The incident occurred the day after Columbia President Nemat Shafik’s Congressional testimony over antisemitism on college campuses. In a letter to the university community on Thursday, Shafik expressed regret for authorizing police intervention, but said she had no choice after “all of these attempts to resolve the situation were rejected by the students involved.”
New York City Mayor Eric Adams, speaking at a press conference at the NYDP headquarters announcing the arrests, acknowledged the protesters’ grief over the ongoing conflict.However, he stressed the importance of upholding the law and adhering to university policies.
The protesters occupied a lawn on Columbia campus for more than 30 hours and were given multiple orders to disperse before arrests began, he said.
“Heartbreak does not give the right to harass,” Adams said. “We are not in a city of lawlessness.”
While most students complied with police orders, a large group surrounded officers on the south lawn, resorting to insults and inflammatory rhetoric, according to the NYPD.
Among those arrested was Isra Hirsi, the daughter of Representative Ilhan Omar, a Democrat from Minnesota. In a post on X, Hirsi said that she was one of three students suspended for her involvement.
Omar is a member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which has convened a series of hearings about antisemitism on US college campuses. The presidents of Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania resigned after failing to definitively condemn antisemitic speech during a hearing held by the House education committee in December.
The war in Gaza started shortly after the militant group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, killing about 1,200 people and abducting some 250 others. Since then, Israel’s retaliatory offensive on the territory has killed more than 32,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. Hamas has been designated a terrorist organization by the US and the European Union.
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