Dozens of protesters arrested
NEW York City police arrested dozens of proPalestinian demonstrators holed up in an academic building on Columbia University campus yesterday and removed a protest encampment the school had sought to dismantle for nearly two weeks.
Shortly after police moved in, Columbia University president Minouche Shafik released a letter in which she requested police stay on campus until at least May 17 — two days after graduation — ‘‘to maintain order and ensure that encampments are not reestablished’’.
Within three hours the campus had been cleared of protesters and ‘‘dozens’’ of arrests were made, a police spokesperson said.
At the start of the police operation about 9pm (local time) throngs of helmeted police marched on to the campus in upper Manhattan.
Soon after, a long line of officers climbed into Hamilton Hall, an academic building that protesters had broken into and occupied on Tuesday.
Police entered through a secondstory window, using a police vehicle equipped with a ladder.
They were seen loading dozens of detainees on to a bus, each with their hands bound behind their backs by zipties. ‘‘Columbia will be proud of these students in five years,’’ Columbia University Apartheid Divest student negotiator Sueda Polat said.
Students did not pose a danger and she called on police to back down.
In her letter released yesterday, Shafik said the Hamilton Hall occupiers had vandalised university property and were trespassing, and that encampment protesters were suspended for trespassing.
The university earlier warned that students taking part in the Hamilton Hall occupation faced academic expulsion.
The occupation began overnight when protesters broke windows, stormed inside and unfurled a banner reading ‘‘Hind’s Hall’’, saying they were renaming the building for a 6yearold Palestinian child killed in Gaza by the Israeli military.
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 lacked any affiliation with Columbia and were 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.
One of the student leaders of the protest, Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian scholar attending Columbia’s school of international and public affairs, disputed assertions that outsiders led the occupation.
‘‘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 yesterday before police moved in.
ProPalestinian demonstrators also gathered at City College New York in Harlem yesterday, and the university ordered individuals off the campus, New York Police Department Deputy Commissioner Kaz Daughtry said on X. Dozens of protesters were arrested, The New York Times reported. Daughtry also said the university had requested police presence to assist in dispersing trespassers.
The chancellor at the University of California in Los Angeles said yesterday law enforcement was engaged to investigate ‘‘recent acts of violence’’ by a group of demonstrators and increased security in the area. The university’s student newspaper Daily Bruin said supporters of Israel had tried to tear down a proPalestinian protest encampment on the campus. Aerial footage from broadcaster KABC showed people wielding sticks or poles to attack wooden boards being held up as a makeshift barricade to protect proPalestinian protesters, some holding placards or umbrellas. — Reuters