Protesters occupy Columbia building as university standoff escalates
Al Jazeera
Demonstrators take over Hamilton Hall in escalation of antiwar protests.
Students have taken over a building at Columbia University as the standoff between protesters against Israel’s war on Gaza and the varsity authorities escalates.
Protesters moved to occupy Hamilton Hall at the university in New York early on Tuesday after the management said it had begun suspending students who had refused to meet a deadline to disperse on Monday. The move threatens to escalate the standoff, which has seen protests over the Gaza war spread across the country.
Video footage showed protesters on Columbia’s Manhattan campus locking arms in front of Hamilton Hall early on Tuesday and carrying furniture and metal barricades to the building.
Dozens of protesters barricaded the entrances and unfurled a Palestinian flag out of a window. Hamilton Hall, which protestors said they have now dubbed “Hind Hall,” is one of several buildings that was previously occupied during a 1968 civil rights and anti-Vietnam War protest on the campus.
“An autonomous group reclaimed Hind’s Hall, previously known as ‘Hamilton Hall,’ in honor of Hind Rajab, a martyr murdered at the hands of the genocidal Israeli state at the age of six years old,” Columbia University’s Apartheid Divest (CUAD), a coalition representing pro-Palestinian student organisations, posted on X.
