Students Disrupt and Protest Columbia Graduation in Solidarity with Palestine

Katya Yindra

On Wednesday (5/21), Columbia University held its university-wide commencement which faced non-stop disruptions and protests by the Palestine solidarity movement. In spite of police assaults, arrests and rain, the protesters did not relent.

Last year’s commencement was canceled in response to the student encampments and occupation of Hamilton Hall, which the students renamed Hind’s Hall in honor of a six year old Palestinian child murdered by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in Gaza. This year, the administration faced a choice: risk backlash from families and students by canceling again, or go forward and face the inevitable wave of protest.

As thousands of graduates and their guests crowded into rain-soaked bleachers, outside campus others gathered in protest, numbering over 100. Alumni burned their diplomas while demonstrators banged drums. Protesters held signs with photos Palestinian students who were killed by Israel, noting that their murders were funded in part by Columbia’s investments.

The New York Police Department responded with force. Officers shoved protesters, attempted to kettle the crowd, making multiple arrests. The crowd held their ground and pushed back against the police barricades.

NYPD’s Strategic Response Group (SRG) arrived with flex cuffs, prepared for mass arrests. Just two weeks earlier, SRG arrested about 80 pro-Palestine protesters in a raid on Columbia’s Butler Library.

Inside the gates, security was on high alert. Columbia issued a preemptive warning that anyone disrupting speakers would be removed. The announcement followed the previous day’s disruption of Columbia College’s Class Day ceremony. Students booed and chanted “Free Mahmoud,” drowning out the opening remarks of Claire Shipman, the university president and former co-chair of Columbia’s Board of Trustees.

Underneath the downpour of rain, Shipman tried in vain to get ahead of the crowd. “Many in our community today are mourning the absence of our graduate Mahmoud Khalil,” she said, acting as if the university played no role in his abduction, confinement and separation from his wife and infant child.

The crowd jeered at her obvious hypocrisy, which only mounted as she began recounting her time as a “journalist” in Moscow in “the final years of the authoritarian state.” She claimed there were no “open forums” adding, “You couldn’t say what you want, like people here have the right to.” Boos erupted from the audience, full of students who witnessed or experienced harassment, arrest, and suspension for speaking up for Palestine.

Shipman continued with a bizarre denunciation of Lenin, Stalin, and Felix Dzerzhinsky, referring to the great revolutionary as “the infamous KGB boss,” though he died in 1926 and the KGB was not formed until 1954. She pivoted to praising “freedom” in the US, flagrantly dismissing the violence, censorship, and surveillance deployed right on her own campus.

After Shipman spoke, numerous students walked out and joined the rally outside the gates. Their anger was a continuation of the previous day’s disruptions across several of the smaller Class Day ceremonies.

At the School of Social Work’s graduation, students chants of “Free Palestine” overpowered their dean’s speech. Many students wore keffiyehs and decorated their caps for Palestine. One student walked across the stage holding a banner that read, “There are no universities left in Gaza.”

At the ceremony for the School of International and Public Affairs, the crowd cheered as Mahmoud Khalil’s name was announced. Khalil completed his studies the previous semester and was set to walk on May 20 until DHS detained him and shipped him to Louisiana without a charge. Numerous students wore keffiyehs and refused to shake hands with Dean Keren Yarhi-Milo, who previously served in the IDF.

At Barnard College, members of the audience jeered during President Laura Rosenbury’s speech. In her opening remarks, she began a sentence saying, “We do more than just educate students,” when someone in the crowd loudly cut her off, screaming, “You arrest us!” Later, as students walked across the stage, many of them clad in keffiyehs, the majority refused to shake hands with Rosenbury, who eventually stopped extending her hand as the graduates passed her.

Image: The protest outside the gates of Columbia University on Wednesday.

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