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New York City police officers entered the grounds of Columbia University on Tuesday night in an apparent effort to disperse pro-Palestinian protesters who took over a campus building after a nearly two-week standoff with administrators of the Ivy League school.
Live television images showed police entering the elite campus in upper Manhattan, which has been the focal point of student protests that have spread to dozens of schools across the U.S. expressing opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza.
“We’re clearing it out” police in a riot unit yelled as they marched up to the barricaded entrance to the building. While dozens more police marched to the protest encampment.
“Shame! shame!” jeered many onlooking undergrads still outside on campus.
Columbia University officials earlier on Tuesday threatened academic expulsion of the students who seized Hamilton Hall.
“Hind’s Hall”
The occupation began overnight when protesters broke windows, stormed inside and unfurled a banner reading “Hind’s Hall,” symbolically renaming the building for a 6-year-old Palestinian child killed in Gaza by the Israeli military.
Outside the eight-story, neo-classical building – the site of various student occupations on the campus dating back to the 1960s – protesters blocked the entrance with tables, linked arms to form a barricade and chanted pro-Palestinian slogans.
At 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 “outside agitators” who lack any affiliation with Columbia and are known to law enforcement for provoking lawlessness.
Police 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.
Adams suggested some of the student protesters were not fully aware of “external actors” in their midst.
“We cannot and will not allow what should be a peaceful gathering to turn into a violent spectacle that serves no purpose. We cannot wait until this situation becomes even more serious. This must end now,” the mayor said.
One of the student leaders of the protest, Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian scholar attending Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs on a student visa, disputed assertions that outsiders had initiated the occupation.
“They’re students,” he told Reuters.
A day earlier, the university said it had begun suspending students who defied a deadline for vacating a protest encampment, as school officials declared that several days of talks with protest leaders aimed at dismantling the tents had reached a stalemate.
“Disruptions 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,” the university said in a statement on Tuesday.
New York Police Department officials had stressed before Tuesday night’s 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.
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