More than 100 arrested at pro-palestinian protest
NEW YORK – Police arrested more than 100 protesters on Columbia University’s campus Thursday after they set up encampments to protest Israel’s war in Gaza.
Police officers forcibly moved students out of tents at the center of Columbia’s campus in Manhattan, according to eyewitness accounts. University President Minouche Shafik told police the encampment began early Wednesday morning with more than 100 people occupying the South Lawn of the campus.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams confirmed the NYPD made more than 108 arrests.
Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition of student organizations, said more than 120 people, including three legal observers, were arrested at Columbia’s “Gaza Solidarity Encampment.” The encampment was established early Wednesday morning, CUAD said.
City officials confirmed at a news conference Thursday evening that Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar’s daughter, Isra Hirsi, was among those arrested and charged with trespassing. Hirsi said in a social media post hours earlier that she and two other students were suspended for “standing in solidarity with Palestinians facing a genocide.” She noted that in her three years at Barnard College, Thursday was the first time she had received a disciplinary warning.
Some people in the crowd donned keffiyehs, a traditional Palestinian scarf, and held signs. One read: “Defund Israel! America First!”
Other signs called for the safety of pro-palestinian protesters at Columbia University. “CUNY students say: Stop the witch hunt against pro-palestinian protesters!” a poster read.
Edrees Mohamed, a 20-year-old political science student studying at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, stood inside police barricades that NYPD slowly closed down around dozens of demonstrators
outside of campus. Wearing a red keffiyeh, a sign for Palestine, he had gone to the protest outside of Columbia to support student demonstrators.
“I’m thinking about the kids in Gaza,” he said. “Us getting arrested is nothing compared to what they go through.”
Demonstrators were warned multiple times that they were not allowed to occupy the space and needed to disperse, Shafik said. All participants were told they were trespassing and have been suspended, she said.
“Students who are participating in the unauthorized encampment are suspended. We are continuing to identify them and will be sending out formal notifications,” university spokesperson Samantha Slater told USA TODAY.
The Columbia Spectator, a student newspaper, reported the incident marked the first time that mass arrests were made on campus since 1968, when NYPD arrested hundreds of students protesting the Vietnam War.
The group said a student fainted outside of the encampment, and police denied access to health services.
A USA TODAY reporter was denied entry onto the campus amid the protests, as were some other members of the media.