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Hours after student protesters at Columbia University took over a campus building, Mayor Eric Adams warned against further escalation on Tuesday and claimed that “professional outside agitators” had “co-opted” a peaceful demonstration.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators began occupying Hamilton Hall on Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus overnight, without any reported resistance from law enforcement. The city has maintained a large police presence outside the campus gates, responding to what Adams said was a request by Columbia’s administrators.
“They asked us to come into all their entry points to monitor that,” Adams said during an unrelated press conference on Tuesday, adding that people unaffiliated with the university had tried to join the campus protests. “The entry to the school is on the streets and it’s important to protect the streets.”
Adams and NYPD officials have said for days that officers would not move onto Columbia’s campus unless their presence was requested by administrators, as happened last week when officers arrested more than 100 people who had camped out on the school’s south lawn. But the mayor also added Tuesday that the occupation of a building marked an “elevation” of tensions.
“We cannot allow the elevation of actions like that,” Adams said.
Hours later, Tuesday evening, Adams called another press conference at NYPD headquarters, where he and top police officials repeated a claim that outsiders unaffiliated with Columbia had infiltrated the protest and sown discord. Officials refused to identify any of those people, but Rebecca Weiner, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism, said that some had been known to frequent prior protests such as Occupy Wall Street and the Stop Cop City movement in Atlanta.
“A lot of people involved, some are known to us, and others are reported by university officials to be unaffiliated with campus” Weiner said, adding that the destruction of security cameras on campus had hampered attempts to identify people. Weiner showed reporters footage and photos of people clad in black smashing windows and barricading doors at Hamilton Hall, but did not specify which of the people shown were alleged to be outsiders.
Students who are occupying Hamilton Hall would face charges of third-degree burglary, criminal mischief and trespassing if police are invited onto campus, said Kaz Daughtry, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner for operations. People who remain camped out outside would be charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct.
Columbia is threatening to expel students who are occupying the building, and is suspending students who did not leave an outdoor encampment before a deadline it set Monday. Student protesters have said they will remain inside the building until the university meets their demands, which include disclosing the university’s financial investments and divesting from companies with ties to Israel.
“We made it very clear yesterday that the work of the university cannot be endlessly interrupted by protesters who violate the rules,” the office of Columbia’s president Minouche Shafik wrote in a Tuesday afternoon email to the university community. “Continuing to do so will be met with clear consequences. Protesters have chosen to escalate to an untenable situation — vandalizing property, breaking doors and windows, and blockading entrances —and we are following through with the consequences we outlined yesterday.”
Adams offered a measure of sympathy for the students earlier Tuesday, defending their right to free speech and saying Tuesday that he had protested for causes such as divestment from Apartheid South Africa during his days as a college student. But the mayor has also condemned those associated with the Columbia protest who have been seen making antisemitic remarks. (Student organizers have called their protest peaceful, and at least some of the hateful rhetoric has been attributed to members of the public unaffiliated with the student group.)
A large number of police officers continued to surround the Columbia campus on Tuesday, concentrated mostly along the East Side of Broadway where the university’s main campus lies.
Also on Tuesday, Gov. Kathy Hochul told reporters that students occupying the academic building “are clearly breaking the law” and called for accountability — whether through “disciplinary action from the school or from law enforcement.”
The mayor, asked earlier whether the National Guard should be sent in — a fraught possibility given the deadly results at Kent State University half a century ago — said immediately that such an escalation would not be necessary.
“The NYPD is doing an amazing job,” Adams said.
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Nick Garber , 2024-04-30 21:35:57
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