USAnalysis

A pro-Palestinian protest that began at Columbia University has taken hold in hundreds of US campuses

At the heart of the standoff is the tension between the right to peaceful protest and the disputed contention the college protests have an anti-Semitic intent

Pro-Palestine student protesters outside Hamilton Hall on the campus of Columbia University in New York after fellow protesters seized the building on Tuesday. Photograph: Bing Guan/The New York Times

Keith Duggan's face
Keith Duggan in New York
Tue Apr 30 2024 - 17:23

The US’s universities are in chaos. A Columbia University building stormed and occupied by protesters. A walkout at the University of California, Los Angeles. State troopers and local police hauling students from the lawns at the Austin campus of the University of Texas. Barricades dismantled and tossed at George Washington University, just a five-minute walk from the White House.

The protest that began as a small, peaceful demonstration on the lawn at Columbia a fortnight ago has taken hold in hundreds of campuses across the United States as pro-Palestinian protesters, including faculty members, make their voices heard – and those echoes may reverberate most loudly at November time.

Early on Tuesday the beleaguered administration at Columbia confirmed that overnight students had gained access to Hamilton Hall, the building that was previously seized during the 1968 student protests against the Vietnam war, and used tables and furnishings to barricade its doors. “The safety of every single member of this community is paramount. The first step we have taken is to ask members of the university community who can avoid coming in to do so,” the university said.

Outside a spokesman for the protesters, Jared, a Jewish student from New England, appeared on CNN to reiterate what he had told The Irish Times after the speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, visited the campus last Wednesday.

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“All talk of anti-Semitism, I think, is a tactic designed to keep people afraid and try to ignore what we are saying. And what we are saying is that there is a genocide going on in Gaza which our government is funding and which our university is profiting off,” he said.

On Monday four Irish students at Columbia gathered to speak about a fortnight that has left the university struggling to control its campus in the defining semester of the academic year, with exams and commencement to prepare for.

“I think overall it has been extremely tense, stressful and nerve wracking. I’ve also found the collective action inspiring,” said Aoife Houlihan, a Trinity College Dublin student in Columbia as part of a dual programme. “But class work, assignments, recreational time is difficult.”

“I think the administration’s treatment of students and its reaction to protests since October has been an on-going joke,” said her friend, Monica Thorne. “And since the encampment emerged, it has been embarrassing.”

Con Moran, a Columbia undergraduate, said he had “encountered a lot more Islamophobic events on campus than anti-Semitic”, and said the more extreme verbal abuses had occurred off campus.

Peter Gorman said the response of the university’s administration, which asked the New York City police department to remove protesters from the campus lawn on April 17th, was the result of “enormous top-down pressure”.

“It came in the wake of the congressional hearing [into allegations of anti-Semitism at elite universities], and you got the sense that [Columbia] president [Minouche] Shafik ... it was either her job, like the presidents at Penn and Harvard [who resigned in the wake of the Congress hearing], or make a pretty strong statement. I work in the neuroscience institute up town and even in that building there is a lot of fear that they will lose funding because there have been threats thrown around,” he said.

At the heart of the standoff is the tension between the right to peaceful protest, protected by the US constitution first amendment, and the heavily disputed contention that the college protests have an anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic intent which are rising in tandem with the volume and profile of the protests.

“This is not about the war with Hamas and Gaza,” Brian Cohen, the executive director of Columbia’s Kraft Centre for Jewish Student Life, said on Monday. “This is not about an occupation. This is about students inspired by their faculty who fundamentally disagree with the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state. It has been obvious to anyone paying attention that students and faculty members are trying to send a message that Zionists, Jewish students, Israelis do not belong on this campus.”

On Monday afternoon it was over 30 degrees in Washington and on the small encampment in the yard of George Washington University (GWU) many students tried to keep both themselves and their laptops cool as they sat in the shade. One protester laughed as he admitted he was trying to get a final term essay in. The group had pulled apart the barricades surrounding the encampment in the early hours. The atmosphere was easy going, but the intent remained solemn and serious.

“We are in this for the long haul,” said Miriam, who liaised with the media and offered a first name only. “It is important to note that this is so much bigger than any grade or diploma, and we are willing to put so much on the line to be here. We are creating our university sort of setting here. We are teaching each other; we are learning from each other. We just had a cultural showcase last night where we did poetry and music.”

The demands of students at GWU mirror those of the Columbia protest group and others: to protect pro-Palestinian speech, to drop all charges against participating groups, to have the university disclose its investments and to divest from Israel. The university’s response, Miriam said, has been to remove access to bathrooms and to suspend a number of students.

“I was not old enough to vote four years ago,” she said, but now had to think about things more.

“As much as this is a protest [against] the university it is also a protest [against] the government because not only has the government been complicit in genocide they have been actively facilitating genocide sending billions of dollars in military aid to Israel. Being in DC we are in a prime location, and it is important the government know we are going to be out here not just until our demands are met but until we get liberation for the Palestinian people.”

Meanwhile, Columbia remains at the epicentre of what has become a national protest movement, and the camera lenses of multiple media outlets remain focused on Hamilton Hall.

The campus itself has become oddly quiet, with many classes cancelled and students staying away. A week has passed since Mike Johnson stood on the steps of the Low Library and declared that “the cherished traditions of this university are being overtaken right now by radical and extreme ideologies. They place a target on the backs of Jewish students in the United States and here on this campus”. Protesters had “chased down” Jewish students and “mocked” and “reviled” them, he said.

He had to fall silent then for a few moments as his voice was drowned out by a chant. He nodded grimly: “Enjoy your free speech.”

That was a week ago. Early on Tuesday he declared “a housewide crackdown on the virus of anti-Semitism”, and announced an afternoon press conference to elaborate on what that would mean.

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