NY university suspends in-person classes
NEW YORK – As tensions over the Israel-Hamas war continue to boil on campuses across the country, Columbia moved classes online, Harvard Yard was closed to the public, and dozens of Yale students had been arrested by Monday morning.
Demonstrations at both Yale and Harvard were planned, in part, out of solidarity with protesters at Columbia after they set up an encampment last week that led to the arrests of more than 100 students. The protests have raised concerns for the safety of Jewish students and fueled a national debate over student demonstrations as campuses grapple with growing unrest over the war in Gaza.
Columbia President Minouche Shafik said in a statement Monday that while online classes are being held, a working group of deans, university administrators and faculty members “will try to bring this crisis to a resolution” by, among other actions, speaking with student protesters.
“I am deeply saddened by what is happening on our campus,” Shafik said in a statement. “Our bonds as a community have been severely tested in ways that will take a great deal of time and effort to reaffirm.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul met with Shafik on Monday morning to discuss the security situation on the school’s Manhattan campus.
In a video posted on X, the governor underscored the need to ensure students and faculty have the right to peacefully protest while also upholding human rights laws.
“The recent harassment and rhetoric is vile and abhorrent,” Hochul wrote in a social media post. “Every student deserves to be safe.”
New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a former police officer, previously condemned the situation and promised that any demonstrators around campus found to be in violation of laws would be arrested.
“We will not be a city of lawlessness, and those professional agitators seeking to seize the ongoing conflict in the Middle East to sow chaos and division will not succeed,” he wrote Sunday in a post on X.
Outside of Columbia’s gates near 115th Street in New York on Monday, both pro-Palestinian protesters and pro-Israeli protesters gathered in groups to chant with students inside the campus.
Tahia Islam, an organizer with Shut it Down For Palestine, said the coalition has been working and communicating with students in the encampment, where she said they have created a community of “safety and care.”
“They are putting so much of their lives, their careers at risk because they know that the real struggle and the real school is in this moment, right now. It’s not in what’s getting (taught) in these ivory towers,” she said. “They’re part of a historical legacy of student movements ... they’re absolutely on the right side of history and we’ll be with them every step of the way.”
Columbia student Hector Lionel took issue with the university’s messaging that the students in the encampment were disrupting his studies. The closed gates with ID checkpoints are a bigger hassle than the tents, he said.
“It’s just gotten too dystopian,” Lionel said.
“Now we need to defend the right to protest.”