Police Arrest Protesters at N.Y.U. as Tensions Rise at U.S. Colleges (2024)

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Here’s what to know about the campus protests.

Officers, some dressed in riot gear, grabbed protesters who refused to move, before cuffing their wrists with zip ties and loading them onto transport vans. Within about half an hour, the encampment had been cleared and the crowd had largely dispersed.

The campus unrest on Monday followed arrests last week at Columbia University. The escalating tension in Manhattan came as turmoil gripped some of America’s most influential universities. Administrators tried to defuse campus protests while balancing the free speech rights of protesters and the fears of many Jewish students, who said some of the demonstrations against the war in Gaza had veered into antisemitism.

President Biden said on Monday that he condemned “the antisemitic protests” on campuses, as well as “those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.”

Here’s more on what is happening:

• At Yale, the police arrested at least 60 people, including 47 students, who defied orders to leave Beinecke Plaza, according to a tally from the university. Later in the day, protesters halted traffic at a major intersection in New Haven, Conn., flanked by university buildings. Here’s what we know about the arrests.

• There were reports of encampments at universities in the Boston area, including at Tufts, Emerson and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and in some other parts of the country, including at the University of Michigan and University of California, Berkeley. Here’s what we’re seeing across the country.

• At Columbia, where more than 100 people were arrested last week, classes were held remotely on Monday and officials encouraged students to stay away from campus. More than 100 Columbia professors rallied to criticize the university’s crackdown, while others demanded more protection for Jewish students. Republican lawmakers called for the resignation of Columbia’s president, Nemat Shafik, who could soon face a censure resolution from the university’s faculty.

• Many Jewish students are away from campuses for the start of Passover on Monday evening, but Jewish groups are pressing university leaders to do more, and quickly, to protect against antisemitism. Several schools, including Columbia, have increased campus patrols. Here’s how Jewish students at the university are feeling.

A night different from others as pro-Palestinian protests break for Seder.

But there were also changes and additions, like a watermelon on the Seder plate to represent the flag of Palestine. There were repeated references to the suffering of the Palestinian people and the need to ensure their liberation. There was grape juice instead of wine to respect the alcohol-free encampment, which was started last Wednesday and, despite a police crackdown last week, was stretching into its sixth day.

The question asked each year — Why is this night different from all other nights?— echoed with new meaning.

At other pro-Palestinian encampments and protests that have cropped up this week, similar scenes played out. Some protest organizers and participants are anti-Zionist Jewish students, and at Columbia, roughly 15 of the students who have been suspended for their involvement in the encampment are Jewish, organizers said.

At Yale University, just before 6 p.m., hundreds of students gathered on Cross Campus, the main university quad, to sit around a sheet painted to symbolize a Seder table. The action was organized by groups including Jews for Ceasefire, a Yale group, and the New Haven chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace.

There, the Seder marked the end of a day that began with the early-morning arrests of 47 students at a tent encampment on Beinecke Plaza. Then, for nine hours, students had occupied a local intersection, calling for Yale to divest from weapons manufacturers.

Surrounding the Seder, students held banners that read, “Our Seder plates are empty stop starving Gaza” and “Another Jew for a free Palestine.” References to suffering in Gaza and pro-Palestinian student activism were woven into the ritual.

“Tonight, we stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people, not in spite of our Judaism, but because of it,” Miriam Levine, a 22-year-old Yale student who helped organize the Seder, told the crowd through a microphone. “Tonight we proclaim that our liberation is intertwined.”

Discussing the 10 plagues, Ms. Levine asked participants to identify “what is plaguing our university.” Answers came from throughout the crowd: “the confinement of free speech,” “the policing of New Haven,” “apathy, “misinformation,” “ignorance,” “capitalism.”

Toward the end of the Seder, students draped their arms across each other’s shoulders and swayed, singing, “If we build this world from love, then God will build this world from love.”

A more traditional scene played out at Chabad Columbia, a branch of an Orthodox Jewish movement with a headquarters off campus, where students sought a sense of community amid the tensions on campus.

Chatter and laughter filled a room in the center, as people connected with new and old friends. As an added measure of safety, there were five security guards standing outside.

Rabbi Yuda Drizin, 33, and his wife, Naomi, co-direct the group. Rabbi Drizin said they were expecting over 100 students. “It’s actually our largest Seder yet,” he said.

“Our motto is ‘Your Jewish home and family on campus,’ so for the students that can’t make it home, or that don’t make it home, or that are here, they’re celebrating as part of our family,” he added.

“My message to all the Jewish students that show up here, is to figure out a way to stand above it, to try and step above it,” Rabbi Drizin said, adding, “This is really a place for people to find a way to, you know, to just be Jewish, not in response to anything, not a reaction to anything, just because that’s who you are and that’s it.”

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Protests, frustration, anger: A day of tension at Columbia’s campus.

“I am here because of her infringement on academic freedom in the congressional hearing and because of her decision to bring police on to campus to arrest students,” said Dr. Hirsch, a professor emerita in the English and Comparative Literature Department.

Around and on Columbia’s campus on Monday — as protests unfolded under perfect blue skies, just hours before the beginning of the Jewish holiday of Passover — there was one sentiment shared by nearly everyone, no matter their viewpoint on the war: anger at Dr. Shafik.

