The 50 or so pro-Palestinian demonstrators picketing outside Columbia University’s main gates on the first day of the semester urged students to boycott classes and handed out fliers accusing Columbia of being complicit in genocide.
But the lines to enter campus stretched longer than the picket line. Inside the gates, students lounged in the sun and the university’s new interim president served ice cream. The mass show of support for the demonstrators, which caused Columbia to largely shut down its central campus in the spring, was not yet evident.
Even the day’s boldest disruption, the splashing of red paint on Columbia’s iconic statue, Alma Mater, was cleaned up by the university within hours. Some had predicted there would be a new encampment on Day 1, but from the administration’s perspective the start of the semester went relatively smoothly.
School administrators, at Columbia and around the country, have been preparing for this moment all summer. There are new protest rules and new security measures. At Columbia, only people with valid IDs can enter the main campus. Students who didn’t have one on Tuesday had to wait in long lines. Some grumbled about the inconvenience.
The anti-Israel rhetoric at the protests continued and disturbed some students who walked by. “There is only one solution, intifada revolution,” the protesters chanted.
But the demonstration, which included an eclectic range of people who weren’t students, including anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews, was on a public sidewalk, outside of the university’s jurisdiction. A large number of police officers stood nearby. Two protesters were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and obstruction, the police said.
A long academic year stretches ahead, and the war in Gaza continues. But around the country, there are signs that student protesters will have to rebuild momentum. School administrators are starting out more prepared then they were last fall, when the scale and intensity of protests caught many of them off guard. New students, or those who weren’t on campus last year, are bringing new perspectives.
Lily Meyers, a Columbia University senior who is Jewish, took last year off and said the new school year already felt different. Still, she was not too concerned.
“In New York,” she said, “there’s people saying hateful stuff all the time.”
For now, it was the logistics of the campus ID checks that most worried her. “It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out in the coming weeks, considering people are hoping to get to classes on time,” she said.
Other campuses around the country that hosted encampments saw sporadic protest activities as classes resumed, but there were few large disruptions.
At Cornell University, about 150 pro-Palestinian demonstrators, made up of students and community members, rallied on campus last week on the first day of school there. The night before, Day Hall was vandalized. A group of protesters broke a glass door and spray painted the exterior walls with the phrases, “Israel bombs, Cornell pays” and “Blood is on your hands.”
In a statement to The Cornell Daily Sun, the activists behind the graffiti said, “We had to accept that the only way to make ourselves heard is by targeting the only thing the university administration truly cares about: property.”
Yet classes have continued, and this Monday about 150 members from the Cornell and Ithaca communities gathered on campus to hold a vigil in honor of the six Israeli hostages who were found dead in Gaza. No disruptions to that event were reported.
By Wednesday, the building had been repaired and protesters had dispersed.
Shivani Vel, 20, a third-year pre-med student, said the climate still felt different. “Obviously the encampment is gone,” she said, “but people still talk about it. It shows how effective a demonstration like that can be.”
At the University of Pennsylvania, where a pro-Palestinian encampment ended with about 33 arrests, including nine students, last semester, there were no banners, posters or protesters on the College Green on Wednesday morning. The area was partly fenced off with crowd-control barriers hung with “No Trespassing” signs.
Pro-Palestinian student groups announced that they would share daily “Updates from Gaza” in front of the school’s Benjamin Franklin statue, the student newspaper reported. But several students said on Wednesday that they had not seen any protests so far this semester.
At Harvard University, a group of five professors used chalk and humor on Tuesday to protest new guidelines prohibiting chalked messages on campus walks. “Why do preschoolers have more academic freedom than Harvard students?” read one message scrawled on the ground.
But the student convocation ceremony, which is often disrupted by protesters, was uninterrupted on Monday. Pro-Palestinian activists distributed a pamphlet entitled “The Harvard Crimeson” but didn’t shout between speakers, The Harvard Crimson reported.
Tighter campus rules may have limited the protests. But curtailing academic freedom and speech too tightly could also cause a backlash, increasing student support for protesters, similar to what happened last semester. Some professors and students are already saying that they are once again facing inappropriate repression for expressing their views.
At the University of Michigan, a group of around 50 young people gathered for a “die-in” demonstration at the school’s club fair, Festifall, last Wednesday. They sat and laid on the ground chanting, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” while holding signs with images of Palestinians killed in Gaza and reading their names. A group of counterprotesters held American and Israeli flags, and recited, “Bring them home.”
Four were arrested. They included the 16-year-old child of a university employee who was later treated at the children’s hospital for injuries related to the arrest, said the chair of the Faculty Senate, Rebekah Modrak, who condemned the police response as too aggressive.
“It was such an overwhelming show of force against unarmed, very peaceful protesters,” said Silke-Maria Weineck, a professor of comparative literature and German studies, who was also there.
Campus police and administrators noted that none of those arrested were current students. “For more than an hour, they were given multiple warnings that made clear they were blocking pedestrian traffic and violating university policy,” they wrote in a statement.
At the University of California, Berkeley, the steps of Sproul Hall, the site of last semester’s encampment, were swept clean for the new academic year. Last week, some demonstrators gathered there to protest new University of California guidance to ban encampments and masks worn to disguise protesters’ identities.
But some students said it felt as if the activism had waned.
“The momentum ended very quickly,” said Trista Lenford, a junior who is supportive of the pro-Palestinian movement. “The energy shifted. It went away over the summer.”
At Columbia, pro-Palestinian activists gathered on Wednesday for a sit-in outside the class that Hillary Clinton teaches at the School of International and Public Affairs.
Though their numbers were small, about 30 protesters as the class was set to begin, their choice of event guaranteed press coverage to amplify their cause. “Zionists not welcome here,” they chanted. “Columbia, you will see, Palestine will be free.”
Mrs. Clinton had come to class through a different door. After about two hours, the protesters dispersed.
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