The occupation of a building on Columbia University’s campus on early Tuesday marked an especially tense 24 hours of pro-Palestinian protests across the country, as police in California started arresting protesters that had taken over at least one other building and threatened to do so at others.
Police had begun arresting demonstrators at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, where they had occupied a building for more than a week. And at Portland State University in Oregon, students had taken over a library.
In Manhattan, the takeover of Hamilton Hall at Columbia began shortly after midnight, as protesters marched around campus to chants of “free Palestine.” Within 20 minutes, protesters had seized Hamilton, a 118-year-old building that has been at the center of campus protests dating back to the 1960s. A spokesman for Columbia wasn’t immediately available.
Outside the neoclassical building, protesters, many wearing helmets, safety glasses, gloves and masks, barricaded the entrance. Those inside stacked chairs and tables at the entrance. A protester took a hammer to smash the glass part of a door. The protesters appeared to have free rein of the building.
The building, named after Alexander Hamilton, the first Treasury secretary, has been at the center of movements since at least 1968.
Tuesday promises to be another tense day at the Columbia campus in Manhattan, with students bracing for possible further action against the pro-Palestinian encampment on campus and administrators waiting to see if their decision to suspend demonstrators who remained at the site would blunt the protest.
In Portland demonstrators on Monday seized control of the library at Portland State University, where some had spray-painted words such as “Free Gaza,” a sign declared “Glory to Our Martyrs,” and activists called for the university to cut all ties with Boeing, which has supplied weaponry to Israel’s military.
Bob Day, the chief of the Portland Police Bureau, estimated on Monday night that perhaps 50 to 75 protesters were inside the building. Officials urged protesters to leave the area and warned that those involved could face criminal charges.
Columbia announced Monday evening that it had begun to suspend students who had failed to leave the encampment on its Manhattan campus by a deadline the university had set earlier in the day. After a day of protest and confusion, 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 with no sign of police action, most of the protesters had begun to disperse by the end of the afternoon, leaving 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 also stayed behind, with several saying that they planned to remain overnight to make sure their students’ right to protest was respected.
Columbia’s…
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