As Columbia resumes classes, student activists vow to carry on with protests against Israel (2024)

NEW YORK — Columbia University resumed classes Tuesday with students sunbathing and eating ice cream on the lawn that was home to a pro-Palestinian encampment last spring. But there were also fresh demonstrations just off campus, and students and faculty say they're planning for more as the new school year unfolds.

In recent weeks, the university's new leadership embarked on listening sessions aimed at cooling tensions, released a report on campus antisemitism and circulated new protest guidelines meant to limit disruption.

Still, student organizers are undeterred, promising to ramp up their actions — including possible encampments — until the university agrees to cut ties with companies linked to Israel.

Someone splattered red paint Tuesday on a statue in front of the Low Memorial Library. Outside the gates of the university, a small group of protesters marched on a picket line.

"As long as Columbia continues to invest and to benefit from Israeli apartheid, the students will continue to resist," Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student who represented campus protesters in negotiations with the university, told The Associated Press last week. "Not only protests and encampments, the limit is the sky."

The new year began less than a month after the resignation of Columbia's president, Minouche Shafik, whose decision to bring police on campus to clear a protest encampment in April set off a wave of college demonstrations nationwide. After a second encampment was erected and a group of students occupied a university building, hundreds of police officers surged onto campus, making arrests and plunging the university into lockdown.

Since Shafik's resignation, the interim president, Katrina Armstrong, met with students on both sides of the issue, promising to balance students' rights to free expression and a safe learning environment. While the message inspired cautious optimism among some faculty members, others see the prospect of major disruptions as all but inevitable.

"There haven't been any monumental changes, so I don't know why the experience in the fall would look much different than what it did in the spring,"said Rebecca Korbin, a history professor who served on Columbia's antisemitism task force.

In a report released Friday, the task force of Columbia faculty accused the university of allowing "pervasive" antisemitism to fester on campus following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. The report recommended the university revamp its disciplinary process and require additional sensitivity training for students and staff.

Demonstrations against the war already started bubbling up on college campuses this semester, including one at the University of Michigan that resulted in multiple arrests.

The University of Maryland announced it will not allow student organizations to hold any on-campus demonstrations Oct. 7, the anniversary of the Hamas attacks in Israel.

Columbia's steps to limit protests this semester included restricting access to campus.

The university's tall iron gates, long open to the public, are now guarded, requiring students to present identification to enter campus. Inside, private security guards stand on the edge of the lawns that students seized for their encampment. A new plaque on a nearby fence notes that "camping" is prohibited.

On Tuesday morning, dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrated outside one entrance to the university, some beating drums, while a long line of students and staff members made their way through the checkpoint. At another entrance, protesters used a megaphone to implore those in line to instead join their picket line.

Later, police took two protesters into custody outside Barnard College, the university's nearby sister school.

Layla Hussein, a junior at Columbia who helped to lead orientation programming, described the added security measures as an unwelcome and hostile distraction. "We're trying to cultivate a welcoming environment. It doesn't help when you look outside and it's a bunch of security guards and barricades," she said.

Others accused the university of treating student protesters too leniently. Though some disciplinary cases remain ongoing, prosecutors dropped charges against many of the students arrested last semester, and the university allowed them to return to campus.

"They violated every rule in the book, and they openly state they'll continue to do so," said Elisha Baker, a junior at Columbia who leads an Israeli engagement group, adding: "We need to have a serious reckoning with the disciplinary process to make sure students have a safe learning environment."

After Jewish students sued Columbia, accusing it of creating a dangerous environment on campus, the university agreed in June provide a "safe passage liaison" to those concerned with protest activity.

In July, Columbia removed three administrators who exchanged text messages disparaging speakers during a discussion about Jewish life in a manner Shafik said touched on "ancient antisemitic tropes."

A spokesperson said Columbia bolstered its guidelines around protests and developed new training for incoming students on antisemitism and Islamophobia.

The revised protest guidelines require organizers to inform the university of any scheduled protests, barring any demonstrations that pose "a genuine threat of harassment" or "substantially inhibit the primary purposes" of university space.