Rising tensions on campuses
- Multiple people were taken into custody tonight at New York University, city officials confirmed, adding that officers responded to the campus after university officials requested police. The number was unclear.
- Police officers arrested protesters who had set up an encampment on Yale University’s campus in support of the Palestinian cause. In total, 47 students were issued summonses, the university said.
- In New York City, classes at Columbia University were held virtually today amid reports of antisemitic and offensive statements and actions on and near its campus.
- Last week more than 100 Columbia students were arrested after the administration called police to report the students as a danger to campus. NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell told the student newspaper that there were no reports of violence or injuries and that the students were "peaceful, offered no resistance whatsoever."
- Pro-Palestinian encampments have also been established at the University of Michigan, New York University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt.
- The escalated tension comes ahead of this evening's start of the Jewish holiday of Passover.
Coverage on this live blog has ended. Follow the latest news on the campus protests here.
Cal Poly Humboldt in California closes campus after occupation of building
California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, said campus is closed through Wednesday after protesters demonstrating against the war in Gaza occupied Siemens Hall on the campus in Arcata.
“The University is deeply concerned about the safety of the protestors who have barricaded themselves inside the building. The University is urgently asking that the protestors listen to directives from law enforcement that have responded and to peacefully leave the building,” it said in a statement.
It asked the campus community to avoid the area of the building, "as it is a dangerous and volatile situation."
Cal Poly Humboldt has an undergrad enrollment of around 5,800. Humboldt is on the California coast in the northwestern part of the state, near the Oregon border.
MIT students demand school call for cease-fire
Prahlad Iyengar, an MIT graduate student studying electrical engineering, was among about two dozen students who set up a tent encampment on the school’s Cambridge, Massachusetts, campus Sunday evening. They are calling for a cease-fire and are protesting what they describe as MIT’s “complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza,” he said.
“MIT has not even called for a cease-fire, and that’s a demand we have for sure,” Iyengar said.
He also said MIT has been sending out confusing rules about protests.
“We’re out here to demonstrate that we reserve the right to protest. It’s an essential part of living on a college campus,” Iyengar said.
Police 'ready' to remove protesters again at NYU's request: NYPD official
A New York Police Department deputy commissioner tonight shared the letter sent by New York University to the police department asking police to clear Gaza war protesters from its Manhattan campus who refused to leave.
Deputy Commissioner Kaz Daughtry also on social media said that if called upon, the NYPD would do it again.
"There is a pattern of behavior occurring on campuses across our nation, in which individuals attempt to occupy a space in defiance of school policy,” Daughtry wrote on X. “Rest assured, in NYC the NYPD stands ready to address these prohibited and subsequently illegal actions whenever we are called upon.”
Police took multiple people into custody at NYU’s Gould Plaza while clearing the protesters, the police department said. The number of those arrested, as well as charges, were not available from police early Tuesday.
The letter from NYU posted by Daughtry said the protesters refused to leave and that the university considered them to be trespassers and asked for police help.
Fountain Walker, head of NYU Global Campus Safety, said on social media that the university had given the demonstrators until 4 p.m. to leave. Walker said that barricades had been breached and “we witnessed disorderly, disruptive, and antagonizing behavior that has interfered with the safety and security of our community.”
Columbia to offer hybrid learning for classes on main campus until summer
Classes at Columbia University’s main campus will be hybrid, if the technology permits it, until the end of the spring semester, Provost Angela V. Olinto said in guidance to the Manhattan institution, which has had demonstrations over the war in Gaza.
Faculty with classes equipped with hybrid technology “should enable them to provide virtual learning options to students who need such a learning modality,” she wrote.
Those without should hold classes remotely if students request it, she wrote. The guidance applies to the university’s main campus in Morningside Heights.
There have been large demonstrations over the war in Gaza, and last week over 100 people were arrested there after the university asked the NYPD to remove protesters who occupied a space on campus for more than 30 hours.
Columbia President President Minouche Shafik said in a letter to the university community today that "I am deeply saddened by what is happening on our campus."
"The decibel of our disagreements has only increased in recent days," Shafik said. "These tensions have been exploited and amplified by individuals who are not affiliated with Columbia who have come to campus to pursue their own agendas. We need a reset."
She added that "over the past days, there have been too many examples of intimidating and harassing behavior on our campus" and that antisemitic language will not be tolerated.
Barnard offers suspended students a deal
Barnard College says it has offered the students who were suspended after a 30-hour encampment protest at Columbia last week a way to get off interim suspension.
