Columbia University administrators backed down after setting a midnight deadline for anti-Israel protesters to disperse, saying instead that the university had decided to extend negotiations for an additional 48 hours after the student protesters agreed to make some concessions short of complying with university rules and disbanding the camp they set up seven days prior.
Columbia administrators and student representatives from the encampment will continue negotiations for 48 hours after Columbia’s initial deadline of Tuesday at midnight passed without the university taking action to disband the encampment, a university spokesperson told the Columbia Spectator.
The university’s chapter of pro-Hamas student organization Students for Justice in Palestine posted a statement on X just after midnight saying Columbia University Apartheid Divest left the negotiating table because the administration threatened to send in the National Guard and NYPD to disperse the encampment.
“Since good faith negotiations are impossible if one side threatens use of force to extract concessions, the student negotiating team has left the table and refuses to return until there is a written commitment that the administration will not be unleashing the NYPD or the National Guard on its students,” the statement reads.
The students are protesting Columbia’s financial relationship with companies that do business with Israel and U.S. support for Israel’s ongoing war effort against Hamas sparked by the terrorist organizations’s mass civilian slaughter on October 7.
Student protesters made promises that they would remove a significant number of tents and make outside demonstrators leave the area, the spokesperson said. The students have also complied with FDNY safety requirements and vowed to remove discriminatory and harassing language from the site.
Columbia president Minouche Shafik announced Tuesday a midnight deadline for the protests to clear out after the campus encampment and accompanying outside demonstrations grew increasingly violent and antisemitic over the weekend.
“For several days, a small group of faculty, administrators, and University Senators have been in dialogue with student organizers to discuss the basis for dismantling the encampment, dispersing, and following university policies going forward. Those talks are facing a deadline of midnight tonight to reach agreement,” Shafik said.
Her lax approach towards Columbia’s student protesters and outside agitators drew widespread calls for her resignation when the pro-Hamas demonstrations escalated and Jewish students were harassed and assaulted this past weekend. Jewish New Yorkers rallied outside campus on Monday to express solidarity with Jewish students and speak out against antisemitic campus activism.
Classes at Columbia have been shifted to a hybrid learning arrangement for the remainder of the semester because of the unruly campus environment created by the protesters. Pro-Israel Columbia professor Shai Davidai was prevented from entering campus on Monday and accessing the encampment because the university believed he could pose a threat to students’ safety, according to an email obtained by National Review.
Last week, NYPD officers arrested over 100 protesters a day after the encampment began and activists started protesting right outside the campus gates, as National Review previously reported.
Barnard College, Columbia’s sister school, suspended dozens of students on an interim basis for participating in the unsanctioned encampment, including Isra Hirsi, Representative Ilhan Omar’s (D., Minn.) daughter. The school plans on lifting the interim suspensions for students without a past history of misconduct if they act in accordance with campus rules.
Speaker Mike Johnson is set to visit the Columbia campus on Wednesday to show solidarity with the university’s Jewish students.