Tension is high on Monday at Columbia University in New York, the epicenter of the pro-Palestinian demonstrations which are shaking many campuses in the United States, with students refusing to leave the site, “except by force”, despite an ultimatum from the management under penalty of sanctions.
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Minouche Shafik, the president of the establishment – one of the most prestigious in the country – urged the students in a press release to leave their camp after the failure of negotiations launched last Wednesday.
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In a document distributed to demonstrators, entitled “Notice to the encampment”, the university demands that they evacuate the premises by 2 p.m. (6 p.m. GMT). Otherwise, “you will be suspended pending an investigation,” according to the text.
Students immediately called for a rally followed by a press conference to “protect the camp”.
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“We will not be dislodged, except by force,” Sueda Polat, a student leader of the movement, shouted from the platform.
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As the ultimatum expired, dozens of young people marched, their faces hidden by sanitary masks, walking around the campus clapping their hands and singing “Free Palestine,” according to a journalist from the AFP which counted around fifty people remaining in the camp.
For Columbia professor Joseph Howley, the university’s statement amounts to “yielding to external political pressure.”
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The management of the establishment chooses, he told AFP, to start from the “postulate according to which the simple presence of a political discourse in the name of Palestine is a threat to Jews like me”, this which is “absurd and dangerous”.
It has been ten days since a wave of protests spread across American universities. The movement started from Columbia where around a hundred pro-Palestinian students, who had launched an occupation of the campus lawns to demand an end to the war in Gaza, were arrested on April 18.
Since then, hundreds of people – students, teachers and activists – have been briefly questioned, sometimes arrested and prosecuted at several universities across the country.
Images of riot police intervening on campuses, after being called to the rescue by university leaders, have gone around the world, recalling similar events in the United States during the Vietnam War.
Tense debate
The demonstrations have revived the debate, already tense and even violent since the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7, on freedom of expression, anti-Zionism, and what constitutes anti-Semitism.
Many American universities have found themselves at the heart of the news with the conflict in Gaza, and two university presidents, including Harvard, had to resign a few months ago after being accused of not doing enough against the conflict. anti-Semitism.
On the one hand, students and teachers accuse their universities of seeking to censor political speech, on the other several personalities, including elected representatives of Congress, affirm that activists are fueling anti-Semitism.
“Many of our Jewish students, and others, have felt an intolerable atmosphere in recent weeks. Many have left campus and it is a tragedy,” the president of Columbia said in her press release.
Minouche Shafik also affirmed that the university would not withdraw from its investments in Israel, which the protesters also demanded.
But Columbia “offered to invest in health and education in Gaza,” she said.
Trumpist Republican elected official Elise Stefanik, who led the charge against the two university presidents who resigned, considered Ms. Shafik’s press release “absolutely shameful”.
“Not once is there any mention of protecting Jewish students from the anti-Semitism that rages at Columbia,” she wrote on X.
On Sunday, the White House called on demonstrations in support of Gaza to remain “peaceful.”
“We obviously respect the right to peaceful protest,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said.
“But we fully condemn the anti-Semitic comments that we have heard in recent times and (…) all the hate speech and threats of violence that are circulating,” he continued.
Over the weekend, 100 people were arrested on a college campus in Boston, and their encampment was dismantled, 80 at a college in Missouri, 72 on a campus in Arizona, and 23 others at the Indiana University.