Students have been sleeping in tents on campus for several nights, and confrontations between protesters and counterprotesters have occasionally broken out both inside and outside Columbia’s gates. On Monday, the action on Broadway began at about 9:30 a.m., when several dozen people, several wrapped in Israeli flags, listened to a speech from Professor Shai Davidai, who has been a vocal critic of Columbia’s response to antisemitism on campus.

A trio of women who live nearby saw Dr. Davidai’s posts saying he would be at Columbia and felt an urge to attend, despite needing to prepare Passover meals for dozens of guests.

Another woman, Peggy Sarlin, attended the rally swaddled in an Israeli flag. She said she was reminded of a 2004 documentary called “Columbia Unbecoming,” about antisemitism on campus, which was hotly debated at the time of its release.

“No one has done anything to address the problem since then,” she said.

Caroline Bissonnette, a graduate student studying journalism and international affairs, was waiting in the security line to get on campus. She said the protests had been peaceful and any escalation in tension had come as a result of the university’s response. “The biggest disruption has come from the police,” she said.

By 10:30 a.m. a throng of N.Y.P.D. officers began to mass on Broadway, some in riot gear. “Is this necessary?” asked Rabbi Michael Feinberg, who runs an nonprofit that supports worker rights and economic justice, as he walked to an interfaith Earth Day celebration. “I think it’s distressing that things have reached this point where there is this kind of police presence. It is especially sad that this is happening as we prepare to celebrate Passover.”

As the police kept watch, the verbal rancor and tension escalated.

A man holding a sign that said, “Israel Kills 14,000 Kids!” shouted antisemitic slurs at onlookers. A woman who was holding a poster of an Israeli hostage engaged in a shouting match with the man until she began to cry. A man shouting, “Palestine will be free,” was escorted by police officers toward a mobile command center.

A student dressed in a graduation gown and Birkenstocks sipped a coffee as she walked down Broadway. Graduation ceremonies are on May 15, but she was dressed for a photo shoot with her sorority sister. She said she was upset at the restrictions set up so close to graduation, but also at the way students had been treated.

Within the campus itself, workers had already set up chairs for graduation ceremonies. On a lawn nearby, student protesters and reporters milled around a large encampment of about 70 tents decorated with signs and Palestinian flags.

Shouts from the crowds on Broadway could be heard on campus, but inside the gate, the tenor was quieter and less intense. A large crowd of faculty members held a walkout and news conference, then migrated across Broadway to Barnard College to continue their protest over the arrests and suspensions of students.

Groups of students took in the scene. A second-year student who asked to be identified by only her first name, Linda, hung out with friends. She said was pleased to see professors speak out against the arrest of students. She said she supported the protesters’ right to gather and also said she understood why some Jewish students felt unsafe.

Nearby, two Barnard students wearing kaffiyehs — one carrying a large Palestinian flag — made their way toward the encampment after attending a Zoom class in their dorms. They said they did not feel any regret that the end of their school year had been dominated by unrest and protest. One said the cause was more important than their education.

Inside the campus gate near West 117th Street, a mother and son hugged goodbye. They did not share their names, citing safety concerns. She had stopped by to assess his safety, after he told her he no longer felt safe at school.

He has applied to transfer to another university in the fall.

Karla Marie Sanford contributed reporting.

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Protests continue at Yale after dozens of students were arrested.

“This is all about saying to Yale that we’re not going to stop,” said Chisato Kimura, 24, a student at Yale Law School. “We’re going to continue mobilizing. We’re going to continue showing up until Yale discloses their investments and divests.”

Ms. Kimura had spent a couple of nights in the tent encampment at Beinecke Plaza before it was cleared. She was on the plaza when the police began arresting demonstrators but was not arrested herself.

Zachary Herring, 33, a member of the New Haven chapter of the pro-Palestinian group Jewish Voice for Peace, spoke at Monday’s demonstration and said in an interview afterward that he had been moved by the diversity of the pro-Palestinian movement in New Haven.

He said that Jewish people were in the best position to say that the protest was “not anti-Jewish; this is anti-Zionist.”

“We want folks to be able to see that the Zionist agenda is actually fomenting antisemitism around the world,” he said.

By Monday afternoon, more than 1,500 Yale alumni, students and parents had signed a letter supporting the demonstrators. It called for donations to the university to be withheld until the administration commits to divesting from companies helping to supply weapons to Israel.

“While Yale students put their bodies on the line to stand in solidarity with Gaza, the least we can do as alumni is pledge our support for their cause and urge Yale to accept its students’ demands,” wrote Ryan Gittler-Muñiz, a Jewish alumnus who signed the letter.

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Columbia’s president may face a censure resolution.

If the campus distrusted Dr. Shafik two months ago, the relationship is now approaching estrangement.

The university senate is expected to vote, possibly as early as Wednesday, on a resolution censuring Dr. Shafik, a reaction to her testimony before Congress and the arrests of more than 100 student protesters.

A draft of the resolution, circulated Monday, accused Dr. Shafik of violating “the fundamental requirements of academic freedom,” ignoring faculty governance and staging an “unprecedented assault on student rights.”

The resolution is expected to be introduced by two members of the 111-seat senate. It specifically states that the resolution is not a call for Dr. Shafik’s resignation, but the resolution also calls for the censure of other university officials, including Claire Shipman and David Greenwald, the chairs of Columbia’s board of trustees.

