NEW YORK — The pro-Palestinian demonstration that paralyzed Columbia University ended in dramatic fashion Tuesday night, with police carrying riot shields storming the Ivy League campus, storming an administrative building that protesters occupied the night before and making dozens of arrests.
A statement released by a Columbia spokesperson said New York City police officers entered the campus after the university requested assistance. A tent camp on school grounds to protest the Israel-Hamas war was evacuated, along with Hamilton Hall, where a group of officers used a ladder to climb through a second-story window. Protesters took over the hall about 20 hours earlier.
“After the University learned overnight that Hamilton Hall had been occupied, vandalized and locked down, we had no choice,” the school said. “The decision to contact the NYPD was in response to the protesters’ actions, not the cause they champion. We have made it clear that campus life cannot be disrupted indefinitely by protesters who violate the rules and the law.”
NYPD spokesman Carlos Nieves said he had no immediate reports of any injuries. The arrests came after protesters ignored an earlier ultimatum to leave the camp on Monday or face suspension, and unfolded as other universities stepped up efforts to end demonstrations against the Israel-Hamas war that were inspired by Colombia.
A few blocks away, at the City College of New York, protesters were clashing with police outside the public college’s main gate. Video posted on social media by reporters at the scene Tuesday night showed officers placing some people on the ground and pushing others as they moved people away from streets and sidewalks. Many detained protesters were expelled onto city buses.
A camp at the college, part of the City University of New York system, has been operating since Thursday. After police arrived on campus Tuesday, NYPD officers lowered a Palestinian flag to the top of City College’s flagpole, rolled it up and threw it to the ground before raising the American flag.
Police have swept other U.S. campuses over the past two weeks, leading to clashes and more than 1,000 arrests. In rarer cases, university officials and protest leaders have reached agreements to restrict disruption of campus life and upcoming graduation ceremonies.
Brown University, another Ivy League member, reached a settlement Tuesday with protesters on its Rhode Island campus. Protesters said they would close their camp in exchange for administrators voting to consider divestment in October. The commitment appears to mark the first time a U.S. college has agreed to vote on divestment in the wake of the protests.
The Columbia police action came on the 56th anniversary of a similar action to quell the occupation of Hamilton Hall by students protesting racism and the Vietnam War.
The police department said Tuesday that officers would not enter the location without a request from the college administration or an imminent emergency. Now, law enforcement will be present until May 17, the end of the university’s graduation events.
Fabien Lugo, a first-year accounting student who said he was not involved in the protests, said he opposed the university’s decision to call the police.
“This is very intense,” he said. “It feels more like escalation than de-escalation.”
In a letter to senior NYPD officials, Columbia President Minouche Shafik said the administration was making the request for police to remove protesters from the occupied building and a nearby encampment “with the greatest regret.”
Shafik also supported the idea, first put forward by New York City Mayor Eric Adams earlier in the day, that the group that occupied Hamilton was “led by individuals who are 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 grassroots demonstrations against racial injustice that erupted across the city following the death of George Floyd in 2020. In some cases, senior police officials falsely labeled neighborhood-organized marches peaceful known. activists as the work of violent extremists.
Before agents arrived in Columbia, the White House condemned the standoffs there and at California State Polytechnic University in Humboldt, where protesters occupied two buildings for more than a week until baton-wielding agents intervened Tuesday morning. fair and arrested 25 people.
President Joe Biden believes the occupation of students in an academic building is “absolutely the wrong approach” and “is not an example of peaceful protest,” said National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.
Former President Donald Trump later called into Sean Hannity’s Fox News Channel show to comment on the turmoil in Columbia as live footage of police clearing Hamilton Hall was broadcast. Trump praised the officers.
“But it never should have come to this,” he told Hannity. “And they should have done that much sooner than before they took over the building, because it would have been a lot easier if they were in tents instead of a building. And tremendous damage was also done.”
National 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 around 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took around 250 hostages. Promising to eradicate Hamas, Israel killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the local health ministry.
As ceasefire talks appeared to gain momentum, it was unclear whether those talks would inspire an easing of protests.
Israel and its supporters have called the university protests anti-Semitic, while Israel’s critics say the country uses such allegations to silence 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.
On the Columbia campus, protesters first set up a camp nearly two weeks ago. The school sent police to clear the tents the next day, arresting more than 100 people, only for the students to return — and inspire a wave of similar camps on campuses across the country.
Negotiations between the protesters and the school have stalled in recent days, and the school set a deadline for the activists to leave the camp on Monday afternoon or face suspension.
Instead, protesters defied the ultimatum and occupied Hamilton Hall on Tuesday morning, moving furniture and metal barricades. Protesters dubbed the building Hind’s Hall, after a young woman who was killed in Gaza under Israeli fire, and issued demands for divestment, financial transparency and amnesty.
The Columbia chapter of the American Association of University Professors said faculty efforts to help calm the situation were repeatedly ignored by the university administration, despite school statutes requiring consultation.
Ilana Lewkovitch, a self-described “left-wing Zionist” student at Columbia, said it has been difficult to focus on school for weeks. Her exams were interrupted with shouts of “say it loud, say it clearly, we want the Zionists out of here.”
Lewkovitch, who identifies as Jewish, said she wishes the current pro-Palestine protests were 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. .
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