Columbia University Closes Campus as Hundreds of Anti-Israel Student Protesters Occupy Quad By James Lynch
New York — Columbia University closed its doors to the public on Wednesday as hundreds of campus activists protested Israel’s ongoing military campaign against Hamas.
Campus police and NYPD officers prohibited those without a Columbia ID card from entering campus as students erected dozens of tents on the school’s main campus lawn and hurled anti-Israel slogans. The protest was held as Columbia president Minouche Shafik testified before Congress.
“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” protesters could be heard chanting. Two Jewish Columbia students spoke about their experience during the protest and the larger issue of antisemitism on campus.
“They took over the lawn, set up tents so people don’t have access to it, and they continued their anti-semitic, hateful chants,” Jewish student Jonathan Lederet told National Review.
“Intifada, intifada” and “death to [the] Zionist state” were among the chants hurled by the protesters, he recalled.
“They all chant ‘shame, shame on you.’ I say ‘I want there to be more aid, Hamas steals the aid.’ I say ‘Let’s chant for peace, let’s talk about co-existence, have a dialogue.’ They chant about martyrdom and violence and killing. So yeah, they all hate me, but I’m not going anywhere,” Lederet added.
Lederet held up an Israeli flag and wore his yarmulke to the march. Footage shared by independent left-wing reporter Talia Jane showed protesters chanting “shame on you” to the pro-Israel students who came to the event.
Another Jewish student from Barnard College, Columbia’s sister college, said she was “disgusted” by the protest and it happens “all the time.” The student, whose first name is Katie, called on Shafik to take further action against antisemitism and live up to Columbia’s values.
“If somebody says calling for the genocide of Jews makes me unsafe, they say ‘f*ck you.’ And then there’s no consequence, people have been told ‘f*ck the Jews,’ they’ve been spit on, someone threw coffee on a Jew today,” she said.
“A lot of Jewish students have either switched rooms, moved off campus, transferred,” Katie added. She was one of the Jewish students who moved off campus because of the antisemitic climate.
The protest began early in the morning and continued throughout the afternoon as the university’s president testified before the House Education and Workforce Committee on Columbia’s response to rampant antisemitism following Hamas’s mass civilian slaughter on October 7.
Asked during by lawmakers testimony whether she had witnessed any “anti-Jewish” protests on campus, Shafik said that she had not, instead agreeing with Representative Ilhan Omar’s framing that on-campus protests have pitted pro-war demonstrators versus anti-war protesters.
The “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” began around 4:00 a.m. Wednesday and demanded the university cut all financial ties to Israel, the Columbia Spectator reported. A campus spokesperson told the outlet protesters were violating university policy by setting up shop on the lawn.
National Review and other outlets were unable to attend the on-campus protest because of the safety measures taken by Columbia. A campus police officer told NR he had never seen anything like it during his time working for the university.
Additional protesters gathered outside the Broadway entrance holding signs and passing out fliers expressing solidarity with campus activists. The fliers were distributed by a youth communist group and claimed Columbia was violating students’ free speech rights.
Eventually, more left-wing activists arrived outside the Broadway entrance to hold a small demonstration. NYPD reinforcements quickly came in to prevent the scene from getting out of hand. The activists came to the area after left-wing anti-Israel group Within Our Lifetime encouraged protesters to show support for the campus demonstration.
Protesters held up signage accusing Israel of “genocide” and “mass murder” in Gaza and shouted anti-Israel and anti-police slogans as NYPD closed off the Broadway entrance and secured the area.
“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” and “Columbia you can’t hide, you support genocide” yelled the activists, many of whom wore masks or keffiyehs to conceal their identities.
A pro-Israel demonstration began at the Broadway entrance later in the afternoon, with attendees surrounded by police and holding up “End Jew Hatred” signs. The officers barricaded the anti-Israel demonstration on one side of the Broadway gate and the pro-Israel demonstration on the other.
A Jewish female graduate student at Columbia wearing an Israeli flag told reporters she was yelled at and called “Zionist b***h” when she exited the subway station and walked over to the pro-Israel demonstration.
“I can tell you in the past 30 seconds that I got off the train I was called a ‘Zionist b***h,’ I’ve been called a ‘genocidal b***h,’ I’ve been called 30 other forms of ‘genocidal b***h’ within the last 30 seconds just walking over to the street, and that’s very typical of an experience for a Jewish student on this campus today,” she said.
“Our friend actually, she was spit on her way to class and called a b***h just because she looks Jewish,” she recalled to National Review. She was accompanied by a friend and fellow first year masters student who told NR she was scared to wear her Jewish star on campus.
Both demonstrations continued separately on Broadway and 116th Street with dozens of attendees on each side. Only days earlier, anti-Israel protesters marched in Manhattan and Brooklyn, shutting down streets.
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