The city police New York entered the main campus of the Columbia Universityevicted the students who occupied the historic Hamilton Hall building in protest against the War in Gaza and made dozens of arrests. The rector of the University, Minouche Shafikhe was the one who requested police entry and requested that there be a police presence on the campus of Morningside Heights until May 17th, i.e. two days after the date scheduled for the graduation ceremony which closes the academic year.
It is the culmination of exactly two weeks of protests on the main campus of the emblematic University of New York, which took place in the same building where another student protest took place in 1968, on that occasion against the war of Vietnam and racism, which ended, just like now, with the intervention of the security forces.
Tensions began to rise when on April 17 a group of students camped in the large central courtyard that occupies the center of the campus and is surrounded by its most emblematic buildings. The young people gave the area its name «Liberated Zone» AND «Solidarity camp in Gaza», and asked the University to suspend all its financial ties to Israel or entities associated with that country, which essentially includes a nearly infinite number of companies and institutions in the United States. Shafik refused and ended up ordering that the university not allow the students who had taken part in the protest to attend classes or take the final exams of the semester, which are currently taking place.
On Monday, the situation became even more heated, when Columbia began telling students at the camp that they would not be able to participate in final exams, while Shafik stated categorically that the institute «will not divest from Israel«That’s when a group of students broke the windows of Hamilton Hall and entered the building. Yesterday, after a tense wait that lasted virtually all day, Columbia announced that it would expel those who remained inside of Hamilton Hall. And in the end, that’s what he said he did, with the help of law enforcement.
Now it remains to be seen the impact that the police action may have on the other protests taking place at universities across the country and, also, on the November elections. He Democratic party It is divided between a minority but mobilized left wing that supports the students and the rest, which prefers that Israel not continue its offensive but continue to firmly support the Jewish state. Meanwhile, the Republican Party fully supports the actions of Tel Aviv and advocates for police to clear campuses of unruly college students.
In any case, it is unclear whether the protests will disappear no matter what happens in Gaza. For Edmund Fitton-Brown, of the international non-profit organization Center Against Extremism (CEP), demonstrations, occupations and acts of boycott against Israel «have always been latent, and ready to appear at the slightest opportunity.» For this expert on extremism – whether right-wing, left-wing or religious – “if Israel suspended its military operations against Hamas, it would probably be seen by protesters as a success, and it would mean that every time Israel tries to defend its national security, there would be more occupations and demonstrations.»
