Police clear pro-Palestinian protesters from Columbia’s Hamilton Hall after occupation

New York City police cleared 30 to 40 people from Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall late Tuesday after pro-Palestinian protesters occupied the administration building earlier in the day.

NYPD officers acted after the school’s president said there was no other way to ensure safety and restore order on campus and sought help from the department. The occupied building had expanded the demonstrators’ reach from an encampment elsewhere on the Ivy League school’s grounds.

Law enforcement will be at Columbia through May 17, the end of the university’s commencement events.

Columbia’s protests began this month and kicked off demonstrations that now span from California to Massachusetts. As May commencement ceremonies near, administrators face added pressure to clear protesters.

More than 1,000 protesters have been arrested over the last two weeks on campuses in Texas, Utah, Virginia, North Carolina, New Mexico, Connecticut, Louisiana, California, New Jersey and other states, some after confrontations with police in riot gear.

Tuesday’s police action at Columbia comes 56 years to the day since officers swept into Hamilton Hall to arrest protesters occupying the building. The students taken into custody on April 30, 1968, had taken over the hall and other campus buildings for a week to protest racism and the Vietnam War.

Former President Trump called Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News Channel on Tuesday night to comment on Columbia’s turmoil as live video of police clearing Hamilton Hall aired. Trump praised the officers.

“But it should never have gotten to this,” he told Hannity. “And they should have done it a lot sooner than before they took over the building, because it would have been a lot easier if they were in tents rather than a building. And tremendous damage done, too.”

In a letter to senior NYPD officials, Columbia President Minouche Shafik said the administration was requesting that officers remove protesters from the occupied building and a nearby tent encampment “with the utmost regret.”

Earlier in the day, New York City Mayor Eric Adams urged the protesters to leave before police arrived.

“Walk away from this situation now and continue your advocacy through other means,” Adams said. “This must end now.”

The White House earlier Tuesday condemned the standoffs at Columbia and Cal Poly Humboldt, where protesters occupied two buildings until officers with batons intervened overnight and arrested 25. Officials estimated the Northern California campus’ total damage at more than $1 million.

President Biden said he believes student occupation of academic buildings is “absolutely the wrong approach” and “not an example of peaceful protest,” said National Security Council spokesperson John F. Kirby.

Other colleges have sought to negotiate agreements with demonstrators in the hopes of having peaceful commencement ceremonies. As cease-fire negotiations between Israel and Hamas appear to gain steam, it wasn’t clear whether the talks would inspire an easing of protests.

Northwestern University officials said they reached a compromise with students and faculty who represent the majority of protesters on its campus near Chicago to allow peaceful demonstrations through the end of spring classes.

The campus protests began at Columbia in response to Israel’s offensive in Gaza after Hamas launched a deadly attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7. Militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took about 250 hostages. Vowing to stamp out Hamas, Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry.

Israel and its supporters have branded the university protests as antisemitic; Israel’s critics say it uses those allegations to silence opposition. Demonstrators have been caught on camera making antisemitic remarks and violent threats, but organizers, some of whom are Jewish, contend that it is a peaceful movement aimed at defending Palestinian rights and protesting the war.

On Columbia’s campus, protesters locked arms early Tuesday and carried furniture and metal barricades to Hamilton Hall. Demonstrators called the building “Hind’s Hall,” honoring a girl who was killed in Gaza under Israeli fire.

The takeover came hours after protesters shrugged off an earlier ultimatum to abandon a tent encampment Monday or be suspended — restricted from all academic and recreational spaces, allowed to enter only their residences and, for seniors, ineligible to graduate.

Mahmoud Khalil, a lead negotiator before talks with the administration broke down over the weekend, was among the suspended students. His suspension letter — which he shared with the Associated Press — said he had refused to leave the encampment after prior warnings, but Khalil said he had abided by the university’s demand to vacate the encampment by the Monday-afternoon deadline.

Columbia spokesperson Ben Chang said in a statement that anyone occupying Hamilton Hall risked being expelled from the university for escalating the protest “to an untenable situation — vandalizing property, breaking doors and windows and blockading entrances.”

Occupying protesters have insisted they will remain in Hamilton Hall until the university agrees to three demands: divestment, financial transparency and amnesty.

Students defiantly set up tents again after police cleared an encampment at the university April 18 and arrested more than 100 people. The students had been protesting on the Manhattan campus since the previous day, opposing Israeli military action in Gaza and demanding that the school divest from companies they claim are profiting from the conflict.

The Columbia University Chapter of the American Assn. of University Professors said faculty’s efforts to defuse the situation have been repeatedly ignored by the administration despite school statutes that require consultation. The group warned of potential conflict between police officers nearby and protesters on campus.

“We hold University leadership responsible for the disastrous lapses of judgment that have gotten us to this point,” the chapter said in a statement late Tuesday. “The University President, her senior staff, and the Board of Trustees will bear responsibility for any injuries that may occur during any police action on our campus.”

Ilana Lewkovitch, a self-described “leftist Zionist” student at Columbia, said it’s been hard to concentrate on school for weeks amid calls for Zionists to die or leave campus. Her exams have been punctuated with chants of “Say it loud, say it clear, we want Zionists out of here” in the background, she said.

Lewkovitch, who is Jewish and studied at Columbia’s Tel Aviv campus, said she wishes the pro-Palestinian protests were more open to people like her who criticize Israel’s war policies but believe there should be an Israeli state.

Adams said Tuesday that the Columbia protests have been “co-opted by professional outside agitators.” The mayor didn’t provide evidence to back up that contention, which was disputed by protest organizers and participants.

NYPD officials made similar claims about “outside agitators” during the huge, grassroots demonstrations against racial injustice that erupted across the city after the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a policeman. In some instances, police officials falsely labeled peaceful marches organized by well-known neighborhood activists as the work of violent extremists.

Attanasio, Offenhartz and Mattise write for the Associated Press. Attanasio and Offenhartz reported from New York and Matisse from Nashville. AP writers around the country contributed to this report, including Colleen Long, Karen Matthews, Jim Vertuno, Hannah Schoenbaum, Sarah Brumfield, Stefanie Dazio, Christopher Weber, Carolyn Thompson, Dave Collins, Makiya Seminera, Philip Marcelo and Corey Williams.