Over 100 people were arrested last night at Columbia University after dozens of activists took over the school’s Hamilton Hall, renaming the building “Hind’s Hall” in honor of six-year-old Hind Rajab, who was killed alongside her family by Israeli forces in Gaza. Combined with arrests at student protests at City College of New York, more than 300 protesters were detained, according to statements from Mayor Eric Adams at a press conference today, May 1.
Echoing the 1985 student protests opposing Columbia University’s investments in apartheid in South Africa, during which organizers baptized the Hamilton building “Mandela Hall,” the seizure and renaming of the structure followed weeks of student-led Gaza solidarity encampments on Columbia’sSouth Lawn and in schools across the United States.
Photographs captured by Hyperallergic earlier in the day showed students inside the occupied Hamilton Hall, peering out from second-floor windows to receive food and supplies from fellow demonstrators outside, their faces obscured by masks to protect their identities. At the South entrance, near a statue of Alexander Hamilton, a sign that read “Hind’s Hall” bore an illustration of “Handala,” the iconic cartoon by Naji al-Ali that became an emblem of the Palestinian people.
Following the student occupation of the Hamilton building, Columbia officials placed the campus under indefinite lockdown, restricting access to students living in on-campus housing and essential Columbia personnel. The only access point in and out of campus was the Amsterdam Avenue and 116th Street entrance, which became a site for protests throughout the day. Activists occupying Hamilton Hall periodically waved a Palestinian flag from the roof of the building as protesters on the ground cheered and chanted: “Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest.”
At approximately 9pm, at least 100 police officers in riot gear entered the campus, swarming the solidarity encampment while searching what appeared to be empty tents with flashlights and batons. The police presence was authorized by president Nemat (Minouche) Shafik, who also requested officers remain on-site until May 17, according to the Columbia Spectator.
Shortly after, officers armed with white zip ties arrested at least two dozen student demonstrators who had formed a human chain in front of the occupied building’s South entrance. Officers also extracted students occupying Hamilton Hall via a window, Washington Post reported.
Throughout the day yesterday, student organizers and other anti-war advocacy organizations, including Radical Elders and Veterans for Peace, gathered outside the barricaded Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway campus entrances to protest the school’s investments in Israel’s occupation of Palestine and ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip. A few pro-Israel counter-protesters were in attendance, draped in blue and white Israel flags and screaming profanities and “Jew Haters” at the pro-Palestine group.
The actions traveled around the campus throughout the afternoon, merging with other protests traveling uptown from the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York University, and the New School, before eventually splitting in half to move up town to City College.
“It’s always been the campus response and the policing and the security gates and the militarization of our community that has made students feel unsafe and kept us from studying,” Shehza Anjum, a third-year undergraduate student who has participated in the campus solidarity encampment, told Hyperallergic.
Since Columbia announced the campus lockdown, Anjum said there has been “a lot of confusion” among students and faculty over how the rest of the semester should proceed.
“Luckily, for me at least, I’ve had supportive professors who have been a bit more lenient with us because they know that it’s difficult to submit work right now, but it was never the protests that endangered our ability to do that,” Anjum said.
A fifth-year PhD student who asked to remain anonymous agreed that the encampment “is a really beautiful space” that has brought a lot of protesters hope.
“It’s infuriating that the US government is funding a genocide, and it’s infuriating that our university is investing in weapons manufacturers and in companies that are in occupied territories in the West Bank,” they told Hyperallergic.
Over recent weeks, students have publicized the names of companies with ties to Israeli weapons and settlements, such as BlackRock and Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest military contractor.
Columbia officials declined to comment on the ongoing protests or demands, referring Hyperallergic to the updated statements released periodically on the situation. University spokesperson Ben Chang confirmed that students occupying Hamilton Hall faced expulsion and students who refused to leave the South Lawn encampment had been suspended.
“We believe that the group that broke into and occupied the building is led by individuals who are not affiliated with the University,” read a statement published yesterday from an unnamed university spokesperson.
Columbia’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) issued a sharp rebuke of Shafik and Columbia’s board of trustees’ decision to have police enter the campus yesterday, which they said “place[d] students and everyone else on campus at risk.”
Another AAUP statement released yesterday also condemned “the heavy-handed, militaristic response to student activism that we are seeing across the country.”
“There’s this narrative going around that if you stop protesting, then things can go back to normal,” Anjum told Hyperallergic. “We don’t want things to go back to normal. This is nothing compared to what people are going through in Gaza.”
Editor’s note 5/1/24 1:40pm EST: This article has been updated with additional information about arrests made on the evening of Tuesday, April 30.
