University President Nemat Minouche Shafiq said that the days-long talks between the students organizing the protest and academic leaders did not succeed in convincing the demonstrators to remove dozens of tents they had set up to express their opposition to the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip.
The campaign at Columbia University, the focus of protests against the Gaza war that has ravaged university campuses in various parts of the United States in recent weeks, comes at a time when police arrested dozens of students at the University of Texas at Austin during a pro-Palestinian march.
Columbia University sent a letter to protesters on Monday morning, warning that students who refused to leave the tents by 18 GMT and sign a form acknowledging their participation in the protest would be expelled, and said they would not be able to complete the semester in good standing.
“We have begun suspending students as part of the second phase of our efforts to ensure safety on our university campus,” university spokesman Ben Chang said in a briefing on Monday evening.
“The camp created an unwelcoming environment for many of our Jewish students and faculty and created a noisy distraction that interfered with teaching, learning, and preparation for final exams,” Chang added.
The university's president said in a statement that Columbia University would not divest in assets that support the Israeli military, a key demand of the protesters, but offered to invest in health and education in Gaza and improve transparency regarding the university's direct investment holdings.
Protesters pledged to keep the camp on the Manhattan campus until the university meets three demands: divestment, transparency regarding the university's finances, and amnesty for students and faculty who were subject to disciplinary action for their role in the protests.
The Columbia University Desegregation Coalition said in a joint statement read at a press conference after the deadline ended, “These disgusting intimidation tactics mean nothing compared to the killing of more than 34,000 Palestinians. We will not move until Colombia meets our demands or they move us by force.”
A large number of students, faculty members, and observers from outside the university criticized Nemat for calling the New York Police two weeks ago to end the sit-in, which led to the arrest of more than 100 people.
Efforts to break up the sit-in, which the students held again within days of the police action on April 18, sparked dozens of similar protests at universities from California to New England.
The pro-Palestinian marches sparked intense debate on campus about the point at which university officials should draw a line between freedom of expression and hate speech.
Other student protests
At the University of California, Los Angeles, where protesters and their opponents clashed over the weekend, pro-Israel activists set up a large screen and speakers to play a tape of a Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7.
The video was apparently responding to pro-Hamas chants that leaked into campus protests in support of Palestinian civilians trapped in Gaza.
The university also beefed up security around the pro-Palestinian camp, which consists of more than 50 tents surrounded by a metal fence near the main administrative building on campus.
Rights groups have criticized police violence on university campuses such as Emory University in Atlanta and the University of Texas at Austin, where police moved against protesters last week and detained dozens before dropping charges against them for lack of evidence.
Protests and arrests broke out again on the University of Austin campus on Monday.
Campus police, backed by Texas State Troopers, attempted to break up a large student protest, arresting at least 43 people, according to defense attorney George Loeb, who said he confirmed the number with court and prison staff.
For its part, Virginia Tech University said Monday that authorities arrested 91 demonstrators from a student camp on charges of trespassing.
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