Columbia canceled in-person classes, dozens of protesters were arrested at Yale and the gates to Harvard Yard were closed to the general public on Monday as among the most prestigious U.S. universities sought to defuse tensions on campus Israel’s war with Hamas.
The various actions followed last week’s arrest of greater than 100 pro-Palestinian protesters who were camped out on the Columbia Green while schools struggled to search out where to go draw the road between enabling free expression and maintaining a secure and inclusive campus.
In addition to demonstrations at Ivy League schools, pro-Palestinian camps have sprung up on other campuses, including the University of Michigan, New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Students compete against one another through the protests. Pro-Palestinian students are demanding that their schools condemn Israel’s attack on Gaza and divest from corporations that sell weapons to Israel. Some Jewish students, meanwhile, say much of the criticism of Israel has veered into anti-Semitism and left them feeling insecure, and so they indicate that Hamas remains to be holding hostages taken through the group’s Oct. 7 invasion were taken.
Tensions remained high Monday at Columbia in New York City, where campus gates were locked to anyone with no school ID and protests erupted each on and off campus.
U.S. Rep. Kathy Manning, a North Carolina Democrat who visited Columbia with three other Jewish congressmen, told reporters after meeting with students from the Jewish Law Students Association that there was “a huge camp of people” hanging around would have a 3rd of the green.
“We saw signs suggesting that Israel should be destroyed,” she said after leaving the Morningside Heights campus.
A lady outside the campus gates led about two dozen protesters into the road, shouting, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” — a loaded phrase that may mean very various things to different groups. Meanwhile, a small group of pro-Israel counter-demonstrators protested nearby.
University President Minouche Shafik said in a message to the varsity community on Monday that she was “deeply saddened” by what happened on campus.
“To defuse the resentment and give us all an opportunity to consider next steps, I am announcing that all classes on Monday will be held virtually,” Shafik wrote, noting students who live off campus , should stay away.
Robert Kraft, who owns the New England Patriots football team and has funded the Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life across the road from the Columbia campus, said he would stop donations to the university.
“I am no longer confident that Columbia can protect its students and employees, and I do not feel comfortable supporting the university until corrective action is taken,” he said in a press release.
Since the Hamas initiative, there have been protests on many university campuses. fatal attack In southern Israel, militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took about 250 hostages. In response, Israel has killed greater than 34,000 Palestinians in Gaza, based on the local health ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and non-combatants but a minimum of says so Two thirds of the dead are children and ladies.
Prahlad Iyengar, an MIT graduate studying electrical engineering, was amongst about two dozen students who arrange camp on the varsity’s campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Sunday evening. They are calling for a ceasefire and protesting against MIT’s “complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza,” he said.
“MIT has not even called for a ceasefire, and that is a demand we certainly have,” Iyengar said.
He also said MIT sent out confusing rules about protests.
“We are here to show that we reserve the right to protest. “It’s an essential part of life on a college campus,” Iyengar said.
On Sunday, Elie Buechler, rabbi of the Orthodox Union’s Jewish Learning Initiative at Columbia, sent a WhatsApp message to almost 300 Jewish students recommending they go home until it was safer for them on campus.
The latest developments got here ahead of the beginning of the Jewish holiday of Passover on Monday evening.
Nicholas Baum, a 19-year-old Jewish college freshman who lives in a Jewish theological seminary constructing two blocks from the Columbia campus, said protesters over the weekend were “calling on Hamas to blow away Tel Aviv and Israel.” He said among the protesters who shouted anti-Semitic slurs weren’t students.
“Jews are afraid of Columbia. It’s that simple. There has been so much denigration of Zionism, and that has extended to the denigration of Judaism as well,” he said.
The protest camp emerged on Wednesday, the identical day, in Columbia Shafik was heavily criticized at a congressional hearing of Republicans who said she had not done enough to combat anti-Semitism. Two others The presidents of the Ivy League have resigned months ago, after giving widely criticized testimony to the identical committee.
In her statement on Monday, Shafik said the Middle East conflict was terrible and he or she understood that many were in deep moral distress.
“But we cannot allow one group to dictate terms and attempt to disrupt key milestones like graduation to advance their point of view,” Shafik wrote.
In the approaching days, a working group of deans, school administrators and teachers will try to search out an answer to the university crisis, noted Shafik, who didn’t say when in-person classes will resume.
U.S. House Republicans from New York called for Shafik to resign, saying in a letter Monday that it had failed to offer a secure learning environment in recent days as “anarchy reigned on campus.”
In Massachusetts, an indication said Harvard Yard can be closed to the general public on Monday. It said that structures, including tents and tables, could only be allowed into the yard with prior permission. “Students who violate these policies will face disciplinary action,” the sign said. Security forces checked people for college ID cards.
At Yale, law enforcement officials arrested about 45 protesters and charged them with trespassing, said Officer Christian Bruckhart, a New Haven police spokesman. All were released on a promise to look in court later, he said.
Protesters arrange tents in Beinecke Plaza on Friday and demonstrated over the weekend, calling on Yale to stop all investments in defense corporations that do business with Israel.
Nadine Cubeisy, a Yale student and one in all the protest organizers, said it was disturbing that “this university that I go to, that I donate to, that my friends donate money to, is using that money to fund violence.” “
In a press release to the campus community on Sunday, Yale President Peter Salovey said university officials had spoken with the coed protesters several times in regards to the school’s policies and guidelines, including those related to freedom of speech and granting access to campus spaces .
School officials said they spoke with protesters over several hours and gave them until the top of the weekend to depart Beinecke Plaza. They said they warned protesters again Monday morning, telling them they may face arrest and disciplinary motion, including suspension, before police moved in.
A big group of protesters gathered at Yale after Monday’s arrests and blocked a street near campus, Bruckhart said. There were no reports of violence or injuries.
Last week, the University of Southern California took the weird step Cancellation of a planned opening speech from his farewell speaker in 2024, who had publicly supported the Palestinians. The university cited security concerns in a call that was praised by some pro-Israel groups but criticized by free speech advocates.
Several students at Columbia University and its sister school, Barnard College, said they were suspended for his or her participation in last week’s protests, including Barnard students Isra Hirsithe daughter of Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar.
