Columbia student newspaper covers AIM in report on pro-Palestinian pickets on campus
September 10, 2024
Pro-Palestinian picket on first day of class, sit-in against Hillary Clinton
How were Columbia and Barnard students greeted by protesters on the first day of the fall semester? And which professor was confronted with a sit-in outside their classroom just a day later? Welcome to The Scoop. I’m your host, Luisa Sukkar, and in this week’s episode, we’ll unpack these top headlines and more.
Protest fervor has shaped the first week of this fall semester at Columbia.
At around 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday, the first day of classes, dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters formed a “Shut It Down” picket outside the Columbia gates on 116th Street and Broadway. Protesters urged students, staff, and faculty alike to not cross the picket line or attend classes. Flyers handed out during the picket reiterated protesters’ demands for full divestment from companies with ties to Israel.
The New York Police Department arrested two Columbia students around 1 p.m., about an hour after picketing began outside the Barnard campus gates.
From within the gates, red paint was poured on Alma Mater around midday and cleaned by early afternoon.
Two pro-Israel counterprotesters stood outside the Columbia gates around 1:00 p.m. Later that afternoon, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which has previously expressed concerns over antisemitism on Columbia’s campus, wrote on X, “One day in and it’s already clear that Columbia isn’t prepared to prevent a repeat of the spring semester. Jewish students deserve better.”
On Wednesday, conservative media group Accuracy in Media sent a digital billboard truck to circle around Columbia’s Morningside campus, displaying the names and faces of Columbia affiliates under a banner reading “Columbia’s Leading Antisemites.” The truck has made several appearances around campus since October 2023.
That same afternoon, around a dozen pro-Palestinian protesters participated in a sit-in at the International Affairs Building. While displaying a banner that read, “Welcome to the IGP: Israel’s Global Propagandists,” they urged students of professor Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State, to walk out of her class.