2024-05-02 08:04:34
Tensions escalated on Monday at Columbia University in New York between demonstrators supporting the Palestinian cause and the university administration, and students refused to vacate the tents where they were protesting “except by force,” despite an ultimatum threatening their expulsion if they did not disperse, according to Agence France-Presse.
Columbia University in New York is considered the starting point that sparked the pro-Palestinian demonstrations before they spread widely to universities in the United States.
In a statement, Columbia University President Minouche Shafik urged the student demonstrators to vacate their tents after negotiations between the protesters and the university administration failed.
In a document distributed to the demonstrators entitled “Notice to the Camp,” the university requested that they evacuate the place by 14:00 (18:00 GMT), otherwise “you will be dismissed pending investigation,” according to the text.
The students pledged to defend their tents erected in the main garden of the university’s campus in New York, despite the college’s threat to expel them.
They immediately called for a demonstration followed by a press conference to “protect the camp.” “We have begun to suspend students (administratively) as part of a new step to ensure the safety of our campus,” Ben Zhang, vice president for communications at Columbia University, told reporters.
With the end of the warning period, dozens of young men, wearing masks covering their faces, walked around the university campus, clapped their hands, and chanted “Free Palestine,” according to an Agence France-Presse correspondent, confirming that about fifty people remained in the camp.
Shafiq confirmed that the university has been holding talks since last week with protest leaders regarding evacuating the tents, but “unfortunately we were unable to reach an agreement.” For his part, Columbia University professor Joseph Holley believed that the university’s statement amounted to “surrender to external political pressures.”
He told the French Agency that the institution’s management chooses to start from “the assumption that the mere presence of a political speech in the name of Palestine constitutes a threat to Jews like me,” which is “ridiculous and dangerous.”
About ten days ago, the student movement was launched at the prestigious Columbia University in New York. Its scope expanded to several university campuses in the United States after the American police arrested about a hundred pro-Palestinian students who had begun occupying the university’s lawns the day after an intervention by its president in Congress, in which she defended herself from accusations of anti-Semitism in the educational institution.
Since then, hundreds of people, including students, professors, and activists, have been briefly arrested, some detained, and judicial complaints were filed against them at several universities across the country.
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2024-05-02 08:04:34