The students were suspended after police cleared the encampment, set up in support of Gaza, on April 18. New York police arrested more than 100 people.
Barnard President Laura Ann Rosenbury said in a letter today that “the vast majority of the students on interim suspension have not previously engaged in misconduct under Barnard’s rules.”
“Last night, the College sent written notices to these students offering to lift the interim suspensions, and immediately restore their access to College buildings, if they agree to follow all Barnard rules during a probationary period,” Rosenbury said.
If they do, the incident will not appear on transcripts or reportable student disciplinary records, she said.
More than 108 people were arrested during the demonstration, authorities have said.
Students mark Passover with interfaith Seders
BERKELEY, Calif. — Jewish students have organized interfaith Passover Seders at the Gaza solidarity encampments at college campuses across the U.S.
Photos and videos from Columbia University in New York City and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor were shared online and show students in keffiyeh scarves, surrounded by tents, sitting down to a Passover Seder.
A spokesperson for the Jewish Voice for Peace chapter at the University of California, Berkeley, said the group would also be hosting a Seder.
“A lot of us had other plans for our first-night Seder, but we want to observe Passover with our community,” said a spokesperson for Berkeley’s chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace. “It’s a strange time dealing with the story of Passover.”
N.J. man charged with hate crime in break-in at Rutgers Islamic center
A 24-year-old New Jersey man has been charged with a federal hate crime and accused of breaking into an Islamic center on the campus of Rutgers University this month, federal prosecutors said today.
Jacob Beacher, of Somerset County, is charged with one count of intentional or attempted obstruction of religious practice and one count of making false statements to federal authorities, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey said in a statement.
Beacher is accused of breaking into the Center for Islamic Life at the New Brunswick campus around 2:40 a.m. April 10.
He broke through the glass pane of a rear door to unlock it, an FBI special agent wrote in an affidavit associated with the criminal complaint, and then allegedly damaged religious artifacts and stole a Palestinian flag.
Around $40,000 in damage was done, the affidavit says. When he was questioned, Beacher said he was the person in surveillance video near the center, but he denied breaking into the building, the FBI agent wrote.
A suspected motive is not described in the affidavit. A federal public defender listed in court records as representing Beacher did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Court records show Beacher was being held in custody.
U.S. Holocaust Museum calls on colleges to address ‘shocking eruption of antisemitism’ on campuses
The U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., today called on colleges to do more to address what it called a “shocking eruption of antisemitism” on campuses due to tensions over the war in Gaza.
“Demonstrators at Columbia University calling for Jews to return to Poland — where three million Jewish men, women, and children were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators — is an outrageous insult to Holocaust memory, a failure to appreciate its lessons, and an act of dangerous antisemitism,” the Holocaust Museum said in a statement.
“America is hardly the Third Reich, but the Holocaust teaches the dangers of pervasive societal antisemitism, and awareness of this history must guide our actions in the present,” it said. “Nazi ideology was official state policy, but it found a receptive audience on university campuses based on well established contempt towards Jews.”
In a letter shared yesterday on social media, Chabad at Columbia University said students have had offensive rhetoric hurled at them, including being told to “go back to Poland” and “stop killing children.”
Demonstrators taken into custody at NYU
New York police said they took multiple people into custody at New York University tonight after the university called police and requested the removal of demonstrators.
How many people were taken into custody was not immediately clear. Video from the Manhattan campus showed police with helmets and batons and warning people to leave.
NYU said on social media earlier that protesters had until 4 p.m. to leave Gould Plaza after barricades were breached and after “we witnessed disorderly, disruptive, and antagonizing behavior that has interfered with the safety and security of our community.”
Video tonight showed some demonstrators chanting “NYPD KKK” and “shame on you.”
The NYPD arrested more than 100 people last week at a Gaza protest encampment at Columbia University, also in Manhattan. Columbia had also requested police assistance, officials said.
Jewish students march in solidarity
BERKELEY, Calif. — Jewish students at several college campuses are marching in solidarity with demonstrators calling for an end to the war in Gaza and the divestment of universities from Israeli companies.
At the University of California, Berkeley, in the San Francisco Bay Area, members of the local Jews for Peace chapter camped alongside pro-Palestinian protesters on the Mario Savio steps, named after a founding member of the Free Speech Movement.
A spokesperson for the group, which plans an interfaith Passover Seder tonight, said members are there to "protect" the free speech of anti-war demonstrators.
At the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, Jews for Peace members held signs that read "Jews say no to genocide" and "Anti Zionism is not antisemitism."