The sun once again shines on the students occupying the main lawn of Columbia University which continues despite a heavy coordinated crackdown
On the morning of April 19, Columbia students emerged from their tents camped out on the main lawn of Columbia University’s campus in New York City, after having held their ground for over 48 hours in what organizers dubbed the “Gaza solidarity encampment.” This action was coordinated entirely by the students, who are part of various organizations including Columbia University Apartheid Divest, Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine, and Columbia Jewish Voice for Peace.
“The energy here is incredible. There’s double the amount of people than at the original encampment—maybe even more.”
🏫🇵🇸We’re on day 3 of the student occupation of Columbia! We spoke to Sarah, a grad student at the university, about police repression yesterday—and how that… pic.twitter.com/2XjvT04iCT
— Party for Socialism and Liberation (@pslnational) April 19, 2024
On Friday, inspired by the bold action taken by student organizers, students at both the University of North Carolina and Miami University in Ohio have begun to stage their own encampment in solidarity with Columbia students and Gaza. In response to the upsurge in student solidarity actions, National Students for Justice in Palestine has issued a “call to action” for students in universities across the country to “seize the university and force the administration to divest, for the people of Gaza.”
UNC students right now starting an encampment outside of the university administration building in solidarity with Columbia students and Palestine 🇵🇸 pic.twitter.com/oY4dYKmWQl
Outside of Columbia University, a large crowd has taken to the streets in solidarity with the encampment.
BREAKING: Actress @SusanSarandon has joined the Palestine solidarity activists rallying outside of Columbia University gates to share her message of solidarity with the students. pic.twitter.com/oxTqkLARjx
Students initially took over the lawn at 4 a.m. on Wednesday, April 19, and managed to hold their ground for over 24 hours. The energy on the ground at the encampment reached a peak last night when arrests of students on campus appeared to be imminent. Over 400 students poured into campus and formed a march around the encampment to protect students from a potential crackdown by either the New York Police Department or the Columbia administration. Students chanted “We will not stop, we will not rest, we will divest!” Soon, Columbia President Minoushe Shafik would call in the New York Police Department to arrest 122 students on Thursday afternoon. Police then confiscated student belongings, throwing them haphazardly in an alleyway in between dorm buildings on campus.
UPDATE: A massive group of students have surrounded the Columbia University Palestine solidarity encampment to express their support for the protesters pic.twitter.com/WN6yc7MSac
After ordering the NYPD mass arrests of student protestors, Columbia quickly discarded the Gaza Solidarity Encampment tents, leaving student belongings in between dorm buildings. Undeterred, new students have once again taken over the encampment pic.twitter.com/4zA2KZUJes
— Palestinian Youth Movement (@palyouthmvmt) April 18, 2024
After the mass arrest, the hundreds of students who had been picketing around the encampment in solidarity moved immediately into action. Around 1,000 poured into the other side of the lawn to start a second encampment, and have been able to successfully hold the lawn since then.
The last of the arrested students were released late into the night on Thursday, to resounding cheers from fellow students and supporters who stood outside of the 1 Police Plaza NYPD headquarters in solidarity with those held inside.
Early on day 2 of the encampment, three students at Barnard College, the women’s college that is part of the larger Columbia University system, woke up to their suspensions via email and the disabling of their student IDs. The Columbia administration is reportedly issuing a new wave of suspensions to any student who attempts to pick up their belongings.
Columbia students are drawing from the example of the 1968 occupation of the University’s Hamilton Hall by students in protest of the Vietnam War. This time around, students are protesting their institution’s complicity in the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza. Their demands are that “Columbia University divests all finances, including the endowment, from corporations that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide, and occupation in Palestine.”
“Morale on campus is high. People initially expected that we were gonna bleed members on the second day, but that’s not happening,” Grant Miner, Vice President of the Student Workers of Columbia, the union of graduate student workers, told Peoples Dispatch on Thursday, shortly before he himself was arrested. “We’re here to stay until we get divestment. We won’t be moved until we are moved by force, or until Columbia meets our demands. No compromises.” Miner was one of the last to be released late on Thursday night.
