After a day of protest and confusion on its Manhattan campus, Columbia University announced Monday evening that it had begun to suspend students who had not left a pro-Palestinian encampment by a 2 p.m. deadline.
The measure reflected the difficult balance Columbia administrators are seeking to strike as they try to avoid bringing the Police Department back to arrest those in the encampment, but also commit to the stance that the protest must end.
Students in the encampment, along with hundreds of supporters, had spent a tense afternoon rallying around the site in a show of force meant to deter the removal of its tents. But by 4 p.m., with no sign of police action, most of the protesters had begun to disperse, leaving only what appeared to be several dozen students and about 80 tents inside the encampment.
Just outside, about a dozen faculty in yellow and orange safety vests stayed behind, with several saying that they planned to remain overnight to make sure their students’ right to protest was respected.
Columbia’s move appeared to be an effort to get the encampment to peter out gradually before the university’s May 15 graduation, rather than to root it out with force, a step that administrators fear will incite more protest. The university said it had identified some but not all of the students in the encampment, who are likely to be notified of their suspensions one by one via email.
“We have begun suspending students as part of the next phase of our efforts to ensure the safety of our campus,” Ben Chang, a spokesman for the university, said.
According to the university, only the students who remained in the encampment after 2 p.m. would face immediate suspension, not the hundreds of other students who came during the afternoon to encircle the camp to protect it and show their support.
So far, at least, the student protesters vowed to stay put. At a news conference on Monday afternoon, Sueda Polat, a student organizer with the encampment, said that the university had not made significant concessions to the protesters’ main demand of divestment from companies with links to the Israeli occupation of Gaza. Columbia had also stopped negotiating. As a result, she said, the students inside the encampment “will not be moved unless by force.”
“We’ve been asked to disperse, but it is against the will of the students to disperse,” she said. “We do not abide by university pressures. We act based on the will of the students.”
Elga Castro, 47, an adjunct professor in the Spanish department at Barnard College, Columbia’s sister school, stood with other faculty and staff members, guarding access to the tents. She said she was there not because of her views, but because of her desire to protect her students’ abilities to protest. “I have my opinions on Gaza and Palestine, but I am mainly here to protect my students,” she said.
Ms. Castro said she had not received any word from Columbia about whether faculty participating in the protest would face censure.
The protesters at Columbia have inspired similar pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campuses across the country. Hundreds of students have been arrested.
On Monday afternoon in New York, many demonstrators were prepared for the elements. One student offered spray-on sunscreen to fellow protesters; another passed out bags of trail mix. Faculty members standing guard at the encampment held umbrellas to protect themselves from the sun on an uncharacteristically hot spring day.
Frances Anderson, 19, a Columbia engineering student, said she found the protests inspiring but was sitting them out because she felt that the students’ message was being distorted by outside influences. She said the demonstrations had taken on a hostile tone in recent days that felt out of step with their goals of peace.
“I’m very impressed by the people who are able to give up their school life for what they believe in,” she said. “The right to protest is fundamental to the American experience. But now the anger is on all sides.”
Dore Fish-Bieler, 22, a student in a joint program with the Jewish Theological Seminary and the Columbia University School of General Studies, had come with a group of Jewish students to observe the protest. He did not feel threatened by the chants or protesters he said, but he felt that his perspective, as a Zionist who also wanted a cease-fire, was not welcome.
“I wish there was room,” he said. “I would honestly join them if there was room for the hostages and things I care about.”
That friction was more pointed outside the Columbia Journalism School. As protesters walked by shouting “Free, free Palestine,” a lone woman countered: “Free the hostages!”
Amid the confusion, university administrators received a letter on Monday from 21 members of Congress, expressing frustration that the encampment had not already been dismantled. “As a result of this disruption on campus, supported by some faculty members, many students have been prevented from safely attending class, the main library, and from leaving their dorm rooms,” the letter said.
Students in the encampment on Monday morning received a notice from administrators stating that negotiations with student protest leaders were at an impasse. It urged the students to clear out voluntarily to allow the school to prepare the lawn for graduation ceremonies.
The university’s order to clear the encampment appeared be to an attempt to clear the area without calling in the Police Department, whose intervention on April 18 at the request of Columbia administrators led to more than 100 student arrests and incited an international movement to build similar encampments on dozens of university and college campuses.
“The current unauthorized encampment and disruption on Columbia University’s campus is creating an unwelcoming environment for members of our community,” the notice stated. “Please promptly gather your belongings and leave the encampment.”
Students will be not be punished for their participation in the encampment if they sign a form promising not to break any university rules through the end of the next academic year. Students in the encampment who already face discipline from previous violations, but who are there anyway, may not be eligible for the same deal, the document stated.
The notice also warned students that they might still be held accountable for discrimination and harassment charges stemming from their involvement in the encampment even if they did sign the form.
For those who did not leave, it was not immediately apparent how Columbia would enforce the clearing of the encampment. Last Friday, Nemat Shafik, Columbia’s president, in a statement to the community, all but ruled out calling in the Police Department again to clear the space.
“We called on N.Y.P.D. to clear an encampment once,” she wrote, in a notice co-signed by the co-chairs of Columbia’s board of trustees, “but we all share the view, based on discussions within our community and with outside experts, that to bring back the N.Y.P.D. at this time would be counterproductive, further inflaming what is happening on campus, and drawing thousands to our doorstep who would threaten our community.”
Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student and the lead negotiator on behalf of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the student coalition that has organized the encampment, called the deadline “just another intimidation tactic from the university.”
“The university is dealing with this matter as a disciplinary issue, not as a movement to divest from war,” he said.
At noon, about 150 students in the encampment gathered to vote on whether to continue despite the threat. Mr. Khalil, one of the speakers who addressed the students, compared the university’s notice to a similar one last week to clear the camp that was later postponed by Columbia to give more time for negotiations.
“We shouldn’t stop here because the people in Gaza are under bombs, and here we are under disciplinary charges,” he told the group.
As the afternoon wore on without a sign of what would happen next, Joseph Howley, a classics professor at Columbia who supports the protesters, said that he did not understand the administration’s end game.
“The students got the letters this morning about the 2 p.m. deadline and they believed the university was serious. And that’s why we now have a thousand students marching on campus right now,” he said. “So what’s the ending? We’re just going to wait for all those protesters to get tired and go home and then the cops will come in?”
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