While she thought some people might think of anti-Zionism as opposition to Israeli policies, the chants “sounded meaner than that,” she said. She left for her parents’ home in the Bronx shortly before a wave of NYPD officers swept through campus, arresting more than 100 people who refused to leave a pro-Palestinian protest encampment — a rare move by the university to call in external forces to quell a demonstration.
Soph Askanase, 21, said she was one of the first students arrested and is now suspended. The Barnard junior, who has asthma and did not have her inhaler, tried to keep calm by using breathing techniques. “I don’t know if they’ll let me finish my semester,” she said Friday afternoon while picking up a backpack and a tote bag that had been seized, with red marks still on her wrists from police cuffs.
This week at Columbia and Barnard — the affiliated school with its own administration across the street — has been a frightening climax to a tense and uneasy year for many students. After six months of searing protests over the Israel-Gaza war, events at the end of the school year rapidly escalated fears and pressure, drawing sharp dividing lines on campuses that seek to be welcoming communities.
Some pro-Palestinian students saw the administration as increasingly punitive amid scrutiny from federal lawmakers and described a broad chilling effect brought about by doxing, arrests and suspensions. Many students said they spoke candidly only during adhan, the five-times-a-day Muslim call to prayer.
Some Jewish students said the rhetoric at protests has become more extreme, describing demonstrators ordering them away from an encampment and, in one case, brandishing a Hamas logo at them. Several were also upset that despite the police intervention, hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters remained at the center of campus Friday, where they had slept overnight with sleeping bags, improvised mattresses and picnic blankets.
Some faculty, too, were angered by the arrests and what they saw as an attack on freedom of speech. They also bristled at hostile questions from the House Committee on Education and the Workforce to Columbia officials Wednesday amid a broader investigation into antisemitism at multiple universities.
“It’s the most appalling thing I’ve ever seen,” said Nadia Abu El-Haj, an anthropology professor who was on the school’s lawn when the police entered. “The students were extraordinary. Chanting. Crying. It felt like a total violation of everything an academic institution is supposed to be.” She said the arrests were political theater aimed at appeasing Congress without concern that students were collateral damage.
“Palestine was always going to be the issue that broke this university,” said Ry Spada, 24, a history major who is Jewish and was part of the pro-Palestinian protest Thursday night, identifying as non-Zionist. “This year and this topic.”
James Applegate, an astronomy professor who is part of the executive committee of the Columbia University Senate, said he is more concerned about what happened on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, the ongoing loss of academic freedom and the culture on campus than he is about police making peaceful arrests of student protesters.
At Columbia, issues such as conflict in the Middle East used to be handled well, he said. “We used to deal with these extremely emotional, very, very hard, contentious issues with peaceful protest, reasoned debate and outside speakers. … Unfortunately, American universities — Columbia is not the only one — have lost the ability to respectfully disagree.”
The unrest at Columbia is emblematic of growing tensions nationwide as thousands of students at colleges — public and private, large and small — are protesting the Israel-Gaza war in ways that are upending campus life.
On several campuses, students have occupied large lawns or student facilities, launched hunger strikes or interrupted school events. Already on Friday morning, some students, including at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, had set up tents and protests in solidarity with their pro-Palestinian peers at Columbia.
Many of the demonstrators, organized by pro-Palestinian groups, call for their institutions to divest from certain businesses that support or operate in Israel. They demand their administrations to sever academic programs with Israeli institutions. Some chant for their schools to stop funding genocide, and some wear kaffiyehs, face masks and glasses to make it harder for them to be identified. Some have been arrested or suspended as academic leaders try to strike a balance of support for protest and free speech with safety concerns.
“This is a challenging moment and these are steps that I deeply regret having to take,” Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, wrote in a letter to students Thursday. Protesters were given multiple warnings before police intervened.
Other presidents have issued similar statements, noting that they support the right to protest generally but not when it rises to harassment or impedes on others’ rights. Some universities have responded to the demonstrations by rewriting policies outlining punishments for disruptive behavior.
In California, the University of Southern California canceled the graduation speech of a pro-Palestinian valedictorian, citing fears of threats. At Pomona College, police arrested 19 people who had occupied the office of the school’s president — at least seven were temporarily suspended before a large majority of faculty demanded the charges be dropped.
“This is part of an escalating series of incidents on our campus,” Pomona President G. Gabrielle Starr wrote to students early this month.
Yale students began a hunger strike last week, calling for the university to divest from weapons manufacturing companies involved in the Israel-Gaza war. The university declined. “We know Yale is agitated,” the group of students wrote in an Instagram post Thursday. “We know the tides are turning on the timescale of the long struggle for justice.”
At the University of Michigan, the American Civil Liberties Union is calling for a reconsideration of a draft policy that would bring harsher punishments for students participating in “disruptive demonstrations.” The organization argues that it would violate students’ First Amendment rights. “If adopted in its current form,” the ACLU of Michigan wrote to university officials, “the policy risks chilling a substantial amount of constitutionally protected speech and expression on campus.”
A study of thousands of college students by the University of Chicago found that in surveys conducted in December and January, 56 percent of Jewish students, 52 percent of Muslim students and 16 percent of other students felt they were in personal danger — suggesting that 2 million to 3 million U.S. students have been living in fear.
At Columbia on Friday, there was a visible police presence near campus, with dozens of NYPD officers outside the university gates, which are closed to people without a school ID. People gathered outside holding Palestinian flags and signs and handed food through the gates to students inside, where protesters were chanting, “Long live the intifada” and an expletive aimed at the “settler Zionist state.”
Columbia announced that personal belongings that were swept up when the protest encampment was shut down Thursday could be collected Friday, with several tables jammed with backpacks, charging cords and phones.
A petition reiterating protesters’ demands and calling for amnesty for protesters garnered nearly 10,000 online signatures.
“While the encampment has been dismantled, our community has had protest activity on campus since October, and we expect that activity to continue,” a Columbia spokeswoman said. The university will continue to enforce rules about the time, place and manner of protests, remains in regular contact with student groups, and is committed to ensuring the core functions of the university continue, she said.
Alisa Shodiyev Kaff contributed to this report.