With the encouragement of the state, universities from coast to coast are taking draconian steps to silence debate about US-backed violence in the Middle East.
The Columbia University community looked on in shock as cops in riot gear arrested at least 100 pro-Palestine protesters who had set up an encampment in the center of campus (New York Post, 4/18/24). The university’s president, Nemat Shafik, had just the day before testified before a Republican-dominated congressional committee ostensibly concerned with campus “antisemitism”—a label that has come to be misapplied to any criticism of Israel, though the critics so smeared are often themselves Jewish.
The New York Post (4/18/24) was also pleased that Google had fired 28 employees for protesting genocide.
A sense of delight has filled the city’s opinion pages. The New York Post editorial board (4/18/24) hailed both the clampdown on protests and Congress’s push to ensure that such drastic action against free speech was taken: “We’re glad to see Shafik stand up…. Congress deserves some credit for putting educrats’ feet to the fire on this issue.” The paper added, “Academia has been handling anti-Israel demonstrations with kid gloves.” In other words, universities have been allowing too many people to think and speak critically about an important issue of the day.
In “At Columbia, the Grown-Ups in the Room Take a Stand,” New York Times columnist Pamela Paul (4/18/24) hailed the eviction, saying of the encampment that for the “passer-by, the fury and self-righteous sentiment on display was chilling,” and that for supporters of Israel, “it must be unimaginably painful.” In other words, conservative pundits have decided that campus safe spaces where speech is banned to protect the feelings of listeners are good, depending on the issue. Would Paul (no relation!) favor bans on pro-Taiwan or pro-Armenia demonstrations because they could offend Chinese and Turkish students?
And for Michael Oren, a prominent Israeli politico, Columbia students hadn’t suffered enough. He said of Columbia in a Wall Street Journal op-ed (4/19/24):
Missing was an admission of the university’s failure to enforce the measures it had enacted to protect its Jewish community. [Shafik] didn’t address how, under the banner of free speech, Columbia became inhospitable to Jews. She didn’t acknowledge how incendiary demonstrations such as the encampment were the product of the university’s inaction.
Shafik had assured her congressional interrogators that Columbia had already suspended 15 students for speaking out for Palestinian human rights, suspended two student groups—Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 11/10/23)—and had even terminated an instructor (New York Times, 4/17/24).
The hearing was bizarre, to say the least; a Georgia Republican asked the president if she wanted her campus to be “cursed by God” (New York Times, 4/18/24). (“Definitely not,” was her response.)
The former World Bank economist had clearly been shaken after seeing how congressional McCarthyism ousted two other female Ivy League presidents (FAIR.org, 12/12/23; Al Jazeera, 1/2/24).
‘Protected from having to hear’
Twenty-three Jewish faculty members at Columbia published a joint op-ed (Columbia Spectator, 4/10/24) reminding President Shafik that “labeling pro-Palestinian expression as anti-Jewish hate speech requires a dangerous and false conflation of Zionism with Jewishness, of political ideology with identity.”
“What happened at those hearings yesterday should be of grave concern to everybody, regardless of their feelings on Palestine, regardless of their politics,” Barnard College women’s studies professor Rebecca Jordan-Young told Democracy Now! (4/18/24). “What happened yesterday was a demonstration of the growing and intensifying attack on liberal education writ large.”
Her colleague, historian Nara Milanich, said in the same interview:
This is not about antisemitism so much as attacking areas of inquiry and teaching, whether it’s about voting rights or vaccine safety or climate change — right?—arenas of inquiry that are uncomfortable or inconvenient or controversial for certain groups. And so, this is essentially what we’re seeing, antisemitism being weaponized in a broad attack on the university.
Jewish faculty at Columbia spoke out against the callous misuse of antisemitism to silence students, but those in power aren’t listening (Columbia Spectator, 4/10/24).
