Columbia University is being torn in two by anger, hurt amid Gaza protest encampments

The tent demonstrations over the war in Gaza that have roiled Columbia University for the last two weeks have sparked anger and debate, and exploded into a national phenomenon.

But while the high-profile protests and calls for the resignation of the Columbia president seize public attention, a damaging and perhaps lasting change is underway on the Manhattan campus. Increased tension, growing alienation and vitriolic speech are cutting through the study body, creating wounds that may not heal.

“Since Oct. 7, it’s been very tense, but I never felt unsafe,” said Liam Schorr, a freshman from Long Island pursuing a dual degree at Columbia and the Jewish Theological Seminary.

“But ever since last week, it actually felt uncomfortable to be inside the campus.”

This semester, Schorr said he witnessed his roommate, who is Jewish, wear a shirt with an Israeli flag to a counterprotest and get slammed into a building, just outside the campus gates.

What is, in many ways, unique about the protests now underway at Columbia and other universities across the nation is that they have pitted the student body against itself. The protesters’ demonization of Zionism, for some young Jewish people, cuts to the core of their religious identity. There have been accusations and instances of both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in and around the campus.

One of the leaders of the encampment, Khymani James, was recently banned after he said in a newly surfaced clip from a January Instagram Live, said that “Zionists don’t deserve to live” and “Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.”

On the other side of the deepening divide, the intensity of the protesters, many of whom have cast this as a clear struggle between oppressor and oppressed, echoes the explosion of fervor in the Black Lives Matter movement after the death of George Floyd in 2020.

“What we’re facing here is anti-Palestinian hate that’s taking multiple forms, whether it is Islamophobia, racism, antisemitism,” said Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian graduate student, who is at Columbia on an F-1 visa and did not participate in the first encampment because of fear of deportation. “Columbia has not acknowledged this pain.”

For many, this isn’t just political. It’s personal.

“This isn’t like the anti-apartheid protests we had here in the eighties, and this isn’t like 1968, either,” a source close to the Columbia administration told the New Yorker this week. “These protests are pitting groups of students, and some faculty, against each other. They can turn vicious, hateful at times, and quickly become about personal identity.”

While the campus unrest frays the social fabric of Columbia, casting doubt as to whether a student body at odds with itself can reconcile its anger and differences, university president Minouche Shafik admitted it could take time to return the university to what it was before the around-the-clock protests.

“I am deeply saddened by what is happening on our campus,” Shafik said in a statement on Monday that set the tone for the week to come. “Our bonds as a community have been severely tested in ways that will take a great deal of time and effort to reaffirm.”

The divide has been building for months. Since the Hamas terror attacks on Oct. 7, and Israel’s military response in Gaza, the students supporting Israel, on the one hand, and Palestine, on the other, have launched demonstrations and rallies on and around campus.

The tent cities, in a way, have made that simmering division physical.

Some Jewish students — who fear the protests on or around campus, or are otherwise unwilling to participate in this new reality of campus life — will finish their classes online. Others, more defiant, set up a small demonstration with a series of hostage posters and an Israeli flag.

“I cannot walk around my own campus looking visibly Jewish without preparing myself for the possibility that someone might spit on or attack me,” said Noa Fay, a student at Barnard College and Columbia School for International and Public Affairs.

“I am furious that we now go to school in a police state. I have to go through checkpoints just to get to class, but I’m not mad at the police because of it. I’m angry with the students who have put us all in this position, and I am angry with the administration for letting them.”

Meanwhile, students at the pro-Gaza encampment have formed what they are calling the “People’s University for Palestine,” a banner draped over the lawn hedge reads, where they eat, sleep, study and chant as part of planned programming each day. Recent lectures have focused on antisemitism and Palestinian political prisoners, according to Maryam Alwan, a Palestinian-American student organizer.

“We’ve created a university within the university,” said Alwan. “There’s really a sense of unity inside the encampment. And I haven’t felt as safe as I have for the last week.”

Alwan is part of a group of four students who filed a civil rights complaint Thursday with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, alleging they’ve been made the targets of anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic harassment such as death threats or other fallout for wearing keffiyehs.

“It feels like the trust in the administration has been so far eroded,” Alwan said. “I’m not sure what steps it’ll take to regain that trust.”

Jewish students who have joined the encampment said they have also been the subject of vitriol for their involvement in the protests, explaining their support for Palestinian people is embedded in their values as Jews.

“I know that some of us have been called ‘disgraces,’” said Barnard junior Soph Askanase, who is Jewish, and was among the initial group of students suspended for the Gaza encampment. “I’ve been called self-hating. I’ve been called neurotic.”

In recent days, Columbia University Apartheid Divest has launched a social media campaign to raise awareness about allegations of anti-Arab hate and Islamophobia, including students who were called terrorists and to “go back to Gaza” at a Columbia General Studies gala. In another post, the group said students on a senior boat cruise had alcoholic drinks poured on them.

The division at Columbia extends beyond the student body.

On Friday, the University Senate passed a resolution that criticized recent administrative actions as “contrary to the norms” of Columbia and “counterproductive.”

“Current events, and the University administration’s responses thereto, have made studying, teaching, and research increasingly difficult for many students, faculty, and other members of the Columbia community,” it read.

The oversight panel — made up of faculty, students and administrators — called for a senate task force to investigate the Columbia administration’s response.

The pro-Gaza encampment first crept up last week on campus, as Shafik testified before Congress about efforts to curb antisemitism. Thirty hours later, university officials had suspended students involved and called the NYPD, who arrested more than 100 students while clearing the lawn.

Despite those efforts, students continued with their demonstration, sleeping on the lawns until new tents arrived.

Student organizers and university administrators are in ongoing negotiations to clear the encampment and respond to protesters’ demands, while some Jewish students and campus leaders have called on Shafik to take immediate action. That now appears unlikely, as the university issued a statement saying it had no plans to call in the NYPD again.

Aside from the pro-Israel and Palestine posters, another flyer is plastered across the center of campus: An announcement from Columbia’s facilities and operations department that commencement preparation is in progress.

Indeed, evidence of fast-approaching graduation next month continued to creep up throughout the week: stacks of folded chairs, the installation of bleachers. By Friday, students around campus clad in the Columbia blue cap and gown posed for professional photos with balloons and flowers.

Graduation, one of the primary memories of togetherness a student will experience in college, is scheduled to take place May 15 on the lawns. Its location remains in limbo as the demonstration continues.

“It’s hard to imagine in 15 days, this will be over,” said one of the students at the encampment.