Asked for a comment on the proposed resolution, a spokesman for Columbia issued a statement: “President Shafik is focused on de-escalating the rancor on Columbia’s campus. She is working across campus with members of the faculty, administration, and board of trustees, and with state, city, and community leaders, and appreciates their support.”

Such a vote, if it passed, would be largely symbolic. The senate, which is made up of faculty, students and administrators, does not have the power to remove a president. And Dr. Shafik, who goes by Minouche, seems to retain the support of the university’s board of trustees. Ms. Shipman and Mr. Greenwald testified with her before Congress, and echoed her conciliatory approach to House Republicans.

But a censure vote, whether it passes or not, reflects the depth of anger among faculty members over the arrests of the student protesters, which faculty members say Dr. Shafik ordered without proper consultation with the university senate’s executive committee.

“I have the sense,” said David E. Pozen, a law professor, “that a very broad swath of the faculty, with very different views on the situation in Gaza and Israel, believes that President Shafik’s recent actions are alarming.”

Professors are also incensed over her testimony before Congress last Wednesday, where they say she capitulated to the demands of conservative Republicans on questions of academic freedom. And they are incredulous that her office disclosed information to Congress about pending internal investigations of faculty members, which are usually confidential.

Not all faculty are on board.

Dr. Andrew R. Marks, the chair of the department of physiology at Columbia’s medical school and a member of the university senate’s executive committee, said that antisemitism on campus, not Dr. Shafik’s leadership, was the problem.

“I want her to succeed,” he said. “I want her to be able to manage all of this and get us out of this mess.”

Dr. Shafik was a nontraditional choice for president. Despite having served as president of the London School of Economics for six years, Dr. Shafik, an economist, spent most of her career with the International Monetary Fund, the Bank of England, and the World Bank. She had few ties to Columbia.

And the mood had already been tense before the hearing. In a letter on April 5, 23 faculty members warned Dr. Shafik that, in agreeing to appear before Congress, she would be walking into a “political theater of a new McCarthyism.”

As they predicted, the hearing did not improve things. Among their complaints was that she did not strongly defend academic freedom, while agreeing that some contested phrases — like “from the river to the sea” — might warrant discipline.

Dr. Shafik had thrown “academic freedom and Columbia University faculty under the bus,” said Irene Mulvey, national president for the American Association of University Professors, a national group that supports academics.

After the student arrests, more than 50 of the 90 full-time faculty in the law school released a letter on Sunday condemning Dr. Shafik for bringing the police to campus, and for suspending more than 100 student protesters.

A number of Columbia affiliates — the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia, the Columbia Law School Human Rights Institute, and the head of the Union Theological Seminary — have also denounced the decision.

There was also consternation over Columbia’s decision to disclose to Congress internal information about professors under investigation, the same type of detail that Harvard has resisted releasing to the committee.

In a private letter on April 16, the day before the hearing, Columbia supplied the House committee with details about eight professors and one teaching assistant who were under investigation for alleged violations of university anti-discrimination regulations.

One of those professors, Dr. Joseph Massad, a professor of Middle Eastern studies, had not been informed of the pending investigation by an outside investigator, according to the letter to the House obtained by The New York Times.

Even so, Dr. Shafik answered specific questions about Dr. Massad during the hearing and an article he wrote in The Electronic Intifada, published the day after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.

It described how Hamas paragliders overwhelmed the vaunted Israeli defenses, delivering what Dr. Massad, who is of Palestinian descent, described as a “death blow” to confidence in the military. Adjectives used in the piece, including “awesome,” were interpreted as supportive of the invasion.

When Representative Elise Stefanik pressed Dr. Shafik about the university’s response to the article, Dr. Shafik responded, “He was spoken to by his head of department and his dean.”

“And what was he told?” Ms. Stefanik asked.

“That that language was unacceptable,” Dr. Shafik responded.

Dr. Massad, who has been a subject of campus controversy before, said he had been the target of death threats since the hearing.

In a statement, Columbia acknowledged that the university “generally does not disclose ongoing investigations, including to protect complainants.”

But, it said, “in this case, Congress’s interest required the university to do so.”

The statement added, “Representative Stefanik’s direct line of questioning on this matter obligated Professor Shafik to provide accurate information regarding the investigation.”

But for many of the professors, the breach of confidentiality amounted to being placed on public trial with no chance to defend themselves.

Katherine Franke, a law professor at Columbia, was also identified as being under investigation, in the letter and during the hearing.

On social media, she demanded an apology from Dr. Shafik for not correcting the record when Ms. Stefanik, a Republican from New York, claimed that she had made an inappropriate comment about Israeli students — a charge that Ms. Franke said Dr. Shafik knew was incorrect.

Albert Bininachvili, an adjunct professor in political science, was also on the list, based on what appears to have been one student’s complaint that he made antisemitic remarks directed at Jewish students.

Dr. Bininachvili, whose name was not mentioned during the hearing, said in an interview that the accusations were “completely unfounded, preposterous, absurd, ridiculous.”

“I’m a devoted Jew and I come from a practicing Jewish family and I have six members of my family who perished in the Holocaust,” Dr. Bininachvili said. “Even today, when we’re talking, several members of my extended family are living in Israel and serving in the I.D.F.”

