April 22 – The global struggle in solidarity with the Palestinians against the horrific U.S./Israeli genocide since October 7 has become a major focus on U.S. college campuses. Prestigious Columbia University, located in Harlem, New York, has become ground zero in the campaign to divest funds supporting the apartheid Israeli regime.
The students at this Ivy League university established a Gaza Solidarity Encampment at 4 a.m. on April 17, Palestinian Prisoners Day, on the main lawn to demand Columbia divest funds from Israel. They pitched over 60 tents with an ample supply of food, water and other necessities. Unionized graduate student workers, some of whom have been arrested, are in solidarity with the encampment
April 17 was the same day that Columbia President Minouche Shafik testified before Congress in Washington, D.C., to answer questions over handling of demonstrations organized by Students Voices for Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. Her administration ordered New York Police Department surveillance against pro-Palestine students, who had been slandered and doxxed for being “antisemitic” for their anti-Israel stances.
Shafik, who is of Egyptian ancestry, is a former World Bank vice president, former International Monetary Fund [IMF] deputy managing director, former British Department for International Development permanent secretary and former Bank of England deputy governor, and is presently a 2022-appointed Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Board member.
With these banking and corporate ties, Shafik was chosen by the Columbia Board of Trustees to defend the university’s financial ties to Israel. Columbia’s total endowment is $14 billion.
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Once the encampment was set up and thousands of other activists, along with faculty and campus unions, descended on the campus to show their solidarity, Shafik authorized the NYPD, equipped with riot gear, to physically dismantle this encampment and to carry out mass arrests of around 100 protesters. For a short time, activists supporting the encampment outside the campus blocked police buses carrying the arrestees to the jail at 1 Police Plaza.
These police arrests, however, did not deter other student activists from occupying the west lawn of Columbia and setting up a new encampment April 18, which is still going strong as of April 22. These students have vowed on their Columbia Encampment Telegram thread that they will remain “steadfast until the demand of FULL DIVESTMENT is met.”
It was just announced on April 21 that all classes at Columbia will be conducted virtually and there will be no rehearsals for graduation due to the school being shut down, which the activists say is a victory for their cause.
In response to Yale University students being arrested April 21 in New Haven, Connecticut, for setting up an encampment demanding “no tuition for genocide,” hundreds of supporters have taken to the streets blocking intersections in solidarity with the arrestees.
The encampment at MIT on Kresge Lawn has been named “Scientists Against Genocide Encampment.” MIT has received over $11 million in research funding from Israel’s Defense Ministry since 2015.
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Student walkouts, inspired by the Columbia struggle, have taken place at Boston University, Harvard University and elsewhere, also with their own demands that their universities divest from Israel.
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