April 30, 2024
Inside the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University
By Finn Cooley
Hundreds of peaceful protesters began occupying the campus on Wednesday to demand that the university divest from Israel. The next day, the school sent in the NYPD to arrest them.
Around 4 AM on Wednesday, hundreds of Columbia University students set up tents on the East Butler lawn, establishing what they called a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” in protest of the university’s role in helping fund the war in Gaza.
The occupation, organized by the Columbia University Apartheid Divest coalition (CUAD), Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), had been planned for months. The encampment was an escalation of previous pro-Palestine actions, designed to echo the university’s history of protest. “Columbia University has a rich legacy of student activism, from Vietnam War protests in 1968 to being the first Ivy League school to divest from Apartheid South Africa in 1985,” wrote CUAD on Wednesday. “The Gaza Solidarity Encampment will remain until Columbia University divests all finances, including the endowment, from corporations that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide, and occupation in Palestine.”