Dr. Shafik’s handling of student arrests also did not follow rules and procedure, according to the American Association of University Professors.

The group said that Dr. Shafik violated a longstanding statute requiring that the university “consult” with the senate’s executive committee before the police are called to campus.

James Applegate, a professor of astronomy and a member of the committee, said the group was contacted by the university administration last Wednesday afternoon, the day before the police were called in.

After that meeting, the executive committee composed an email, Dr. Applegate said. He described the email from memory: “We call on the administration to engage the protesters in good faith dialogue to bring the protest to a peaceful end with all deliberate speed. We do not approve of police presence on campus at this time.”

The email was sent to the administration about 6 p.m. Wednesday, and Dr. Applegate said he received no further official word until the next day, when he was told that the police had been brought in.

Mr. Pozen, a constitutional law expert, said the action had backfired.

“If calling the cops last Thursday was meant to protect Jewish students, it seems to have had the opposite effect,” he said. “The initial encampment was peaceful while it lasted. The protests that followed its dismantling brought lots of outraged new people to campus and were much more volatile.”

Even Ms. Stefanik, whom Dr. Shafik tried to mollify, has called for her resignation, which would the follow the resignations of the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania.

Mr. Pozen said he does not think the law faculty wants to oust Dr. Shafik.

“My belief is that most law faculty members want to focus on improving the university’s policies rather than unseating a new president and handing Stefanik another scalp,” he said.

Some have labeled the protests antisemitic, but the term has been contested.

Protests in and around Columbia University’s campus have included a number of threatening episodes, and on Monday, some anti-Zionist protesters outside the campus gates yelled explicitly antisemitic slurs by virtually any definition. A White House spokesman released a statement saying that the calls “for violence and physical intimidation targeting Jewish students and the Jewish community are blatantly antisemitic, unconscionable and dangerous.”

But there are a range of other phrases and chants often repeated by protesters that fall into grayer territory. Among them are phrases like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which some pro-Palestinian demonstrators have described as an aspirational call for freedom and some Jews see as antisemitic and a call to erase the Jewish state.

Competing definitions of antisemitism are embraced by different factions with different views. One definition says “targeting of the state of Israel” could be antisemitic, which could encompass much of what is being said at the protests. That interpretation is favored by the U.S. State Department, many supporters of Israel and some of the Republican lawmakers who grilled the Columbia president last week about whether antisemitism was rife on campus.

Another definition is narrower and distinguishes between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, arguing that critiques of Israel should not be seen as threats or hate speech about Jews. Many of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators at Columbia and elsewhere, a number of whom are Jewish themselves, have argued that this is how their protests should be understood.

The debate over which definition to choose is fraught. When Columbia assigned an antisemitism task force charged with “understanding how antisemitism manifests on campus” and improving the climate for Jewish faculty and students, the task force declined to define the term. That decision met with harsh criticism on both sides.

At a hearing of the House Education and Workforce Committee last Wednesday, Republican lawmakers tried to push Columbia officials to be clearer in their definition of the term and include anti-Zionist speech. Under questioning, Dr. Shafik said that she heard phrases like “From the river to the sea” and “Long live the intifada” as antisemitic, though she conceded that “some people don’t.” She agreed with Representative Lisa McClain, Republican of Michigan, who said that “there should be some consequences to that antisemitic behavior.”

Dr. Shafik also said that Columbia had “some disciplinary cases ongoing around that language,” indicating that despite the school’s official reticence to adopt the U.S. State Department-backed definition of antisemitism, it may well be using it, or something like it, as a matter of practice.

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Here’s what is happening on some other campuses across the country.

Sixty people, including 47 students, were arrested during pro-Palestinian protests at Yale University in Connecticut, and a large crowd of students was occupying an intersection near campus on Monday afternoon.

At Emerson College in Massachusetts, students set up tents in an alley near Boston Common. In nearby Cambridge, a banner at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology declared part of campus a “LIBERATED ZONE.” And in New York City, protests were underway at New York University and the New School, in addition to Columbia, where classes were held remotely but hundreds of students and faculty members continued to demonstrate.

About 400 protesters, mostly pro-Palestinian, were camped out on Monday at the University of Michigan, while a smaller number of students held Israeli flags nearby. About 100 students at the University of Maryland held a sit-in near the administration building, according to a student organizer. And at the University of California, Berkeley, protesters set up a “solidarity encampment,” drawing a crowd.

Harvard University, which was the site of flaring tensions in the fall that culminated with the congressional testimony and resignation of its president, Claudine Gay, sought to head off unrest by closing Harvard Yard to the public.

Students had to show identification to security guards to enter the main campus area on Monday. A sign warned that blocking pathways and erecting tents would not be allowed without permission, with violators subject to disciplinary action, according to the Harvard Crimson, the school newspaper.

About 50 Harvard students traveled to M.I.T. to join the protest there, where students in the M.I.T. “liberated zone” cheered their arrival.

Vimal Patel, Brillian Bao and Matthew Eadie contributed reporting.

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks about the power of students leading campus protests are notable given the contrast with the White House’s statement yesterday. “This blatant anti-semitism is reprehensible and dangerous — and it has absolutely no place on college campuses, or anywhere in our country,” the White House said on Sunday amid protests at Columbia University.

