After midnight in the early hours of Tuesday morning, pro-Palestinian students at Columbia took over Hamilton Hall after the university’s administration issued a new wave of suspensions over an encampment in protest of Israel’s war on Gaza.
In a press release sent at around 2 am, the student protesters implored the administration not to send in the police or military.
“To Columbia’s administrators and trustees: do not incite another Kent or Jackson State by bringing soldiers and police officers with weapons onto our campus. Students’ blood will be on your hands,” the press release from the group Columbia University Apartheid Divest reads.
It is a new escalation in a student movement that has spread to more than 60 universities nationwide, largely in response to the New York City university’s initial crackdown. So far, there have been more than 900 arrests in crackdowns on pro-Palestinian demonstrations on US campuses. ….more
