Columbia University has been a focal point of anger and tensions over the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7 last year and the war in Gaza that has followed. On Monday, the anniversary of the attack, it took on that role once again, as students and faculty held rallies, class walkouts and vigils to mourn the lives lost in both Israel and Gaza.
Outside the university gates, about 100 members of the Jewish community gathered holding Israeli flags and posters showing the faces of people kidnapped by Hamas. Inside, on the steps of Low Library, at the center of campus, pro-Israel students made speeches about people who died at the Nova Music Festival last year.
Near them on the same steps, students who had walked out of class in support of Palestinians chanted, “Free, free Palestine,” and held flags and posters that read “Free Gaza, Free Speech” and “Join us Alumni.”
Columbia University and its affiliate, Barnard College, have sought to contain protests related to the Mideast conflict with new security measures, including locking campus gates and requiring students, faculty and staff to show IDs to enter. So far this school year, the atmosphere has been calmer, but many students and faculty say tensions are palpable.
Starting last week, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a pro-Palestinian group, has been holding a vigil on the steps of Low Library. Unlike some past protests on and off campus, which have been marked by chanting and marching, the vigil has been somber. A few dozen students have often been gathered, sitting in silence, while others recite the names of those killed in Gaza.
At the foot of the campus’s Alma Mater statue last week, protesters set up a memorial featuring pictures of those who have died, along with Palestinian flags and a memorial garden laid out in the grass, but the college removed it and set up barricades. University security officers now stand watch nearby.
Joshua Shain, a biochemistry major and member of Students Support Israel, came to the pro-Palestinian vigil on Friday. He sat a distance away and held an Israeli flag, which he said was meant to raise awareness.
Mr. Shain said he had felt unsafe at times on campus in the past year. He recalled seeing a swastika in a campus bathroom and said that hearing people chant “Globalize the Intifada” had made him feel uncomfortable. But he said that this year felt “a lot less bad.”
A group of journalism students held their own tribute for the Palestinian and Lebanese journalists killed while covering the war in Gaza and the spillover conflict in Lebanon. As the students read each journalist’s name, the students laid a flower on the steps.
Earlier in the day, pro-Israel students had set up their own display, including a memorial for those who died at the Nova Music Festival in Re’im, Israel, on Oct. 7.
Eliana Goldin, who is a leader of Aryeh, a pro-Israel campus group, said the memorial was intended to help people “understand where we’re coming from and what the Jewish experience and the Israeli experience is like.”
After two hours on the library steps, around 200 pro-Palestinian students marched away, through the campus gates and onto city streets, shouting, “Free, free Palestine,” and “The people united will never be defeated.” They blocked intersections and placed stickers on street signs and police cars that read, “I said I loved you and I wanted genocide to stop.”
Several pro-Israel students remained on campus playing music in front of their memorial, but their speeches ceased.
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