Before he left for his motorcade, a reporter asked Biden if he condemned antisemitic protesters.“I condemn the antisemitic protests,” Biden said. “I also condemn those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.”

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Dozens of Yale students are arrested during campus protests.

“Yale, you have intimidated us, criminalized us, militarized our campus and failed to accept our demands,” Occupy Beinecke wrote on Instagram. “We will not stop, we will not rest until we have disclosure and divestment.”

Peter Salovey, Yale’s president, said in a message to students on Monday that of the 60 people “who refused a final request to leave voluntarily” and were arrested by the Yale police, 47 were students at the university.

Protesters had begun daytime demonstrations at the plaza last Monday, dispersing each night after warnings from the school. On Friday, they rallied outside a board of trustees dinner and set up the overnight encampment.

Taran Samarth, 22, a protester, said that the occupation had featured teach-ins about subjects including genocide and “poetry in Palestine and in other places facing war and famine.” Once the encampment was set up, Mr. Samarth said, at night there were “rallies to defend the encampment from threats of disciplinary action by police and by administration.”

The encampment was set up beside Woodbridge Hall, the office of the university president, on a site that has historically been a place of campus protest. In the 1980s, shantytowns were erected on Beinecke Plaza to protest apartheid in South Africa.

After the protesters were arrested on Monday, workers cleared the area, carrying off trash bags and wheeling away stacks of folded tents.

“This university would rather arrest its students and put them through disciplinary action than talk to them and confront them and have serious conversations that give them a voice in this university,” Mr. Samarth said. “That’s shameful.”

Yale said in a statement that it had repeatedly asked protesters to leave and warned that they could be arrested or face discipline. The university also said it had offered the protesters audiences with leading trustees but had decided by late Sunday that negotiations were at an impasse.

According to the university, the campus police issued 47 summonses on Monday. The arrested students face possible suspension, the school said.

“The university made the decision to arrest those individuals who would not leave the plaza with the safety and security of the entire Yale community in mind and to allow access to university facilities by all members of our community,” Yale said in a statement.

The New Haven Police Department said its officers had assisted with the response. The Yale police charged the protesters with first-degree trespass, a misdemeanor, and the demonstrators “were transported to a Yale police facility where they were processed and released,” the New Haven police said.

Hundreds of students and community members also blocked an intersection near Beinecke Plaza, stopping traffic at Grove and College Streets and covering the pavement in chalk messages, including “We will build this world from love” and “Free Palestine.”

The arrests at Yale came four days after more than 100 students were arrested at Columbia University in New York at a similar encampment.

Chisato Kimura, 24, a student at Yale Law School, was one of many demonstrators who said they were moved to act by the demonstrations at Columbia. “It’s definitely made a lot of us feel very inspired,” she said.

Ms. Kimura spent a couple of nights in the tent encampment at Beinecke Plaza before it was cleared. “We thankfully had managed to get everyone out of the tents before the horde of cops came in,” she said, “but they were searching tents, going through people’s belongings.”

After the arrests, the protests resumed. Ms. Kimura was part of a crowd that halted traffic at the busy intersection of Prospect and Grove Streets for much of Monday.

“This is all about saying to Yale that we’re not going to stop,” she said. “We’re going to continue mobilizing. We’re going to continue showing up until Yale discloses their investments and divests.”

By Monday afternoon, more than 1,500 Yale alumni, students and parents had signed a letter supporting the demonstrators. It called for donations to the university to be withheld until the administration commits to divesting from companies helping to supply weapons to Israel.

“While Yale students put their bodies on the line to stand in solidarity with Gaza, the least we can do as alumni is pledge our support for their cause and urge Yale to accept its students’ demands,” wrote Ryan Gittler-Muñiz, a Jewish alumnus who signed the letter.

The Yale protests have largely been peaceful, but one student, Sahar Tartak, 20, said that she had been taunted by demonstrators on Saturday night, and that one of them had poked her in the eye with a Palestinian flag. She went to the hospital to seek treatment.

In recent months, Ms. Tartak, who describes herself as a “visibly observant Jew,” has been critical of pro-Palestinian activists at Yale on social media and in a column for The Wall Street Journal. The campus demonstrators, she said on Monday, were “creating spaces that are conducive to violence against Jewish students.”

Leaders of the Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale sent a letter to the campus’s Jewish community Sunday night voicing concern about the “divisive” moment. The letter, signed by the center’s executive director, Uri Cohen, and Rabbi Jason Rubenstein, said there had also been “credible firsthand accounts” on Sunday “that respected Muslim members of the Yale community, and their sacred symbols, were treated with disrespect.”

“This is precisely the type and degree of conflict so many of us have worked so hard, for so many months, to prevent,” the letter said.

Erin Nolan contributed reporting from New Haven.

Columbia moves to remote classes after disruptions on campus.

The actions have also spread to other campuses across the country, as students said they were walking out or setting up tent encampments in solidarity with Columbia students. The protesters at Columbia have taken over a lawn in the center of campus and erected tents draped with protests signs and Palestinian flags.

The university’s president, Nemat Shafik, said in a letter to the Columbia community, “We need a reset,” adding that she felt sadness about how the university’s bonds had been severely tested in recent weeks. She urged students who do not live on campus not to travel there.

