“I would stick around till about midnight,” they said. “Maybe go home first, though.”
Crowds of student journalists, waited next to the encampment for whatever was to come.
Protesters grouped into “platoons”.
The home of Columbia Journalism School, where a small number of protesters had convened, while some others stood ready with cameras and recorders by the encampment.
That is when it all began. Campers began walking their tents off the lawn. One group began chanting. Another at the opposite end of the lawn sang protest hymns. when protesters entered Hamilton Hall.
Tens of student protesters had gathered to link arms outside the building, which their predecessors had taken over in 1968 to protest against the Vietnam War, and in 1985 to demand that Columbia divest from firms tied to apartheid South Africa.
Protesters rushed metal picnic tables, wooden chairs, trash cans, and planters to the doors where they were zip-tied together, effectively forming a barricade.
Two masked individuals appeared from a second-floor balcony to cheers and applause. They unfurled a hand-painted sign, “Hind’s Hall”, a reference to the six-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed with her family in their car in January as they tried to escape Israel’s military assault in Gaza.
One lone voice amplified through a megaphone, coming from Hamilton Hall: “This joy that I have, the world didn’t give it to me … the world can’t take it away.”
The final offer
Columbia University’s South Lawn was packed, and the little protest village in the heart of the campus – dozens of tents and tarps comprising the “Gaza solidarity encampment” – was bustling with life, two weeks since its erection.
The protest is rooted in a decades-long movement for Palestinian rights in their homeland, and to hold Israel accountable for its illegal occupation of Palestinian territories. The current campaign against Israel’s war on Gaza – in which more than 34,000 people have been killed – also aims to pressure Columbia to divest from Israel-linked companies, just as the university did in the case of apartheid South Africa after similar protests four decades ago.
At the time covering the protest, the sounds at the encampment varied. Some days, you could hear the (Islamic) adhan, or the chants of (Jewish) Passover prayer. Or the sounds of the dumbek (drum) and sharp violins echoing microtonal hymns of Palestinian folk music and classical Andalusian muwashshah. Speakers amplified the melodies of iconic musicians like Abdel Halim Hafez and Fairuz.
Protesters shared donated hot meals – pizzas and samosas, bagels and eggs, sacks of mandarins and tubs of crackers, muffins and cookies spread on a tarp aptly called the “cornucopia”.
One camper had set up a makeshift nail parlour, painting red, white, black and green manicures matching the Palestinian flag. Cardboard “street signs” named the tight spaces between rows of tents “Walid Daqqa Road”, after the Palestinian novelist and activist who died of cancer in April, while in Israeli custody.
In the lawn’s centre, organisers routinely updated a whiteboard to reflect the day’s programmed activities: Dhuhr prayer and Shabbat dinner, with jazz in the mix, too.
In a corner of the lawn near the main campus walk, an “art guild” was buzzing with protesters painting signs, drawing patterns of the keffiyeh, decorating and personalising tent spaces.
Just a few days prior, far before the occupation of Hamilton Hall, the Columbia administration had sent a notice arguing that “to bring back the NYPD at this time would be counterproductive, further inflaming what is happening on campus, and drawing thousands to our doorstep who would threaten our community”.
The note was met with mistrust by protesters: After all, the university had already called the police to campus for the first time in more than 50 years in April to try to clear the encampment. More than 100 students had been arrested.
By Tuesday night, their apprehension would turn into reality. The NYPD entered Columbia’s campus shortly after 9pm on Tuesday (01:00 GMT on Wednesday).
Students linked arms and sang together in anticipation before the harmonies of “We shall not be moved” merged with the march of hundreds of police officers making their way, in formation, to Hamilton Hall.
Calls through long-range acoustic devices (LRAD) to disperse or face arrest, echoed across the campus square, all the time weaving in and out of the floating tunes of the protest hymns, earworms that anyone who’d been on campus had likely come to memorise.
Protesters outside of Hamilton braced for arrest. But officers turned away from them upon arrival, and instead turned towards press – onlookers and press.
Officers instructed press to vacate the area. The press walked backwards to get everything on video. “It’s easier if you face forward,” one officer said. “Turn around so you don’t fall,” another yelled repeatedly in a collective command. “Time to go inside,” another said. “Back to your dorms.”
While our backs were against the door of a building at the end of the courtyard where Hamilton was, the doors opened, and officers raised their batons, giving one final push until the press were all inside.
It’s where the student health centre, a dining hall, and a late-night campus eatery are. While police guarded the doors into the entry vestibule of the building in front of us, campus security guarded the rest of the building behind us, restricting access to dorm residents.
With about 30 or 40 of press squeezed into the small entry vestibule, ventilation was poor. We wouldn’t reach the bathroom. Red arrows pointed towards the emergency exit but the doors were blocked by officers. Phone batteries were dying. And most pressing, for the journalists.
For about three hours, students kicked at the front doors, slouched on the ground against the wall, and slept with their backpacks as pillows. One student sat cross-legged on the floor, sobbing softly while her friend comforted her.
Three hours passed in that hall before they were let out, officers directing us to dorms and buildings they did not know the names or locations of. “We know you want to get out of here. We’re doing you a favour,” one said.
The remains
On Wednesday, the tension wasn’t palpable, only disappointment. The campus was quiet, but not calm. It was completely empty. No one, aside from residents and essential staff – which the journalism faculty ensured they were viewed as, as student journalists – were allowed past campus gates.
Where the encampment once stood, there were only marks of discoloured grass in the shape of rectangular tent bases.
But the movement seems anything but a ghost; on Wednesday, protesters hosted a “light show” beside the campus, projecting titles onto the public-facing side of Hamilton Hall that read “Hind’s Hall forever.”
Every year, on the eve of exams, students gather to let out what is known as a “primal scream” on campus. On Thursday, they took that tradition to Shafik’s house, shouting outside her door.
On Friday, protesters again lined the street outside of Columbia’s gate. And the words still rang through the neighbourhood: “Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest.”