At Columbia University, a movement is brewing. Nasreen Malik from The Guardian captured a moment, narrating how students are “risking their futures in pursuit of ethical principles and justice for Gaza, and Palestine at large.”
About 200 protesters from various backgrounds gathered near the university last week, their signs echoing their chants in support of Palestine.
As the police encircled the crowd, tension simmered, with officers urging bystanders to keep moving. Yet, despite the high volume, the gathering remained orderly.
The protest was sparked by unmet demands from university administrators, including calls to divest from companies benefiting from what they label as Israeli apartheid.
The media swarmed a Jewish student waving the Israeli flag, asserting that Jewish students on campus would not be intimidated. The organization of the campsites struck me. When asked about the structured setup, a student, only 19, revealed that the entire arrangement was orchestrated by peers his age.
The university president had given students until 2 PM to disband the sit-in, prompting them to march across campus in solidarity with the demonstrators.
Most students declined to speak to the press, citing a lack of media training, except for a student named Aidan, who led the chants and spoke about their challenges after the university called in the New York Police Department on April 18, resulting in the arrest of 100 students for trespassing.
Aidan highlighted the university administrators’ bad faith, specifically pointing to Columbia’s President, Nemat Shafik. He mentioned her concerns about antisemitism and the safety of Jewish students on campus as reasons for dismantling the camp.
When questioned about one of their chants, “We don’t want two states; we want everything,” Aidan hesitated before clarifying, “We just want a free Palestine.”
Subsequently, Jewish groups joined the camp, hosting a Passover dinner in solidarity with the pro-Palestine protesters, though some Israeli and Jewish students reportedly felt uncomfortable.
This situation raises broader questions about who gets to define the boundaries of free speech at American universities and how these boundaries are redrawn along partisan lines.
The overwhelming impression was the police’s overreaction. Even after spending hours on campus on the day tensions peaked, I struggled to reconcile the peaceful nature of the protests with the aggressive police response.
That morning, President Shafik had sent an email citing harassment, discrimination, and the urgent need to maintain “physical safety on campus” as reasons to end the protest.
Visiting Columbia and other universities in New York and Washington, I saw and heard from young people burdened with an impossible moral weight: the responsibility to reassess their nation’s stance on Gaza as students at institutions allied with Israel. They carry the fear of repercussions against powerful commercial, media, and political interests for voicing their stance.
The risks Aidan faces—from suspension to loss of housing and medical care, to reputational damage and job prospects—pale in comparison to what students in Gaza face, who lack even schools to protest in. “This is nothing compared to what they live through,” Aidan remarked.
This sentiment was a familiar one among the students I met, serving as a compass to maintain direction and remember the stakes. It appears this moral compass is vividly present among the youth.