Pro-Palestinian students, many of whom are Jewish, had erected dozens of tents on a campus lawn last week, and refused to leave until Columbia met their demands, including divesting from companies with ties to Israel. In an effort to quell the unrest, Dr. Shafik called in the police, who made more than 100 arrests.

Yet the transition to virtual classes was another sign that bringing in local law enforcement may have set off a wave of unintended fallout. Students put new tents up over the weekend. And the response appeared to fuel a crowd of pro-Palestinian demonstrators who were unaffiliated with the school, some of whom yelled from the university gates at Jewish students over the weekend.

The decision to bring in the police also unleashed a wave of activism across a growing number of college campuses. In the days after the tents at Columbia came down, students at Yale, the University of Michigan and M.I.T. erected their own encampments in support of those arrested. By early Monday, New York University had become the latest protest site.

In her announcement on the remote classes, Dr. Shafik acknowledged that there was “much debate about whether or not we should use the police on campus,” adding “I am happy to engage in those discussions.” She said that a group of deans, university administrators and faculty members would work in the coming days to bring the crisis to a resolution.

“The decibel of our disagreements has only increased in recent days,” she said, adding that “there have been too many examples of intimidating and harassing behavior on our campus.”

The announcement was a reflection of the heightened pressure on the university’s leadership to quell campus antisemitism and keep students safe. Dr. Shafik vowed to bring an end to any hateful behavior at a House hearing last Wednesday.

But by Sunday, some members of Congress had become increasingly unsatisfied with the response. Representative Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican, said in a statement that the university’s leadership had “clearly lost control of its campus,” and called on Dr. Shafik to resign.

Representative Virginia Foxx, the Republican chairwoman of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, which held the House hearing, said in a letter to the school’s administration on Sunday that “a severe and pervasive hostile environment for Jewish students” was still thriving on campus.

“This is a pivotal moment and a test of Columbia’s leaders,” Ms. Foxx said, adding that “if you do not rectify this danger, then the committee will not hesitate in holding you accountable.”

The atmosphere on and around campus became particularly tense over the weekend.

Pro-Palestinian protests on Saturday evening drew widespread criticism from city officials and even the White House. Elie Buechler, a rabbi who works for Columbia, told hundreds of Jewish students on Sunday morning via WhatsApp that the university had failed to guarantee their safety and urged them to return home.

Some of those protests led to the harassment of some Jewish students who were targeted with antisemitic comments. The verbal attacks sowed fear in some of the 5,000 Jewish students at Columbia and drew condemnation from the White House and Mayor Eric Adams of New York City.

In her letter, Dr. Shafik, who goes by Minouche, urged anyone affected by the protests to report problems through the proper university channels. Many students and faculty have said the university’s decision to call in the police was too aggressive, and some also drew a distinction between the protests inside campus and those outside.

“Let’s remind ourselves of our common values of honoring learning, mutual respect and kindness that have been the bedrock of Columbia,” Dr. Shafik said in her letter. “I hope everyone can take a deep breath, show compassion and work together to rebuild the ties that bind us together.”

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Jewish students are targeted as protests continue at Columbia.

Those demonstrations took a dark turn on Saturday evening, as protesters targeted some Jewish students with antisemitic vitriol that was captured in video and pictures, both inside and outside the campus. The verbal attacks left a number of the 5,000 Jewish students at Columbia fearful for their safety on the campus and its vicinity, and even drew condemnation from the White House and Mayor Eric Adams of New York City.

“While every American has the right to peaceful protest, calls for violence and physical intimidation targeting Jewish students and the Jewish community are blatantly antisemitic, unconscionable and dangerous,” Andrew Bates, a spokesman for the White House, said in a statement.

On Monday, the university’s president, Nemat Shafik, who goes by Minouche, called for classes to be taught virtually, saying that “over the past days, there have been too many examples of intimidating and harassing behavior on our campus.”

Student protesters have erected a sprawling encampment on one of the campus lawns. They have draped tents and the grass with Palestinian flags and protest signs, and the encampment has been surrounded with piles of supplies.

Protesters and counterprotesters have occasionally faced off, and there have been several moments in which demonstrators have yelled intimidating phrases. In one instance, video captured a person holding up a sign that said, “Al-Qasam’s Next Targets,” referring to Hamas’s armed faction, near several Jewish counterprotesters. Mr. Adams said the police had already increased its presence near the campus and would investigate any potential violations of the law.

Still, some Jewish students who are supporting the pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campus said they felt solidarity, not a sense of danger, even as they denounced the acts of antisemitism.

“There’s so many young Jewish people who are like a vital part” of the protests, said Grant Miner, a Jewish graduate student at Columbia who is part of a student coalition calling on Columbia to divest from companies connected to Israel.

And in a statement, that group said, “We are frustrated by media distractions focusing on inflammatory individuals who do not represent us” and added that the group’s members “firmly reject any form of hate or bigotry.”

Reports of antisemitic harassment by protesters surfaced on social media late Saturday. A video posted on X shows a masked protester outside the Columbia gates carrying a Palestinian flag who appears to chant “Go back to Poland!” One Columbia student wrote on social media that some protesters had stolen an Israeli flag from students and tried to burn it, adding that Jewish students were splashed with water.

