Columbia University protest for Palestine is also protest for Harlem says student movement

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Pro-Palestinian Columbia University student protesters instituted a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on the West Lawn of the campus just a day after an NYPD sweep on the corresponding East Lawn led to more than a hundred trespassing arrests on Thursday, April 18, in demonstrations that are resonating beyond New York City and have since garnered scrutiny all the way up to the White House. 

Yet despite the gated checkpoints and police presence surrounding the campus, university life went on as several news organizations, including the AmNews, were permitted to enter last Friday to cover the protests. Students scanned themselves in while pausing to snap photos of the blooming cherry blossom trees on College Walk. Tardy scholars dashed across campus in hopes of making class on time. And across from the encampment, soon-to-be graduates practiced their powder blue-robbed strut to a silent tune of “Pomp and Circumstance.” 

Even the protest zone itself was a far cry from anarchy and lawlessness. Student demonstrators erected their own checkpoint and asked for IDs to those entering. Reporters were directed to a makeshift press box, made from duct-taping a rectangle to the grass, where students shared their stories. A stockpile of food, drinks and blankets continued to grow throughout the afternoon thanks to donations from sympathetic classmates, faculty and local community members. 

One of the arrested students, an undergraduate who asked to be identified by their first name Jamie, told the AmNews that Thursday’s sweep was nothing but “a minute piece of the entire liberation movement.”

“Ultimately, us Ivy League students will be fine…but at the end of the day, this is for Palestine,” they said. “Something that really made us so proud is that we heard that Gazans were speaking about the ‘Gaza Solidarity Encampment.’ And that is enough. If the school chooses to suspend us, the school wants to send NYPD on us, we know that Gaza is proud of us.”

The students’ defiance stems from five specific demands made by the Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) coalition to the school, ranging from financial divestment from companies with Zionist ties to severing study-abroad relationships with Israeli academic institutions, along with calling for a permanent ceasefire as the death toll in Gaza now tops 34,000 people. 

To be clear, Columbia does not publicly share its full investment portfolio, which protesters said they need easier access to in order to identify what exactly they want it to divest from. A school spokesperson said the university welcomes “an opportunity to discuss the topic of transparency with our community, and to hear where additional information would be impactful.” Currently, an established process is available for students and staff to request information about university holdings.

But the demonstrators said they are also fighting for Harlem, specifically calling for the school to end expansion uptown and provide reparations and supportive housing for local residents in what they call an “end to all interlocking systems of oppression through collective action and solidarity with oppressed people worldwide.” Columbia is one of the city’s largest residential landlords and frequently accused of gentrifying its neighboring communities, many which boast significant Black and brown populations. 

On Saturday, suspended students marched from Washington Heights to Morningside Heights, where the main campus is located, to underscore the connection between uptown and the Middle East, according to student paper Columbia Spectator.

The student organizers said the movement draws from the Protests of 1968, which similarly addressed both international conflict and local conditions of the neighboring Black and brown population, as the uprising denounced American involvement in Vietnam while rallying against a segregated gym on campus.

Beyond Palestine and Harlem, the protesters also asked for no policing on campus. Columbia is private property and traditionally does not allow NYPD onsite unless a crime is committed. But Thursday’s sweep came at the behest of university president Minouche Shafik after the students refused to leave. They were largely issued trespassing summons, according to police. Rep. Ilhan Omar’s daughter Isra Hirsi, a Barnard College student, was among those arrested. The Democratic Congresswoman gushed over X, formerly known as Twitter, as a proud mom.

“She has always led with courage and compassion, from organizing a statewide school walkout on the 20th anniversary of Columbine at the age of 15, to leading the biggest youth climate rally at our nation’s Capitol at 16, and now pushing her school to stand against genocide,” wrote Rep. Omar (MN-5). “Stepping up to change what you can’t tolerate is why we as a country have the right to speech, assembly, and petition enshrined in our constitution.”

Following the arrests, NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell told reporters that “the students that were arrested were peaceful” and “offered no resistance whatsoever” although he did recite several insults hurled at his officers by protesters. On Monday, April 22, NYPD Deputy Commissioner Public Information Tarik Sheppard maintained there were “no credible threats to any group or individual coming from this protest.” Yet the Strategic Response Group, the department’s militarized protest unit, was deployed. 

Shafik also announced that this past Monday’s classes were relegated to online and a university official advised faculty to provide “the option of remote learning — and when possible, assessment — to students who are seeking academic accommodations due to campus activity for either religious reasons or approved disability accommodation reasons.”
Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member who writes about public safety for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.