New York Police Raid Columbia University Amid Pro-Palestinian Protests

(Patria) - New York police officers entered the Columbia University campus on Tuesday evening in an attempt to disperse pro-Palestinian demonstrators who had occupied a campus building after nearly two weeks of conflict with administrators of the Ivy League school, Reuters reported.

Footage shows police entering the elite campus in upper Manhattan, which has been a focal point of student protests that have spread to dozens of schools across the U.S., expressing opposition to the Israeli war in Gaza. “We are clearing out,” riot police shouted as they headed toward a barricaded entrance to the building, with dozens of officers marching to the protest encampment.
“Shame! Shame!” said students who were still on campus in front of the building.

Columbia University officials earlier on Tuesday threatened academic expulsion for students who occupied Hamilton Hall. The occupation began overnight when demonstrators broke windows, entered, and unfurled a banner reading “Hind's Hall,” symbolically renaming the building for a six-year-old Palestinian child killed in Gaza by the Israeli military.

In front of the eight-story building, a site of various student occupations on campus since the 1960s, demonstrators blocked the entrance with tables and their own hands and chanted pro-Palestinian slogans.

At an evening briefing held several hours before police entered Columbia, Mayor Eric Adams and city police officials said the takeover of Hamilton Hall was instigated by “outside agitators” with no connection to Columbia and known to police for provoking lawlessness. Police said they based their conclusions partly on the escalation tactics of the occupation, including vandalism, the use of barricades to block entrances, and the destruction of security cameras.

Adams suggested that some of the student demonstrators were not fully aware of the “outside 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 for this situation to become even more serious. This must end now,” the mayor said.

One of the student protest leaders, Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian student at the School of International and Public Affairs on a student visa, disputed claims that the occupation was initiated by outsiders. “They are students,” he told Reuters.

A day earlier, the university announced it had begun suspending students who defied the deadline to leave the protest encampment, after school officials said days of talks with protest leaders aimed at dismantling the tents had reached an impasse.

“The disruptions on campus have created a threatening environment for many of our Jewish students and faculty and a noisy disturbance that interferes with teaching, learning, and preparation for final exams,” the university said in a statement on Tuesday.

New York police officials emphasized before the Tuesday evening raid that officers would refrain from entering the campus unless Columbia administrators called them, as they did on April 18, when police removed an earlier encampment.