Chabad at Columbia University, a chapter of an international Orthodox Jewish movement, said in a statement that some protesters had hurled expletives at Jewish students as they walked home from campus over the weekend, and had said to them, “All you do is colonize” and “Go back to Europe.”

“We are horrified and worried about physical safety” on campus, said the statement, adding that the organization had hired additional armed guards to chaperone students walking home from Chabad.

Eliana Goldin, a junior at Columbia who is the co-chairwoman of Aryeh, a pro-Israel student organization, said she did not “feel safe anymore” on campus. Ms. Goldin, who is out of town for Passover, said campus had become “super overwhelming,” with loud protests disrupting class and even sleep.

In a statement, Samantha Slater, a Columbia spokeswoman, said that the university was committed to ensuring the safety of its students.

“Columbia students have the right to protest, but they are not allowed to disrupt campus life or harass and intimidate fellow students and members of our community,” said the statement. “We are acting on concerns we are hearing from our Jewish students and are providing additional support and resources to ensure that our community remains safe.”

The upheaval on and around the Columbia campus this week marked the latest fallout from the testimony that Dr. Shafik gave at a congressional hearing on antisemitism on Wednesday.

Dr. Shafik vowed to forcefully crack down on antisemitism on campus, in part by disciplining professors and student protesters who used language she said could be antisemitic, such as contested phrases like “from the river to the sea.” Her testimony, meant as an assertive display of Columbia’s actions to combat antisemitism, angered supporters of academic freedom and emboldened a group of protesting students who had erected an encampment of about 50 tents on a main lawn in the campus this week.

University officials said the tents violated the school’s policies and called in the New York Police Department on Thursday, leading to the arrests of more than 100 Columbia University and Barnard College students who refused to leave. But the police involvement only fueled the uproar. Students pressed on with their “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” sleeping in the cold without tents on a neighboring lawn, and some began to erect tents again on Sunday, without Columbia’s permission.

Students who support the protesters say there is a wide range of opinion among Jewish students at Columbia. “To say that it’s unsafe for Jewish people, to me, indicates that you’re only speaking about a certain portion of Jewish people,” Mr. Miner, 27, said at the university on Sunday.

“We are totally opposed to any sort of antisemitic speech,” he added. “We are here to, you know, stand in solidarity with Palestine. And we refuse — our Jewish members refuse — to equate that with antisemitism.”

Makayla Gubbay, a junior studying human rights at Columbia, said that as a Jewish student, she has mostly been concerned for the safety of her peers protesting for Palestinians.

Ms. Gubbay said that throughout the past six months her friends — particularly those who are Palestinian and other students who are Muslim — have been injured by the police and censored for their activism. Though she was not involved in the organizing of the encampment, she went there for the Sabbath on Friday, attended a speech given by a participant in Columbia’s intense 1968 protest and brought hot tea for friends.

“There’s been a lot of amazing solidarity in terms of other students coming on campus, hosting Shabbats, hosting screenings, having faculty give speeches,” Ms. Gubbay said.

Columbia officials have previously said there have been several antisemitic incidents on campus, including one physical attack in October — the assault of a 24-year-old Columbia student who was hanging fliers a few days after the Hamas attacks on Israel in October.

While many Jewish students had left campus to celebrate Passover, which begins on Monday evening, the rising tensions led at least one rabbi on campus to suggest that the Ivy League school was no longer safe and that Jewish students should leave.

Elie Buechler, an Orthodox rabbi who works at Columbia, sent a WhatsApp message to a group of more than 290 Jewish students on Sunday morning saying that campus and city police had failed to guarantee the safety of Jewish students “in the face of extreme antisemitism and anarchy.” He recommended that students return home “until the reality in and around campus has dramatically improved.”

“It is not our job as Jews to ensure our own safety on campus,” wrote Rabbi Buechler, the director of the Orthodox Union’s Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus at Columbia University and Barnard College. “No one should have to endure this level of hatred, let alone at school.”

Citing Passover preparations, Rabbi Buechler declined to be interviewed, but he said that his message was meant as a personal statement and did not reflect the views of the university or Hillel, the Jewish organization on campus.

Indeed, in an apparent response, Hillel issued a statement on Sunday afternoon saying that the organization did not believe that Jewish students should leave Columbia, but it pressed the university and the city to step up safety measures.

“We call on the university administration to act immediately in restoring calm to campus,” Brian Cohen, the group’s executive director, wrote. “The city must ensure that students can walk up and down Broadway and Amsterdam without fear of harassment,” he added, referring to the avenues that run alongside the Upper West Side campus.

Noah Levine, 20, a sophom*ore at Columbia and an organizer with Jewish Voice for Peace, said they found the rabbi’s comments “deeply offensive.”

“I’m a Jewish student who has been in this encampment since its inception,” they said. “I’m also a student who has been organizing in this community with these people since October, and even before that, and I believe in my heart that this is not about antisemitism.”

But Xavier Westergaard, a Ph.D. student in biology, said the mood for Jewish students was “very dire.”

“There are students on campus who are yelling horrible things, not about Israelis only or about the actions of the state or the government, but about Jews in general,” he said.

Sharon Otterman contributed reporting.

Pressure is building on Columbia’s president, Nemat Shafik. Here’s what to know about her.

