Aftermath
Vestiges of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment on the day after police raided Columbia University’s Morningside Campus, in New York City, on Wedenesday, May 1, 2024. (Photo by Marco Postigo Storel)
Writers: Claire Davenport, Nandhini Srinivasan
Editors: Anna Oakes, Elza Goffaux, Brendan Rose
Photos: Edward Lopez, Emily Byrski, Indy Scholtens, Marco Postigo Storel
Videos: Emily Byrski
In mid-May, dozens of students lined up outside the century-old Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Several wore keffiyehs over their blue Columbia graduation gowns. Some had painted the Palestinian flag on their graduation cap, and others bore the names of children killed in Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza.
They smiled and hugged each other. It had been more than two weeks since hundreds of New York Police Department officers surrounded the campus and arrested over 100 protesters. Some reported injuries from the raid on Hamilton Hall, which protesters had occupied and renamed “Hind’s Hall” in honor of Hind Rajab.
May 18, 2024
Facilities personnel cleared out protesters’ personal items from Hamilton Hall the day after their arrests, New York City, on Wedenesday, May 1, 2024. (Photo by Marco Postigo Storel)
The NYPD and the Mayor insisted there had been no violence. Testimonies from arrested students and medical providers pointed to a different truth. The day after the arrest, a medic helping with jail support for arrested protesters said that they had been handled with “a severity that I’ve never seen before.”
In the days after the police were called on campus to clear Hamilton Hall, Mayor Adams and the NYPD officials inaccurately characterized the protesters as “outside agitators” they described as “professionals.”
Even later, once data was released about the protesters arrested, including that the majority of protesters inside Hamilton Hall were students or affiliated with Columbia, Mayor Adams continued pushing this narrative saying, “There is a movement to radicalize young people, and I'm not going to wait until it's done and all of a sudden acknowledge the existence of it.”
The morning after the NYPD raid, remnants of the preceding days’ protest lingered, New York City, on Wednesday, May 1, 2024. (Photo by Emily Byrski)
At least 46 people were charged for the occupation of Hamilton Hall. A month later, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg would drop charges for 31 of them due to insufficient evidence for anything beyond trespassing and misdemeanors. But this day was a graduation ceremony for the students who had participated in the encampment, dubbed “the People’s Graduation.”
Columbia University had suspended its plans for the traditional university-wide commencement ceremony due to the recent protests. This graduation ceremony, unlike the university-sanctioned ones, was organized by an independent group of faculty who “wanted to create a graduation ceremony for their students who have been excluded from campus for peacefully protesting Israel’s genocide in Gaza.” It was open to “any student who wants to be a part of it,” including from Columbia, Barnard, CUNY, NYU, and the New School.
(Video by Emily Byrski)
Speakers included community advocate Asad Dandia; Pultizer Prize-winning illustrator and data journalist Mona Chalabi; actress and author Amanda Seales; Palestinian-American filmmaker, professor, actor, and author Randa Jarrar; and human rights attorney and professor Noura Erakat. Pianist Vijay Iyer played a piece in honor of Refaat Alareer, a Palestinian writer and professor killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza in December 2023.
Palestinian poet Fady Joudah read “Dedication,” a poem from his book released in March, that addresses the death and despair in Gaza. Joudah eventually burst into tears, along with many in the audience.
“To those whose memory, imagination, and bodies are my memory, imagination, and body. From the collective to the one under the same assault, no matter our location on Earth. ‘Our bodies have different ways of knowing, but our bodies know,’” he said.
As the ceremony concluded, a band called “The Liberated Zone” made up of encampment musicians led the hall in song.
Protesters lit fireworks in protest the day after the raid, in New York City, on Wednesday May 1, 2024. (Photo by Indy Scholtens)
Moving Forward
At the start of the new school year, according to current students and faculty, the atmosphere at Columbia is still tense. Students have to enter a security zone and scan their IDs to get onto campus, waiting in lines that often stretch down the block. Contracted security guards loiter by school lawns that were filled with tents just a few months ago, and the university thoroughfare connecting Broadway and 116th St. to Amsterdam Avenue remains closed to the public.
On September 5, 2024, the first day of classes, dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters gathered outside of the university, and two students were arrested. An unidentified activist dumped red paint on the Alma Mater statue. And shortly before the start of the school year, Columbia University President Minouche Shafik resigned. As of now, it is unclear if the university, or the new interim president, Katrina Armstrong, will handle new protesters any differently.
Campus was quiet the day after the raid, despite the sunshine and nice weather. Yellow imprints of the tents on the lawn served as a reminder of what happened the night before, New York City, May 1, 2024. (Photo by Emily Byrski)
Many questions remain about the administrative response to protesters last semester. New evidence has emerged that trustees and individuals not connected to Columbia may have played an outsize role in how the university and the Mayor responded to protesters. This reporting raises questions about how Columbia makes its public safety and disciplinary decisions.
And while many of the students arrested in the past year for protesting are being allowed to return to campus for the fall, some have received notices that their cases are being fast-tracked to university disciplinary hearings without interviews beforehand, where they face possible further discipline or even expulsion. Dozens still remain under interim suspension or probation.
Meanwhile, in Gaza, Israel’s genocidal campaign continues. As of early September 2024, the Strip, which covers 18 square miles – about the size of Las Vegas, but more than three times the population – has seen at least 90% of its population displaced. People move from North to South to North again, unable to leave or find refuge in hospitals, schools, or UN-designed safe zones. People watch as their homes, children, and limbs are eviscerated. Those who survive lack basic necessities including food, medicine, and water, and face a polio outbreak.
In a post on X in early September, UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese estimated that the number of direct and indirect dead in Gaza could reach 15 to 20 percent of the population by the end of this year. Since Israel’s siege of Gaza began almost a year ago, almost 41,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed and 95,000 wounded.
It is unclear where we go from here. Big questions about America’s relationship with Israel remain. However, it seems likely, given the situation in Gaza and on campus, that bigger protests could start up again in the very near future.
Columbia University finishes restoration work on the entrance of Hamilton Hall, New York City, May 2, 2024. (Photo by Edward Lopez)