The latest protests — stretching across an array of private and public colleges and universities — come days after more than 100 demonstrators were arrested at Columbia, sparking acts of solidarity at other institutions including Boston University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Encampments and other protests also sprang up at campuses such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California at Berkeley.
At New York University late Monday, officers from the NYPD made arrests at Gould Plaza after school administrators requested their assistance, according to police spokesperson Shaimaa Alkhafajee, who said she did not know how many people had been arrested.
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Videos on social media showed dozens of officers in tense confrontations with protesters. Some officers tossed tents, and others grappled with demonstrators.
Videos also showed police loading people, whose hands were zip-tied behind their backs, onto correctional buses. Officers said over a megaphone that protesters were arrested for “disorderly conduct,” according to the Washington Square News, NYU’s independent student newspaper.
Earlier in the day, Yale said 47 students were arrested at Beinecke Plaza and will be referred for disciplinary action, potentially including suspension. The school said it made repeated efforts over the weekend to talk to protesters, offered them meetings with trustees and warned of arrests before the Monday morning action. Police released the detained protesters.
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“I was deeply saddened that the call for civil discourse and peaceful protest I issued was not heeded,” Yale President Peter Salovey said in a message to the campus community.
“We then became aware of police reports identifying harmful acts and threatening language used against individuals at or near the protest sites,” he said. “Some of the aggressors are believed to be members of the Yale community while others were outsiders. We will not tolerate such behavior nor any open violation of Yale policies that interrupts academic and campus operations.”
The students occupying Beinecke Plaza are demanding that the Yale Corporation disclose its investments in, and divest from, military weapons manufacturers. They say Yale holds thousands of shares in index funds “with exposure” to defense contractors and weapons manufacturers that are helping “facilitate the genocide in Palestine,” according to a statement the student activists put out Monday.
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Yale is “sending bombs to level every university, every school in Gaza, and I’m not willing to stand silent while that happens,” said Tacey Hutten, a student protester who was arrested Monday. “And based on what I’ve seen the last couple of days, this campus isn’t either.”
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Israel denies that it is carrying out genocide in Gaza. A case brought before the International Court of Justice by South Africa alleges that Israel is violating international law by committing and failing to prevent genocidal acts. The court has ordered Israel to do more to prevent the deaths of civilians.
Yale’s Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility declined last week to take action on the university’s investments in military weapons makers. The committee “concluded that military weapons manufacturing for authorized sales did not meet the threshold of grave social injury, a prerequisite for divestment, because this manufacturing supports socially necessary uses, such as law enforcement and national security,” the advisory group wrote in a statement Wednesday.
Noor Kareem, a 21-year-old ethnicities, race and migration major who was arrested, had protested at Beinecke Plaza since April 15, and had spent every night there since setting up the encampment Friday. The number of protesters grew in recent days, reaching a peak of 700 to 1,000 on Sunday night, Noor said.
But students say the scene became tense early Monday.
Hutten, a 20-year-old sophomore, said she awoke at 6 a.m. Monday to a friend’s urgent message: Police had surrounded Beinecke Plaza.
Hutten had spent every night at Beinecke since Friday evening, huddling in beanbag chairs and blankets against the cold and snacking on pizza and chai donated by local businesses, many of them Arab- or Palestinian-owned. She had also joined in chants of “From the river to the sea” and “Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest!”
She had been thrilled to see temporary art pop up throughout the plaza. There were “a lot of signs in different languages coming from different groups, different identities and backgrounds,” Hutten said. “Everyone has been offering a piece of himself to the movement. It’s been beautiful.”
But now, she said, law enforcement officers were telling Hutten, her friends and fellow protesters to clear out or they would be arrested.
Police officers gave one warning, which many students did not hear, Hutten said. Nobody moved. Soon, Hutten said, she felt officers grabbing her arm and back and pulling her up some stairs. She said she was not surprised, and that she had come to expect such tactics from Yale, which she accused of being unwilling to engage in earnest with students’ demands.
Police later released the demonstrators without a requirement to post bail, and almost everyone returned to a large intersection near campus, Hutten said. She said the arrests did not intimidate her and fellow protesters.