The crackdown came one day after pro-Palestinian students had erected an encampment with dozens of tents, and refused to leave until their demands were met. The police swept through campus, arresting at least 108 protesters and discarding the tents as students jeered them.

Some Jewish students and others have said they appreciated the response, while some left-leaning faculty members, students, free speech advocates and others have said it was too harsh. Within hours, it was evident that the aggressive response might not have achieved its goal: Several student protesters said they were not only undiscouraged, but inspired to take new action.

What Is Dr. Shafik’s Background

Dr. Shafik took the helm of the school in July 2023, becoming the first woman to lead Columbia.

An economist by trade, she arrived with a uniquely global perspective for a college president. Her childhood was split across continents: Dr. Shafik was born in Egypt, but partly raised in the United States after her family fled the country when she was 4.

She ventured overseas to Britain to earn a master’s degree at the London School of Economics, an institution she also led for six years before arriving at Columbia. She also worked for the Bank of England and the International Monetary Fund.

Her international experience was praised when she was appointed. She beat out a pool of roughly 600 nominations for the role, the campus student newspaper, The Columbia Daily Spectator, reported.

The university described her as a “tireless proponent of diversity and inclusion,” and one of her first challenges was to help the school respond to the Supreme Court’s ban on affirmative action in admissions.

Jonathan Lavine, the former chair of the university’s board of trustees, called her the “perfect candidate” at the time. He described her as a “community builder” who understood the “vital role institutions of higher education can and must play in solving the world’s most complex problems.”

How She Responded to the Oct. 7 Attacks

In the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel, Dr. Shafik called for compassion and civility, and asked the campus community to come together.

But as Columbia grappled with several instances of antisemitism, the administration took stronger stances. In November, the school temporarily suspended two pro-Palestinian student groups — Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace — because the university said they had violated its policies.

Around the same time, the school’s leadership set up a task force to combat antisemitism, an attempt to address the “root causes” of campus hate. It also took some steps to restrict where and when student demonstrations could be held.

For some time, Columbia — and Dr. Shafik — seemed to avoid the firestorms embroiling other campuses.

This was largely because Dr. Shafik did not attend a congressional hearing in December on antisemitism on college campuses, because of a preplanned international trip. The presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and M.I.T. testified and were swiftly and intensely criticized for failing to clearly state that calling for the genocide of Jews would break their universities’ rules.

Days later, Columbia updated its own event policy page to say that calls for genocide were “abhorrent” and inconsistent with the school’s values. Promoting violence, the page said, would “not be tolerated.”

The presidents of Harvard and Penn soon resigned.

How She Fared in Congress

House Republicans reinvited Dr. Shafik to appear before the Education and Workforce Committee this month. On Wednesday during that appearance, they grilled Dr. Shafik about her institution’s response to antisemitism.

She appeared to sidestep the land mines that helped precipitate the resignations of the presidents of Harvard and Penn. When questioned on whether calling for genocide violated the school’s code of conduct, she did not hedge in her answer: “Yes, it does,” she said.

And when asked whether a professor who described the Oct. 7 attacks as “awesome” would be removed from a leadership position, she ultimately said he would. “I think that would be — I think, I would, yes,” she said.

By the hearing’s end, some Republican lawmakers had commended the university’s leaders for acknowledging that Columbia had a problem.

But back at home, new troubles were brewing. Dr. Shafik’s conciliatory approach to the hearing was criticized by defenders of academic freedom, particularly her disclosures of ongoing probes into faculty members. One later said the hearing was the first time he had learned that he was the subject of an inquiry.

Irene Mulvey, the national president of the American Association of University Professors, said that the “public naming of professors under investigation to placate a hostile committee” set “a dangerous precedent.”

It had “echoes of the cowardice often displayed during the McCarthy era,” Ms. Mulvey added.

What Happened on Campus This Week

By the time Dr. Shafik returned to campus from Washington, D.C., a lush central campus lawn had been transformed into a makeshift protest site.

Pro-Palestinian students had organized an encampment with dozens of tents, and had given the university’s leaders a message: They would not leave until their demands — including that the school divest from businesses with ties to Israel — were met. Through Wednesday, they were joined by hundreds of other students.

The next day, the university’s administration took its most forceful step yet to crackdown on unauthorized demonstrations, asking the city’s Police Department to intervene.

Officers arrested at least 108 protesters and dismantled the encampment, as a large crowd shouted “Shame!” Some vowed that their spirits would not be shattered. “They can threaten us all they want with the police, but at the end of the day, it’s only going to lead to more mobilization,” Maryam Alwan, a pro-Palestinian organizer on campus, said.

After the protesters were arrested, Mayor Eric Adams defended Dr. Shafik and said that students did not “have a right to violate university policies and disrupt learning.” But the administration’s escalation drew swift criticism from legal groups, defenders of free speech and some faculty members.

“I’m really worried about a spiral in which suppressing protest is going to lead to more aggressive protest,” said Angus Johnston, a historian of student activism.

Dr. Shafik wrote to the campus on Thursday that she was taking an “extraordinary step because these are extraordinary circ*mstances.” The encampment, she said, “severely disrupts campus life, and creates a harassing and intimidating environment for many of our students.”

Since then, she has not made any additional public statements.