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Students at Columbia University in New York stand firm in maintaining the pro-Gaza camp

The campus of Columbia University in New York, one of the most prestigious universities in the United States, and where pro-Gaza protests began last week, continued to be occupied on Tuesday by students, pressing their demands in about a hundred tents. Are. In an atmosphere of tense peace after police intervention last Thursday.

The tents, whose numbers grew overnight, surrounded the institution’s buildings and were set up in a fenced-off area where Palestinian flags and signs fly against the war in Gaza.

Meanwhile, a large group of students is protesting at the spot where some spend the night, but he refused to give any figures.

The action at Columbia University spread like wildfire to other major academic and private institutions, such as New York University, Yale (Connecticut), MIT in Boston or Berkeley in California and even Michigan, leading to a complete change in Washington’s policy. Before asking. Israel.

The camp at Columbia was destroyed by police – who continue to monitor the university from the outside and entry is only allowed with a university card – who arrested 133 students and teachers last Thursday after Nemat Shafik, president of the academic center Was. Authorize it.

ready to face consequences

However, this did not deter the university students, who set up tents again with greater enthusiasm and this Tuesday they reiterated that they will continue to protest until their claims are accepted and they are prepared to face the consequences. Will stay there.

They demand a ceasefire in Gaza, but also that the university stop investing in companies that are “participating in the genocide of Palestinians” and making money from it and reveal their names, spokeswoman Darialisa Ávila Chevalier. Protesters told the press today.

He said students have raised their voices since the Israel-Hamas war began, but “instead of listening to them, the university is suspending them, making it even more difficult to demonstrate on campus.”

Ávila responded, “There is injustice in Gaza, it is the massacre of over 40,000 Palestinians, the fact that over two million people have lost their homes, the population has been bombed.”

Other students on campus consider the protest inappropriate, which some university students and other observers describe as anti-Semitic.

For his part, US President Joe Biden on Sunday reiterated his condemnation of anti-Semitism, without naming any university. The president said, “This blatant anti-Semitism is reprehensible and dangerous and has no place on college campuses or anywhere in our country.”

The police also intervened at New York University, where this Monday they made 130 arrests, and before that the same thing happened at Yale with 47 detainees. Despite the protests and uncertainty, the university continues to prepare for the dates of final exams and its next graduation in May, for which it has already placed chairs on the stairs of a building away from the protest area.