Images and video launched through Columbia University display overturned and stacked furniture, damaged home windows and different harm within the aftermath of the seizure and occupation of Hamilton Hall through protesters and its clearing through police Tuesday.
The pictures from inside of Hamilton Hall display overturned chairs, tables and different furniture. Protesters broke home windows and led to different harm at the occupied corridor, college officers stated and pictures confirmed. Barricades had additionally been arrange.
In movies launched through the college, police with revolt helmets and different apparatus are noticed throughout the development, close to the piles of furniture, recycling containers and different pieces. Panes of glass throughout the development had been additionally smashed.
New York police used a big car with a ramp on it to get into the second-story window of the corridor at the Manhattan campus, and so they later reported that it was once cleared and secured.
Police cleared the protesters in Hamilton Hall and at protest encampments at Columbia after Mayor Eric Adams stated the protest in opposition to the battle in Gaza has “basically been co-opted by professional outside agitators.”
“We cannot and will not allow what should be a peaceful gathering to turn into a violent spectacle that serves no purpose,” Adams stated at round 6 p.m. ET Tuesday, including, “This must end now.”
Shortly after 9 p.m., police entered the campus after Columbia requested for his or her assist.
“The events on campus last night have left us no choice,” college President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik wrote in a letter to the police division.
Shafik has been criticized through scholars in addition to school individuals for the college’s reaction to protests in opposition to the battle in Gaza, and she or he has been accused of silencing pro-Palestinian voices at the Ivy League campus.
One of the ones critics was once Debbie Becher, a professor of sociology at Barnard College, which is an authentic Columbia faculty, who stated Tuesday night time on NBC News that the management for months “has continuously suppressed students’ speech.”
Columbia has stated encampments needed to opt for protection causes, however negotiations with scholars didn’t lead to other people leaving. The occupation of Hamilton Hall and the vandalism had been “an untenable situation,” college spokesman Ben Chang stated Tuesday.
Nearly 100 other people had been arrested, about 40 of them at Hamilton Hall, after police moved in to transparent protesters at the college’s request, officers stated.
Shafik additionally requested police to stay a presence at the campus thru at least May 17 — two days after the scheduled May 15 graduation. An estimated 15,000 scholars are set to graduate, the college has stated.
Hamilton Hall has been occupied through protesters prior to, famously within the 1968 protest at Columbia in opposition to the Vietnam War.
This 12 months, police cleared an encampment protesting the battle in Gaza on Columbia’s South Lawn at the college’s request on April 18. Over 100 other people had been arrested. Protesters then arrange a brand new encampment.
Protesters at Columbia and at different universities have demanded that schools divest from corporations attached to Israel or the battle in Gaza.
Israel went to battle with Hamas in Gaza after Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing greater than 1,200 other people, in addition to taking hostages. More than 34,000 other people had been killed in Gaza, in step with the Health Ministry in Gaza.