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New York City police entered Columbia University’s campus in a move against protesters occupying a building as authorities stepped up efforts to bring an end to weeks of pro-Palestine demonstrations.
Police entered Hamilton Hall, including through a second-floor window, lined up dozens of students with tied wrists on Amsterdam Avenue to the south of the campus and prepared vans to take them away.
Protesters behind barricades blocking nearby streets chanted “Palestine will be free”, “let the students go” and “NYPD-KKK”. It was unclear whether they were affiliated with the university.
The police action came after demonstrators entered the Hamilton Hall building on campus earlier on Tuesday, blocking entrances and unfurling a “free Palestine” flag in an escalation of a stand-off with Columbia’s authorities.
The university said police intervened at its request at about 9pm. “After the University learned overnight that Hamilton Hall had been occupied, vandalised, and blockaded, we were left with no choice. Columbia public safety personnel were forced out of the building, and a member of our facilities team was threatened,” the school said.
Columbia has been a focal point of demonstrations triggered by the war between Hamas and Israel, which started on October 7, but a decision by its administration to suspend students and call in the police to arrest them sparked widespread copycat occupations and clampdowns in the US and at universities abroad.
Columbia had earlier warned that it would expel students who occupied the campus buildings, as US politicians led by President Joe Biden condemned their actions against a backdrop of escalating protests across the country.
The university said on Tuesday: “We believe that the group that broke into and occupied the building is led by individuals who are not affiliated with the university.
“The decision to reach out to the NYPD was in response to the actions of the protesters, not the cause they are championing. We have made it clear that the life of campus cannot be endlessly interrupted by protesters who violate the rules and the law.”