Shafik justified authorizing the mass arrests, which many said hadn’t been seen on campus since the anti-Vietnam War protests of 1968. “The individuals who established the encampment violated a long list of rules and policies,” she said (BBC, 4/18/24). “Through direct conversations and in writing, the university provided multiple notices of these violations.”
One policy suggested by the university’s “antisemitism task force,” according to a university trustee who also testified (New York Times, 4/18/24): “If you are going to chant, it should only be in a certain place, so that people who don’t want to hear it are protected from having to hear it.”
Cross-country rollback
USC valedictorian Asna Tabassum says the school did not tell her what the security threats were, but said that the precautions that would be necessary to allow her to speak were “not what the university wants to ‘present as an image’” (Reuters, 4/18/24).
Meanwhile, the University of Southern California canceled the planned graduation speech by valedictorian Asna Tabassum—a Muslim woman who had spoken out for Palestine (Reuters, 4/18/24). The university cited unnamed “security risks”; The Hill (4/16/24) noted that “she had links to pro-Palestinian sites on her social media.” Andrew T. Guzman, the provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, said in a statement that cancelation was “consistent with the fundamental legal obligation—including the expectations of federal regulators—that universities act to protect students and keep our campus community safe” (USC Annenberg Media, 4/15/24).
This is happening as academic freedom is being rolled back across the country. Republicans in Indiana recently passed a law to allow a politically appointed board to deny or even revoke university professors’ tenure if the board feels their classes lack “intellectual diversity”—at the same time that it threatens them if they seem “likely” to “subject students to political or ideological views and opinions” deemed unrelated to their courses (Inside Higher Ed, 2/21/24).
Benjamin Balthaser, associate professor of English at Indiana University South Bend, told FAIR in regard to the congressional hearing:
There is no other definition of bigotry or racism that equates criticism of a state, even withering, hostile criticism, with an entire ethnic or religious group, especially a state engaging in ongoing, documented war crimes and crimes against humanity. Added to this absurdity is the fact that many of the accused are not only Jewish, but have strong ties to their Jewish communities. To make such an equation assumes a collective or group homogeneity which is itself a form of essentialism, even racism itself: People are not reducible to the crimes of their state, let alone a state thousands of miles away to which most Jews are not citizens.
Of course, witch hunts against leftists in US society are often motivated by antisemitism. Balthaser again:
The far right has long deployed antisemitism as a weapon of censorship and repression, associating Jewishness with Communism and subversion during the First and Second Red Scares. Not only did earlier forms of McCarthyism overwhelmingly target Jews (Jews were two-thirds of the “defendants” called before HUAC in 1952, despite being less than 2% of the US population), it did so while cynically pretending to protect Jews from Communism. Something very similar is occurring now: Mobilizing a racist trope of Jewish adherence to Israel, far-right politicians are using accusations of antisemitism to both silence criticism of Israel and, in doing so, promote their antisemitic ideas of Jewishness in the world.
Silencing for ‘free speech’
The darker blue states have passed restrictions aimed at Critical Race Theory; in the lighter blue states, proposed restrictions have not been adopted (CRT Forward).
These universities are not simply clamping down on free speech because the administrators dislike this particular speech, or out of fear that pro-Palestine demonstrations or vocal faculty members could scare donors from writing big checks. This is a result of state actors—congressional Republicans, in particular—who are using their committee power and sycophants in the media to demand more firings, more suspensions, more censorship.
I have written for years (FAIR.org, 10/23/20, 11/17/21, 3/25/22), as have many others, that Republican complaints about “cancel culture” on campus suppressing free speech are exaggerated. One of the biggest hypocrisies is that so-called free-speech conservatives claim that campus activists are silencing conservatives, but have little to say about blatant censorship and political firings when it comes to Palestine.
This isn’t a mere moral inconsistency. This is the anti-woke agenda at work: When criticism of the right is deemed to be the major threat to free speech, it’s a short step to enlisting the state to “protect” free speech by silencing the critics—in this case, dissenters against US support for Israeli militarism.
