All the demonstrators were evacuated manu militari from the campus. The New York police intervened Tuesday evening at Columbia University, the epicenter of the pro-Palestinian mobilization on American campuses, in order to dislodge the demonstrators who had barricaded themselves in a building since the previous night.
American student anger has spread over the past two weeks from major universities on the East Coast to those in California, via the South and the Center, recalling the demonstrations against the Vietnam War at the end of the 1960s.
“No choice” according to the president of the university
In New York on Tuesday evening (around 1:30 GMT Wednesday), it was in riot gear, aided by an intervention vehicle with a ladder, that dozens, even hundreds of police officers, entered the campus. Helmeted officers, climbing the ladder, then entered the occupied building through a window.
Dozens of people, some wearing keffiyehs, were arrested in the rain and placed in police buses. Outside the campus, crowds shouted “Free Palestine!” “. “Last night’s events on campus gave us no choice,” wrote university president Minouche Shafik in a publicly released letter asking the New York Police Department to intervene on the campus perimeter. this private establishment in Manhattan.
Denouncing an “escalation”, the university had threatened to expel and “return” the dozens of students and activists holed up in “Hamilton Hall” by accusing them of “vandalizing, breaking and blocking access” to the building.
“Maintain a presence at least until May 17”
For two weeks, Minouche Shafik and many other university leaders across the country have faced demonstrators, sometimes only a few dozen, who occupy their campus to oppose the war waged by Israel in Gaza against Hamas.
In her letter to the New York police, the president of Columbia University asks law enforcement to “maintain a presence on campus at least until May 17, in order to maintain order and ensure that no camps are established. » On their Instagram account, this group denounced an “invasion” of the campus.
“Forcibly occupying a university building is the wrong approach” says John Kirby
Six months before the presidential election in a polarized country, this student movement has provoked a strong reaction from the political world. Joe Biden “must do something” against these “paid agitators,” Republican candidate Donald Trump said Tuesday evening on Fox News. “We must put an end to the anti-Semitism that plagues our country today,” he added.
“While Columbia University is plunged into chaos, Joe Biden is absent because he is afraid to tackle the subject,” Republican leader of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson wrote on X in the evening. It has long called for the departure of its president, Minouche Shafik. “Occupying a university building by force is the wrong approach” and does not represent “an example of peaceful demonstration,” John Kirby, spokesperson for Democratic President Joe Biden’s National Security Council, thundered before the police intervention. .
The debate between freedom of expression and accusations of anti-Semitism reignited
Across the United States, images of law enforcement in riot gear brutally intervening on campuses have gone around the world. Since last weekend, hundreds of students, teachers and activists from around twenty universities have been arrested, some arrested and placed in detention.
At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a group of students claimed to have raised a Palestinian flag in the center of the campus, before the police put up the colors of the United States, according to the press.
These new pro-Palestinian demonstrations in the United States have reignited the electric debate since October between freedom of expression and accusations of anti-Semitism. The country has the largest number of Jews in the world after Israel, and millions of Arab-Muslim Americans.