Students Mobilize at Columbia, Harvard Against Israeli Genocide and Deportations

Katya Yindra

On April 2, Jewish students at Columbia University chained themselves to a gate outside of the school’s St. Paul’s Chapel. Students quickly mobilized to join the demonstration, rallying in their hundreds around the chained students. Protesters unfurled banners on each side of the gate, one reading “Free Palestine” and another reading “Free Mahmoud Now” along with a Palestine flag.

A statement on the Columbia Jewish Voice For Peace Instagram stated their sole demand was the university making public “the names of the Columbia trustees who facilitate the abduction of our beloved friend by collaborating with the Trump administration.”

After several hours of chanting, NYPD and Columbia’s so-called “public safety” officers began accumulating, trying to disperse the rally and threatening arrests.

A university delegate began handing out disciplinary warnings to the protesters, claiming they were violating a policy preventing students from obstructing a University facility. When a student asked how they’re obstructing a facility—a gate, now essentially functioning as a wall since it hasn’t been opened since April of last year—the delegate stated, “if we were to open it, you would be obstructing that entrance.”

Eventually public safety officers arrived with bolt cutters and cut loose the chained students.

Soon after NPYD and public safety took the students off campus without arrest, the students quickly mobilized at a gate on the opposite side of campus. Some of the students still had the original chains dangling from their wrists.

The students remained at the gate just shy of midnight, before dispersing and vowing to return.

This action comes a day after students at Harvard University rallied against the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, Harvard’s investments in genocide, and Trump’s threats to cut funding. The university attempted to lock them out of campus yards, but students managed to resist and push through campus security, open the gate open, and flood inside. Harvard responded with placing sanctions on the school’s Palestine Solidarity Committee, banning them from public events until the end of June.

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