But this isn’t just about Palestine; crackdowns against pro-Palestine protests are part of a broader war against discourse and thought. The right has already paved the way for assaults on educational freedom with bans aimed at Critical Race Theory adopted in 29 states.
If the state can now stifle and punish speech against the murder of civilians in Gaza, what’s next? With another congressional committee investigating so-called infiltration by China’s Communist Party, will Chinese political scholars be targeted next (Reuters, 2/28/24)? With state laws against environmental protests proliferating (Sierra, 9/17/23), will there be a new McCarthyism against climate scientists? (Author Will Potter raised the alarm about a “green scare” more than a decade ago—People’s World, 9/26/11; CounterSpin, 2/1/13.)
Universities and the press are supposed to be places where we can freely discuss the issues of the day, even if that means having to hear opinions that might be hard for some to digest. Without those arenas for free thought, our First Amendment rights mean very little. If anyone who claims to be a free speech absolutist isn’t citing a government-led war against free speech and assembly on campuses as their No. 1 concern in the United States right now, they’re a fraud.
Google employees demand the company terminate its contract with the Israeli government at a protest on April 16, 2024. (Photo: No Tech for Apartheid/Medium)
“These mass, illegal firings will not stop us,” said organizers. “Make no mistake, we will continue organizing until the company drops Project Nimbus and stops powering this genocide.”
The peace coalition No Tech for Apartheid accused Google of a “flagrant act of retaliation” late Wednesday night as the Silicon Valley giant announced it had fired 28 workers over protests against its cloud services contract with the Israeli government.
The firings came after Google organizers held two 10-hour sit-ins at the company’s offices in Sunnyvale, California and New York City, demanding the termination of Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract under which Google and Amazon provide cloud infrastructure and data services for Israel—without any oversight regarding whether the Israel Defense Forces uses the services in its occupation of Palestinian territories and bombardment of Gaza.
No Tech for Apartheid said in a statement that Google officials called the police to both offices to arrest nine protesters—dubbed the Nimbus Nine—on Tuesday morning, before utilizing “a dragnet of in-office surveillance” to fire nearly two dozen other employees on Wednesday.
“They punished all of the workers they could associate with this action in wholesale firings,” said the coalition, which includes Jewish Voice for Peace and MPower Change, a Muslim-led anti-war group.
Google accused the workers of “bullying,” “harassment,” defacing property, and physically impeding other employees—allegations No Tech for Apartheid rejected as it noted organizers “have yet to hear from a single executive about” their concerns over Google’s collaboration with Israel.
“This excuse to avoid confronting us and our concerns directly, and attempt to justify its illegal, retaliatory firings, is a lie,” said the workers. “Even the workers who were participating in a peaceful sit-in and refusing to leave did not damage property or threaten other workers. Instead they received an overwhelmingly positive response and shows of support.”
The organizers staged the sit-ins on the heels of reporting in Time magazine about new negotiations between Google and the Israeli government regarding further potential tech contracts.
Kate J. Sim, a child safety policy adviser at Google who said she was among those fired this week, said the terminations show “how terrified [executives] are of worker power.”
Terminated worker here. Listen when employers tell you exactly who they are
McCarthyism is alive and well. Look how terrified they are of worker power 🔥
Google employees have a history of harnessing worker power to change policies at the company. In 2018, Google terminated a deal with the U.S. Defense Department to develop drone and artificial intelligence (AI) technology through a contract called Project Maven. The decision followed the resignations of several employees and the condemnation of thousands of workers.
Calling Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian “genocide profiteers,” No Tech for Apartheid said Wednesday that they will not stop demonstrating against Project Nimbus until they get a similar result.
“The truth is clear: Google is terrified of us,” said the group. “They are terrified of workers coming together and calling for accountability and transparency from our bosses… The corporation is trying to downplay and discredit our power.
