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Columbia University has begun suspending pro-Palestinian activists who refused to dismantle a tent encampment on its New York City campus after the Ivy League school declared a stalemate in talks seeking to end the polarising protest.
University spokesperson Ben Chang said at a briefing: “We have begun suspending students as part of this next phase of our efforts to ensure safety on our campus.”
Mr Chang added: “The encampment has created an unwelcoming environment for many of our Jewish students and faculty and a noisy distraction that interferes with the teaching, learning and preparing for final exams.”
Previously, university president Nemat Minouche Shafik said in a statement that days of negotiations between student organisers and academic leaders had failed to persuade demonstrators to remove the dozens of tents set up to express opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza.
Ms Shafik said Columbia would not divest assets that support Israel’s military, a key demand of the protesters.
Instead, she offered to invest in health and education in Gaza and to make the university’s direct investment holdings more transparent.
Columbia sent a letter yesterday morning warning that students who did not vacate the encampment by 2pm (7pm Irish time) and sign a form promising to abide by university policies would face suspension and become ineligible to complete the semester in good standing.
Even students who signed the form and dispersed would still go on “disciplinary probation” until June 2025 or their graduation, whichever came first, according to the letter.
“These repulsive scare tactics mean nothing compared to the deaths of over 34,000 Palestinians. We will not move until Columbia meets our demands or we are moved by force,” the Columbia Student Apartheid Divest coalition said in a joint response.
Protesters have vowed to keep their encampment on the Manhattan campus until Colombia meets three demands: divestment, transparency in Columbia’s finances and amnesty for students and faculty disciplined for their part in the protests.
Ms Shafik faced an outcry from many students, faculty and outside observers for summoning New York City police two weeks ago to dismantle the encampment, resulting in more than 100 arrests.
Efforts to remove the encampment, which students restored within days of the 18 April police action, have triggered dozens of similar protests at college campuses from California to Boston.
A US government spokesperson said it was “up to colleges and universities to decide” whether police should be present.
Last week, Columbia took no action when two deadlines it had imposed on protesters to reach an agreement slipped by without a deal. It had cited progress in the talks.
Protests at Columbia and other US universities continued in full force through the weekend, with more arrests around the country and skirmishes between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian demonstrators at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
UCLA has stepped up security around a pro-Palestinian encampment, consisting of more than 50 tents surrounded by metal fencing near the main administration building on campus.
An adjacent gathering of counter-demonstrators set up a giant video screen showing a loop of footage from the 7 October cross-border attack by Hamas militants into southern Israel, with loudspeakers blaring audio from the recording.
Civil rights groups have criticised law enforcement tactics on some campuses, such as Atlanta’s Emory University and the University of Texas in Austin, where police in riot gear and on horseback moved against protesters last week, taking dozens into custody before charges were dropped for lack of probable cause.
Protests, and arrests, flared again on the Austin campus.
Virginia Tech said that 91 protesters arrested at a student-led encampment had been charged with trespassing.
Video posted on social media showed demonstrators chanting, “Shame on you” as some were taken into custody.
The university said in a statement that the “situation” posed by the encampment “had the increasing potential to become unsafe.”
Similar demonstrations have sprung up at universities in other countries.
Students at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, set up about 20 pro-Palestinian protest camps on Saturday demanding the university divest from companies with links to Israel.
By Monday, the number of encampments on the campus had tripled, but many were not set up by members of the McGill community, according to a statement from the university.
McGill also said it was investigating what it said was video evidence of some people using “unequivocally antisemitic language and intimidating behaviour.” Students denied the allegation.
In Paris, days after protests at the elite Sciences Po school, police reportedly moved dozens of protesters who had set up tents in the yard of Sorbonne University to mark their anger with the war in Gaza.
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