New York City Police officers have entered the campus of Columbia University in an effort to disperse pro-Palestine protesters.
Who have occupied the iconic Hamilton Hall, a building on the campus that has had a long-standing connection with students’ activism. This comes after university authorities threatened to expel the anti-Israel protesters to end their occupation of the building.
On Tuesday night, police officers entered Hamilton Hall through a second floor window, while several protesters were taken into custody just off campus at 116th and Amsterdam in New York, CNN reported.
Earlier in the evening, hundreds of officers from the New York Police Department’s Strategic Response Group were deployed outside the campus as the New York City Mayor declared “this must end now”, heightening nearly two weeks of tension between administrators of the Ivy League school and pro-Palestinian activists.
Since the mass arrests of pro-Palestine protesters at Columbia University on April 18, more than 1,000 protesters have been arrested on campuses in the states of Texas, Utah, Virginia, North Carolina, New Mexico, Connecticut, Louisiana, California and New Jersey.
After entering the campus, the New York City Police officers ordered the protesters to “back up” as they started dispersing the protesters from the building. The officers kept saying “back up, or get arrested”.
Shortly before officers entered the campus, the New York Police Department received a notice from Columbia authorising officers to take action, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press.
A Columbia University spokesperson said the protesters who broke into Hamilton Hall were led by people not affiliated with the Ivy League school, CNN reported. “We will not risk the safety of our community or the potential for further escalation.”
In an email notice on Tuesday evening, the Columbia administration said “students occupying the building face expulsion”, Reuters reported. The protesters had “chosen to escalate an untenable situation” and that the school’s top priority was “restoring safety and order on our campus”, it added.
Addressing reporters, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said the Hamilton Hall takeover was instigated by “outside agitators” who lack any affiliation with Columbia and are known to law enforcement for provoking lawlessness, Reuters reported.
The occupation of Hamilton Hall began on Tuesday when protesters broke windows and seized the building, where they unfurled a banner reading “Hind’s Hall”, symbolically renaming the building for a 6-year-old Palestinian child killed in Gaza by the Israeli military, Reuters reported.
As the students continued to occupy Hamilton Hall, pizzas and other food and supplies were sent to the protesters inside the building in a plastic crate dangled from a pulley rope suspended from an upper-floor balcony.
On Monday, Columbia began suspending students for refusing to leave the campus protest tent site when school officials declared a stalemate after days of talks aimed at ending the encampment.
The White House condemned the standoffs at Columbia and California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, where protesters had occupied two buildings until officers with batons intervened overnight and arrested 25 people.
National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said that President Joe Biden believes students occupying an academic building is “absolutely the wrong approach”, and “not an example of peaceful protest”, The Associated Press reported.