“Not only are we not deterred, we may even be more engaged now,” she said. “We’re resolute. I’ve been involved in this struggle for a couple of months now and plan to be for the rest of my life.”
Meanwhile, Columbia University continues to face criticism over its response to recent protests. Last week, the administration asked the New York Police Department to enter campus and break up the pro-Palestinian encampment, a day after school leaders were questioned on Capitol Hill by lawmakers who claimed the protests were antisemitic. Some Jewish students said protesters’ rhetoric had become more extreme, describing demonstrators ordering them away from their encampment and even flashing a Hamas logo at them.
Hillel, a Jewish campus organization, called on Columbia and New York City to step up efforts to protect Jewish students, while urging them not to quit the school. “We do not believe that Jewish students should leave @Columbia,” the group posted on X. “We do believe that the University and the City need to do more to ensure the safety of our students.”
Classes at Columbia were held virtually Monday, and the university encouraged faculty and staff to work remotely. Students, either for religious reasons or with an approved disability accommodation, have the option of remote learning going forward, according to the university.
In a message to campus, Columbia President Minouche Shafik said she is convening a group of deans, university administrators and faculty to bring “this crisis to a resolution.” She said the group will continue discussions with student protesters, hoping to return to “respectful engagement with each other.”
Shafik said people not affiliated with the university have exploited and amplified tensions on the campus. Students and faculty have said the encampment on university grounds, accessible only to Columbia students and staff, is far more calm than the demonstrations held outside school gates.
Jeanine D’Armiento, a professor of medicine in anesthesiology at Columbia and chair of the executive committee of the University Senate, said Sunday that “a lot of the outside protests are different than the inside protests. … I have found that the students that we’re working with within the encampment have been very straightforward and making clear what their goals are … as we expect nonviolent protesters to do.”
On Monday afternoon, four Democratic lawmakers, who are Jewish, visited Columbia’s encampment.
Rep. Kathy Manning of North Carolina said in a statement to The Post that she spoke with Jewish students who felt unsafe by “virulent antisemitic chants” that called for Israel’s destruction.
“My visit to Columbia’s campus further underscored the pressing need for Congress to take action to combat antisemitism,” Manning’s statement said. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) said at a news conference near the campus that some students had witnessed protesters burning Israeli flags.
Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) also spoke, saying Columbia “will pay the price” if administrators don’t protect Jewish students. “Jewish students are welcome here at Columbia,” Gottheimer said. “And while the leadership of Columbia may be failing you, we will not. We will do everything in our power to keep you safe and do everything in Washington we can to make sure that you feel welcome at this university or any university across the United States of America.”
Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) also visited the campus.
Republican congressional lawmakers say Shafik is not doing enough to quell the unrest at Columbia. Rep. Elise Stefanik — who sits on the House panel Shafik testified before last week — led all 10 House Republicans from New York in a letter urging Shafik to resign for what they called her failure to “ensure students have a safe learning environment.”
Asked about the letter, a university spokesperson said, “President Shafik is focused on de-escalating the rancor on Columbia’s campus. She is working across campus with members of the faculty, administration, and Board of Trustees, and with state, city, and community leaders, and appreciates their support.”
Debbie Becher, an associate professor of sociology at Barnard College, said hundreds of faculty members on Monday afternoon protested Columbia’s use of police and what they considered harsh disciplinary measures to silence peaceful student protests.
Meanwhile, other campuses also are contending with increasingly aggressive campus activism. A group of student protesters at Pomona College in California was arrested earlier this month after storming the president’s office. At the University of California at Berkeley in February, protesters broke windows and a door while disrupting a talk given by an Israeli lawyer.
On Sunday, President Biden condemned antisemitism on college campuses. Biden’s statement, which was part of a lengthy Passover greeting he issued from the White House, did not name Columbia or Yale directly but cited “harassment and calls for violence against Jews” in recent days.
“This blatant Antisemitism is reprehensible and dangerous — and it has absolutely no place on college campuses, or anywhere in our country,” the statement said.
Richard Morgan, Susan Svrluga and Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff contributed to this report.
