Talks have broken down between Columbia University students and administrators to clear the campus pro-Gaza encampment, the school’s president announced Monday.
Monday is the last day of classes for the semester. Organizers and school officials had been in negotiations to remove the tents from the main campus lawns, which will be needed for graduation ceremonies in a couple of weeks. But the parties at the end of last week reached an impasse over divestment from companies and institutions that profit from Israel.
“Regretfully, we were not able to come to an agreement,” University president Minouche Shafik wrote in an email to students and faculty early Monday. “The University will not divest from Israel.”
Instead, Shafik said the university offered to speed up a process for students to suggest “socially responsible” investment proposals and to make Columbia’s direct investment holdings more transparent. Also on the table was a faculty committee to address academic freedom and investments in health and education in Gaza.
The deal was not acceptable to student protesters.
“Columbia asks students to operate within the confines of bureaucratic red tape with no assurances of binding divestment decisions if we end the encampment,” the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, one of the organizers of the tent demonstration, said in a statement Sunday.
It was not immediately clear how the university might attempt to remove hundreds of students from the lawn.
“We urge those in the encampment to voluntarily disperse,” Shafik said. “We are consulting with a broader group in our community to explore alternative internal options to end this crisis as soon as possible.”
The pro-Gaza encampment first emerged on campus on April 17 as Shafik testified before Congress about efforts to curb antisemitism. Thirty hours later, university officials had suspended students involved and called the NYPD, with cops arresting more than 100 students while clearing the lawn.
The protesters quickly returned and set up a second encampment. University administrators vowed over the weekend not to bring the NYPD in again to clear out the encampment, claiming that police intervention would only inflame an already tense situation.
Columbia’s campus is on private property and the NYPD can only go in if asked by the university.
