Dozens of scholars took over Columbia College’s Hamilton Corridor earlier this morning, April 30, renaming the constructing “Hind’s Corridor” in honor of six-year-old Hind Rajab, who was killed alongside her household by Israeli forces in Gaza. Echoing the 1985 scholar protests opposing Columbia’s investments in apartheid in South Africa, throughout which organizers baptized the Hamilton constructing “Mandela Corridor,” the continuing seizure of the construction follows weeks of student-led Gaza solidarity encampments on the college’s South Garden and in colleges throughout the USA.
Images captured by Hyperallergic present college students contained in the constructing peering out from home windows to obtain meals and provides from fellow demonstrators exterior, their faces obscured by masks to guard their identities. On the entrance, close to a statue of Alexander Hamilton, an indication that reads “Hind’s Corridor” bears an illustration of “Handala,” the enduring cartoon by Naji al-Ali that turned an emblem of the Palestinian individuals.


All through the day as we speak, scholar organizers and different pro-Palestinian advocacy teams gathered exterior the principle campus entrances to protest the varsity’s investments in Israel’s occupation of Palestine and ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip. The demonstrations adopted Columbia officers’ resolution to indefinitely lock down the Morningside campus, proscribing entry to college students residing in on-campus housing and important Columbia personnel.
Round 50 demonstrators from Columbia scholar teams and different anti-war advocacy organizations, together with Radical Elders and Veterans for Peace, gathered exterior the barricaded entrance at 116th Avenue and Broadway round 1pm as we speak, carrying keffiyehs and waving Palestinian flags. Along with at the least a dozen New York Police Division officers, there have been additionally a couple of pro-Israel counter-protesters in attendance, draped in blue and white Israel flags and screaming profanities and “Jew Haters” on the pro-Palestine group.


“It’s all the time been the campus response and the policing and the safety gates and the militarization of our neighborhood that has made college students really feel unsafe and stored us from learning,” Shehza Anjum, a third-year undergraduate scholar who has participated within the campus solidarity encampment, instructed Hyperallergic.
Since Columbia introduced the campus lockdown earlier this morning, Anjum mentioned there was “a number of confusion” amongst college students and college over how the remainder of the semester ought to proceed.
“Fortunately, for me at the least, I’ve had supportive professors who’ve been a bit extra lenient with us as a result of they know that it’s troublesome to submit work proper now, however it was by no means the protests that endangered our means to try this,” Anjum mentioned.


A fifth-year PhD scholar who requested to stay nameless agreed that the encampment “is a very stunning house” that has introduced a number of protesters hope.
“It’s infuriating that the US authorities is funding a genocide, and it’s infuriating that our college is investing in weapons producers and in corporations which might be in occupied territories within the West Financial institution,” they instructed Hyperallergic.
Over latest weeks, college students have publicized the names of corporations with ties to Israeli weapons and settlements, equivalent to BlackRock and Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest army contractor.
Columbia officers declined to touch upon the continuing protests or calls for, referring Hyperallergic to the up to date statements launched periodically on the state of affairs.
“We remorse that protesters have chosen to escalate the state of affairs via their actions. Our prime precedence is restoring security and order on our campus,” college spokesperson Ben Chang mentioned early this afternoon, including that college students occupying Hamilton Corridor at the moment face expulsion. Different college students who proceed to occupy the South Garden encampment have additionally been suspended, which makes any fourth-year college students collaborating “ineligible to graduate.”


At round 3:20pm, supporters traveled to 116th Avenue and Amsterdam Avenue, the one entry level to campus, the place demonstrators convened with one other few dozen pro-Palestine protesters on the sidewalk and roughly 30 scholar organizers who had gathered from contained in the gated-off Morningside Campus.
A minimum of 20 law enforcement officials have been lined up alongside barricades subsequent to the protest, with extra officers throughout the road and in automobiles. As a demonstrator waved a Palestinian flag from the roof of the occupied Hamilton Corridor, protesters on the bottom cheered and chanted: “Say it clear and say it loud, college students you make us proud”; “Columbia, you’ll be able to’t disguise, we cost you with genocide”; and “Disclose, divest, we won’t cease, we won’t relaxation.”
“There’s this narrative going round that in the event you cease protesting, then issues can return to regular,” Anjum instructed Hyperallergic. “We don’t need issues to return to regular. That is nothing in comparison with what persons are going via in Gaza.”




