Columbia University canceled in-person classes on Monday and latest demonstrations broke out on other campuses across the U.S. as tensions proceed to rise over Israel's war in Gaza.
Protesters gathered throughout the weekend on the campus of the Ivy League school in New York City, where police last week arrested greater than 100 pro-Palestinian protesters who had arrange an encampment.
Since those arrests, pro-Palestinian protesters have arrange camps on other campuses across the country, including on the University of Michigan, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Yale University, where several dozen protesters were arrested Monday morning after officials said they’d surrendered abandoned despite warnings.
The developments got here hours before the beginning of the Jewish holiday of Passover on Monday evening.
Columbia President Minouche Shafik said in a message to the college community Monday that she was “deeply saddened” by what happened on campus.
“To defuse the resentment and give us all an opportunity to consider next steps, I am announcing that all classes on Monday will be held virtually,” Shafik wrote. She said faculty and staff should work remotely when possible and students who don’t live to tell the tale campus should stay away.
Protests have erupted on many university campuses since Hamas' deadly attack on southern Israel on October 7, through which militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took about 250 hostages. In response, Israel has killed greater than 34,000 Palestinians within the Gaza Strip, in keeping with the local health ministry. The Health Ministry doesn’t distinguish between combatants and non-combatants but says not less than two-thirds of the dead were children and girls.
The demonstrations on US campuses have tested the road between free speech and inclusivity. They have also stoked tensions, with some Muslim students and their allies calling on schools to sentence Israel's attack on Gaza, and a few Jewish students saying they not feel supported or secure on campus as anti-Semitic sentiment runs high.
Prahlad Iyengar, an MIT graduate student studying electrical engineering, was amongst about two dozen students who arrange a camp with greater than a dozen tents on campus Sunday evening to call for a ceasefire and protest what they called “MIT’s complicity in what happened” refers to genocide in Gaza.”
“MIT has not even called for a ceasefire, and that is a demand we certainly have,” he said.
Iyengar also said the college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, issued confusing rules for protests.
“We are here to show that we reserve the right to protest. It is an essential part of life on a college campus,” he said, adding that they’ve received support from each graduate and undergraduate students.
On Sunday, Elie Buechler, rabbi of the Orthodox Union's Jewish Learning Initiative at Columbia, sent a WhatsApp message to almost 300 Jewish students recommending they go home until it was safer for them on campus.
Nicholas Baum, a 19-year-old Jewish college freshman who lives at a Jewish theological seminary two blocks from Columbia's Morningside Heights campus, said protesters over the weekend were “calling on Hamas to blow away Tel Aviv and Israel.” He said a number of the protesters who shouted anti-Semitic slurs weren’t students.
“Jews are afraid of Columbia. It's that simple. There has been so much denigration of Zionism, and that has extended to the denigration of Judaism as well,” he said.
The protest camp emerged in Columbia on Wednesday, the identical day Shafik faced intense criticism at a congressional hearing from Republicans who said she had not done enough to combat anti-Semitism. Two other Ivy League presidents resigned months ago after widely criticized testimony before the identical committee.
In her statement on Monday, Shafik said the Middle East conflict was terrible and she or he understood that many were in deep moral distress.
“But we cannot allow one group to dictate terms and attempt to disrupt key milestones like graduation to advance their point of view,” Shafik wrote.
In the approaching days, a working group of deans, school administrators and teachers will try to search out an answer to the university crisis, noted Shafik, who didn’t say when in-person classes will resume.
Several Columbia College and Barnard College students said they were suspended for his or her participation in last week's protests, including Barnard student Isra Hirsi, the daughter of Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar.
At Yale, cops arrested about 45 protesters and charged them with trespassing, said Officer Christian Bruckhart, a New Haven police spokesman. All were released on a promise to look in court later, he said.
Protesters arrange tents in Beinecke Plaza on Friday and demonstrated over the weekend, calling on Yale to stop all investments in defense firms that do business with Israel.
Nadine Cubeisy, a Yale student and one in every of the organizers of the protest, said the protesters were calling for Yale to divest from defense contractors since it was troubling that “this university that I'm going to attend, that I'm contributing to, and that's mine.” Friends donate money for the usage of that cash to finance violence.”
“Constructing structures, ignoring orders from university officials, remaining on campus areas beyond permitted hours, and other actions that violate university policies and guidelines pose safety risks and hinder the work of our university,” he said.
School officials said they spoke with protesters over several hours and gave them until the tip of the weekend to go away Beinecke Plaza. They said they warned protesters again Monday morning, telling them they might face arrest and disciplinary motion, including suspension, before police moved in.
A big group of protesters gathered at Yale after Monday's arrests and blocked a street near campus, said Bruckhart, the police spokesman. There were no reports of violence or injuries.
Last week, the University of Southern California took the weird step of canceling a planned commencement speech by its 2024 valedictorian, who had publicly supported the Palestinians. The university cited security concerns in a choice that was praised by some pro-Israel groups but criticized by free speech advocates.
Associated Press writers Steve LeBlanc and Susan Haigh contributed to this report.
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