in opposition to the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. in Gaza.

Protesters barricaded entrances and raised a Palestinian flag outside a window of the university’s Hamilton Hall, the Associated Press reported.

Video footage shows the protesters, who also appear to have given the building a new name, crossing their arms in front of the doors and carrying furniture and metal barricades into the hallway. The same building was also occupied at a civil rights and anti-Vietnam War protest in 1968, according to the AP.

“An autonomous group has reclaimed Hind’s Hall, formerly known as ‘Hamilton Hall,’ named after Hind Rajab, a Gaza martyr murdered at the hands of the genocidal state of Israel at the age of six,” said CU Apartheid Divest, a coalition of pro-Palestinian student organizations at the university, he said in a statement posted Tuesday on the X social media platform.

“This escalation represents the next generation of the student movements of 1968, 1985 and 1992, which Columbia once suppressed and which today celebrates,” the statement continues. “Protesters expressed their intention to remain in Hind’s Hall until Columbia gives in to CUAD’s three demands: divestment, financial transparency and amnesty.”

Columbia spokesman Ben Chang said protesters “occupied” the hall early in the morning and that “the safety of every member of this community is paramount.”

“The first step we took was to alert the campus community – in light of the protest activity, we are asking members of the university community who can avoid coming to the Morningside campus to do so; essential personnel must report to work in accordance with university policy,” Chang told The Hill in an emailed statement. “Access to campus has been limited to students residing in on-campus residential buildings and employees providing essential services to campus buildings, laboratories and residential student life.”

More than 1,000 people have been arrested on campuses as the end of the school year approaches, according to the AP. The protests have also expanded outside the US, into Canada, according to The Canadian Press, and into Europe. However, some Jewish students said the protests made them feel unsafe.

Columbia recently banned a student protest leader from campus who said “Zionists don’t deserve to live.”

Khymani James, an organizer of pro-Palestinian protests at the school, also said in a recently resurfaced video earlier this year that people should “be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.”

James apologized for the comments that resurfaced on Friday, acknowledging they were “a mistake.” Yet. the White House sharply criticized his previous comments, calling them “appalling.”

“These dangerous and appalling statements are stomach-churning and should serve as a wake-up call. It is horrible to advocate the murder of Jews,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates said in the statement.

“President Biden has made clear that violent rhetoric, hate speech and anti-Semitic comments have no place in America and he will always oppose them,” he added.

The Associated Press contributed