Tensions are rife on many university campuses across the United States, particularly at Columbia in New York, where pro-Palestinian demonstrations and anti-Semitic discourse are intensifying, four months after the high-profile resignations of two rectors.
Under the spring sunshine, hundreds of students on the New York campus were more determined than ever to maintain the camp set up in the center’s gardens, fighting with principal Nemat Shafik to “set things right.” , which ordered this Monday that classes should be held remotely.
The students are calling on the institution to cut its financial ties with Israel, a key U.S. ally.
“We will stay here until they talk to us and listen to our demands,” Mexican student Mimí Elías tells AFP, despite being suspended from the university after being arrested on Thursday along with a hundred other students. Past.
“99% of us are here for the liberation of Palestine,” he assures, before stating: “We don’t want anti-Semitism or Islamophobia here.”
At the entrance to the camp, a group of volunteers distribute masks and control who enters. A sign prohibits the consumption of alcohol and drugs.
“We undertake not to disclose the names or details of anyone on this campus (…), not even to the police or Columbia administration, if they attempt to force us to reveal the identities of classmates,” it says one of the slogans.
Meanwhile, on the outskirts of the center, a group of demonstrators chanted “Freedom for Palestine” under the watchful eyes of dozens of police officers who have blocked some entrances to the subway and erected fences on the sidewalks.
Israel’s destruction of the Gaza Strip in response to attacks by the Islamist group Hamas on October 7, which killed 1,160 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally using official figures, has ignited pro-Palestinian demonstrations in cities and towns Regions multiply American universities and with them a wave of anti-Semitism.
The US President, Democrat Joe Biden, condemned on Sunday evening the “blatant, reprehensible and dangerous anti-Semitism that has absolutely no place on university campuses or anywhere in our country.”
“Terrible tool”
After the police intervention on Thursday, students intensified their protests not only at Columbia University but also at other universities in the country.
Protests are intensifying on other campuses, such as at Yale University in northern New York, where at least 47 people have been arrested, according to a statement from the institution, or at Harvard, where the park in the heart of the campus is closed. for the public all week.
Intervention is the “nuclear option,” complains Professor Joseph Howley, who belongs to a pro-Palestinian group.
“The university has resorted to a terrible tool. Not only did she make a mistake, she also made the situation worse,” this classics professor told AFP.
Howley asserts that there are Jewish students at Columbia who do not want to be on campus because they are uncomfortable with the protests, but there are also others who have been suspended and imprisoned for being part of the protests and themselves feel excluded from their institution.
“Free expression”
For a young 21-year-old architecture student who prefers to hide her name and not take part in the protests, the campus is about “freedom of expression.”
“One of the most important things about college is that you can explore and say what you need to say without being reprimanded and without the NYPD coming to campus and arresting you, no matter what your viewpoint is,” he says.
For Howley, the conflict is caused by the “American far right making common cause with the hegemonic Zionist far right to suppress political expression they don’t like.”
“Today we are talking about Israel-Palestine. Next week it will be about race, gender, vaccines or the climate,” he warns.
AFP
