Anti-Israel activists try to stop first Columbia U classes with protests, vandalism

Anti-Israel activists attempted to stop Columbia University’s first day of classes on Tuesday with a picket line and vandalism against a monument, according to statements by Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), Columbia/Barnard Hillel, and pro-vandalism group Unity of Fields.

CUAD established picket lines at the Morningside Heights campus gates, calling on students, faculty, and staff not to cross the protest boundary. The activist coalition contended that there should be no sense of normalcy as the Israel-Hamas war progressed and Gazan students could not continue their education because Palestinian academic institutions had been destroyed in the fighting.

“Do not enter campus,” CUAD said on social media. “Do not go to classes. Do not hold classes.”

Palestinian Youth Movement New York City claimed on Instagram that administrators called the New York Police Department to arrest the picketers.

Sending a reminder

CUAD said that it was reminding the Columbia administration of the protest demands the coalition established the previous tumultuous academic year – that the university divest from any institutions with a connection to Israel, establish an academic boycott of the Jewish state, and call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

“Instead of heeding the cries of its student body to end our complicity in genocide, Columbia spent the last year doubling down on its commitment to being a war-profiteering corporation that criminalizes dissent and sanctions the death of thousands of Palestinians,” said CUAD. “Until Columbia commits to full financial disclosure and complete divestment from Zionist apartheid, occupation, and genocide – we do not deserve a first day of school.”

Columbia Hillel said on Facebook that it was disheartened that the excitement of the first day of classes had been impacted by the protests.

“Although we affirm the right to peaceful protest, we want to name that the rhetoric outside the gates today is jarring and upsetting for many of us,” said Hillel. “The signs we saw at the picket line were harassing and intended to intimidate students. This is simply unacceptable.”

Hillel said that it was in contact with the administration and encouraged students to report any acts of antisemitism. The campus Jewish life organization empathized with Jewish students who were distressed by the murder of Hamas’s six hostages, and that the Hillel team was available for support.

The Columbia Alma Mater Statue was also defaced in a separate action on Tuesday, according to pro-vandalism Unity of Fields, formerly known as Palestine Action US.

The Alma Mater Statue was drenched in red paint in protest of the administration’s failure to comply with anti-Israel demands.

In a manifesto published by Unity of Fields, the vandals' further actions, which it said were in support of the “Palestinian resistance” in an effort to translate their “resilience in Gaza to unrest and violence in America.”

“Divestment is not an incrementalist goal. True divestment necessitates nothing short of the total collapse of the university structure and American empire itself,” said the vandals, adding that it wanted economic revolution and “eradicate America as we know it.”

CUAD had led protests last Sunday at the gates of Columbia in an attempt to disrupt the convocation by banging drums and pots. On Monday, one of the groups involved in the protest, Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine, announced that it had been suspended from Instagram. Anti-Israel groups denounced the move as censorship ahead of the fall semester.

Eye of the anti-Israel storm

Columbia University had been the epicenter of the anti-Israel campus protest movement the previous academic year, with an encampment on its grounds that was emulated around the world. The April encampment was cleared by the NYPD in early May, but then-Columbia University president Minouche Shafik resigned on August 14 due to the intense controversy and protests her tenure suffered.

As anti-Israel campus protests and activism disrupted the campus, Jewish students and faculty alleged that they had suffered increasing discrimination at the hands of their peers. On Friday, the university’s Task Force on Antisemitism released a second report describing how identifiably Jewish students were spat on, berated, and chased off campus in “crushing encounters that have crippled students’ academic achievement.”

Interim president Katrina Armstrong said in a Friday statement that the incidents in the report were “distressing,” and that with the new academic year the university was “focused on ensuring their safety, supporting their well-being, and protecting their ability to learn.”

Armstrong said that they had expanded training, created a new office to better address harassment complaints, reestablished a public safety advisory committee, and updated campus conduct guidelines.