ALBAWABA - After days of overwhelming protests across multiple US university campuses, Columbia University announced in a statement that its classes at its main campus will be hybrid till the end of the spring semester.
"Safety is our highest priority as we strive to support our students’ learning and all the required academic operations," the university said in an announcement Monday night.
Hundreds of dozens of protestors across multiple Ivy League schools swept their campuses in solidarity with the people of Gaza in their 200+ days of brutal Israeli aggression, which left more than 34,151 killed and 77,000+ injured.
Mass protests were witnessed on Columbia's campus, where the police took into custody more than 100 students and faculty members who camped out across campus to push for the Ivy League school to cut ties with businesses associated with Israel.
As statements from the White House were made accusing the students of antisemitism, Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), a coalition of 100+ Columbia University student groups formed in support of the Palestinian liberation, released a statement in response to the accusations by the White House.
"We firmly reject any form of hate or bigotry and stand vigilant against non-students attempting to disrupt the solidarity being forged amount students – Palestinian, Muslim, Arab, Jewish, Black, and pro-Palestinian classmates and colleagues who represent the full diversity of our country," the statement reads.
At New York University, the school administration called the police on hundreds of protestors in what it claimed to be a "disorderly scene", after receiving reports of "intimidating chants", as protestors were calling for putting an end to the Israeli brutal aggression on Gaza.
NYU reached out to the New York Police Department saying they considered "all protestors occupying Gould Plaza to be trespassers" and that the university "would like the NYPD to clear the area and to take action to remove the protestors,", leading to mass arrests among protesting students.
Calls for students from universities all over the country grew for them to take to the streets to demand their universities to divest from companies that sell weapons to Israel and form them to condemn the ongoing onslaught in the enclave.
Students across Harvard, MIT, and Yale in addition to many other schools have answered these calls and started demanding action from their administrations.
On Monday, hundreds of Columbia University faculty members walked out in protest of the president's decision to arrest students during a pro-Palestinian camping protest last week.
Students put out protest tents on campus, prompting the solidarity demonstration. They were demolished last week after the New York Police Department detained over 100 students, who were also suspended by the institution.
Bassam Khawaja, an adjunct lecturer at Columbia law school and supervising attorney at the school’s human rights clinic, said he was "shocked and appalled that the president went immediately to the New York police department", the Guardian reported.
"It didn’t seem like any kind of measures were taken to de-escalate," Khawaja said. "It also just seems completely unnecessary. This was by all accounts, a non-violent protest. It was a group of students camping out on the lawn in the middle of campus. It’s not any different from everyday life on campus".