“These mass, illegal firings will not stop us,” No Tech for Apartheid added. “On the contrary, they only serve as further fuel for the growth of this movement. Make no mistake, we will continue organizing until the company drops Project Nimbus and stops powering this genocide.”
Protesters block the Holland Tunnel on Monday, January 8, in New York City to call for a cease-fire in Gaza. (Photo credit: Alexa Wilkinson)
“We are trying to show how it feels to be trapped in a city you can’t leave,” one participant said.
Protesters blocked the Holland Tunnel and three major New York City bridges during Monday’s rush hour to call for a cease-fire in Gaza as Israel’s deadly assault on the besieged enclave enters its fourth month.
Organizers said that they chose to block traffic in order to create a “physical analogue” to the experience of people in Gaza, “where there is no getting out.”
“We are trying to show how it feels to be trapped in a city you can’t leave,” 30-year-old participant Mon Mohapatra told The New York Times.
“We salute the brave individuals and organizations who across the country and the world are taking action to disrupt the flow of capital, by blocking ports and traffic arteries.”
Organizers said in a statement that a thousand people blocked traffic Monday morning for more than two hours at the Holland Tunnel and Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Williamsburg bridges. The action was coordinated by a coalition of groups including the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), Al-Awda: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), Critical Resistance, and Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG).
The action at the Holland Tunnel began around 9:30 am ET, the Port Authority Police Department toldCBS News. The department arrested 120 people for blocking the outbound lane. The New York Police Department’s chief of patrol toldWABC that 325 people were arrested across all four locations.
The organizers said that their actions snarled traffic in SoHo, Tribeca, Hudson Square, the Financial District, and the Lower East Side. Traffic began moving again around the Holland Tunnel by 10:30 am, over the Brooklyn Bridge a little before 11:00 am, and over the Williamsburg and Manhattan bridges a little before 11:30 am, WABC reported.
Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan Bridge, Holland Tunnel, and Williamsburg Bridge were all SHUT DOWN by a coalition of organizers, bringing New York City traffic to a halt.
The People demand a ceasefire now, an end to US “aid” to Israel, and an immediate lifting of the siege on Gaza! pic.twitter.com/0ksv3nE57x
— Palestinian Youth Movement (@palyouthmvmt) January 8, 2024
“In Gaza, of course, people have limited mobility, no freedom of movement, they cannot leave, even if they want to, they move place to place, then those places are bombed,” Rachel Himes, who was arrested at the Holland Tunnel, told The New York Times. “We wanted to create that condition temporarily in Manhattan.”
The action was planned to coincide with the start of the fourth month of Israel’s attack on Gaza, which has killed more than 23,000 people and injured nearly 59,000 since October 7, according to Monday figures from the Gaza Health Ministry.
Demonstrators at all four Manhattan locations dropped banners listing the five demands of the Palestinian Youth Movement:
An immediate cease-fire;
An end to the siege on Gaza;
The release of all Palestinian prisoners;
An end to the occupation of Palestine; and
An end to U.S. aid to Israel.
Ceasefire is the beginning. These are our demands, as set forth by the @palyouthmvmt. Lift the siege. Free all the Palestinian prisoners. End the occupation. NOW!!! pic.twitter.com/bWyLe2Vg1u
— Writers Against the War on Gaza (@wawog_now) January 8, 2024
Demonstrators at the Williamsburg and Manhattan bridges used piping and chains to bolster their blockades, which police had to saw through to clear the protesters, according to The New York Times and CBS. Police “violently assaulted” one participant at the Williamsburg Bridge, according to a video shared by WAWOG on social media.
Cops violently assaulted a pro-Palestine protester at the blockade of the Williamsburg Bridge earlier today. This is what we mean when we say NYPD, KKK, IDF: THEY’RE ALL THE SAME!
— Writers Against the War on Gaza (@wawog_now) January 8, 2024
Monday’s protest builds on months of direct actions both in New York and across the country as protesters have blocked traffic, sat in at train stations, disrupted political events, and blocked ports to call on President Joe Biden to end U.S. support for Israel’s bombardment and invasion of Gaza.
