Pro-Palestinian protests took place this week on the campuses of at least three universities in New York. [Brooke Anderson/TNA]
A pro-Palestinian protest at Barnard College in New York City that took place on Wednesday continued into Thursday with at least one person being taken into police custody.
The protest on Wednesday was a sit-in with students advocating for the reversal of the expulsion of two students who had demonstrated against an Israeli studies class.
The gathering lasted until late in the evening, with dozens of students refusing to leave Milbank Hall until their demands were met, including asylum for students who had been punished for pro-Palestinian activism (in addition to the expelled students).
On Thursday, the students took their demonstration to the streets, marching from Barnard to City College, both located in uptown New York. Some onlookers described the protesters as aggressive, while others saw them as peaceful and unfairly targeted.
The student protesters claim that the university administration’s fear of losing funding is influencing their crackdowns. Indeed, some prominent Republicans have called for the defunding of Barnard and Columbia over what they see as an insufficient response to the demonstrations.
Meanwhile, multiple Democratic and Republican lawmakers condemned the students’ actions on Thursday, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer calling it inappropriate and unacceptable, while several Republicans described the student protesters as a pro-Hamas mob and suggested that they all be expelled, according to a report by Jewish Insider.
The New York Post reported that Liora Rez, executive director of StopAntisemitism issued a statement to Leo Terrell, leader of the White House’s new task force to combat antisemitism, saying, “The university administration has completely failed to protect Jewish and Israeli students, faculty, and staff, allowing a hostile and dangerous environment to fester unchecked.”
Also on Thursday, on the other side of Manhattan, New York Governor Kathy Hochul cancelled a press conference after a group of dozens of pro-Palestinian students protested her event.
Barnard is a sister college of Columbia University, which has been a leader in the worldwide student-led demonstrations in support of Gaza since the outbreak of Israel’s genocidal war on the coastal enclave in October 2023.
In the 16 months since the conflict began, more than 62,500 Palestinians, most of them civilians, in Gaza and the occupied West Bank have been killed in Israeli airstrikes.
The student protests in New York were organised by Columbia University Apartheid Divest, according to their social media postas part of a “week of action” to call for the reversal of the expulsion of the two students for disrupting an Israeli studies class, a move the group says is an escalation of the university’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian students. They have vowed to hold further demonstrations in support of Gaza and student activists.