On Saturday, a group of protesters blocked traffic on Seattle’s I-5 highway for more than four hours.
“These direct actions that we are seeing now are tools of protest that intend to disrupt the flow of capital and hit the political and economic elites where it hurts, in order to force an end to the ongoing genocide of Palestinians and siege on Gaza,” Bissan Barghouti of Samidoun Seattle, who helped organize a rally in solidarity with the highway blockade, told Common Dreams. “As Palestinians and those in solidarity with our struggle, we condemn the government and corporate complicity in the massacre of our loved ones in Gaza and across occupied Palestine.”
Barghouti added, “We salute the brave individuals and organizations who across the country and the world are taking action to disrupt the flow of capital, by blocking ports and traffic arteries.”
In addition to more recent protests, Monday’s New York action took its inspiration from a 1995 ACT UP protest that was the first to block two bridges and two tunnels in New York at the same time.
“We urge other coalitions, collectives, and autonomous organizations to take meaningful action against the genocidal state, its collaborators, its benefactors, and profiteers,” the group behind Monday’s New York protest said in a statement. “Protests and demonstrations across the so-called U.S. must escalate in their willingness to shut down business as usual and arrest the flow of capital in order to end this occupation once and for all. Our skills and goals must be aligned towards an immediate and permanent cease-fire, the end of Zionism, and a free Palestine in our lifetimes.”
Demonstrators demanding a Gaza cease-fire protest outside Penn Station in New York City on December 18, 2023. (Photo: caren/X)
“We must stand up and not be silent to this injustice,” said one rabbi taking part in the demonstration.
A coordinated wave of demonstrations against what activists called Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza targeted New York City transit hubs Monday afternoon, with protesters demanding an immediate cease-fire as heavy Israeli bombardment of the besieged strip pushed the death toll from 73 days of attacks to nearly 20,000.
Protesters marched from Grand Central Station to the Port Authority Bus Terminal and then on to Penn Station, where at least hundreds of activists gave police the slip and occupied Moynihan Hall. Many participants prayed for peace before leaving the station.
“We must stand up and not be silent to this injustice,” Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss toldamNewYork Metro outside Grand Central Station. “We hurt and cry with the people who are dying and suffering under the stranglehold of the Zionist occupation. We want the world to know that we hurt because we are Jews, we will not be silent because we are Jews.”
#BREAKING Pro-Palestinian Protesters rushed the entrance of Penn Station as cops ran closely behind them, they are now occupying Moynihan Hall inside.
Independent photojournalist Katie Smith followed the entire demonstration—which was coordinated by the group Within Our Lifetime—documenting incidents including police “violently engaging with protesters” and a confrontation between the actor Alec Baldwin and activists.
According to Smith, activists later marched to a building in Greenwich Village where a fundraiser for the Israel Defense Forces was reportedly being held.
Monday’s actions followed recent protests in New York, including a Manhattan march led by artists remembering the life and work of Refaat Alareer—a Gaza poet and professor killed last week in an Israeli airstrike—and calling on Israel to free political prisoners including the members of Freedom Theater recently arrested in Jenin in the illegally occupied West Bank.
In recent days, large protests for Gaza have also taken place in U.S. cities including Houston, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., as well as in cities in countries including the U.K., Canada, France, Belgium, Norway, and Germany.
In California, workers at Google and allies held a Thursday die-in at the tech giant’s San Francisco office “to demand the company stop powering Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza” through the $1.2 billion Project Nimbus cloud computing contract.
More protests are planned for this week, including a nationwide action by Mennonites on Tuesday and a rally by over 80 groups on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. that same day.
Sponsored by the Action Center on Race and Economy, Adalah Justice Project, Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, and the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, Tuesday’s D.C. event is being held to “demand a permanent cease-fire in Gaza and oppose the Biden administration’s proposed military aid package sending billions of taxpayer dollars to Israel, U.S. southern border militarization, and immigration enforcement.”
