Negotiations between Columbia University students and administrators to clear the pro-Gaza camp on campus have broken down, the school’s president said Monday.
Monday is the last day of classes for the semester. Organizers and school officials have been negotiating to remove the tents from the main campus lawns that will be needed for graduation ceremonies in a few weeks. But the parties reached an impasse late last week Divestment From companies and institutions that benefit from Israel.
“Unfortunately, we were unable to reach an agreement,” University President Minush Shafiq wrote in an email to students and faculty early Monday. “The university will not leave Israel.”
Instead, Shafiq said, the university suggested students expedite the process to offer “socially responsible” investment proposals and make Columbia’s direct investment holdings more transparent. Also on the table was the Faculty Committee on Academic Freedom and Investing in health and education in Gaza.
This deal was not acceptable to the student protestors.
“Columbia is asking students to act within the confines of a bureaucratic bureaucracy and not accept guarantees of a binding decision if we end the encampment,” one of the organizers of the tent demonstration, Students in Palestine for Justice Campus, said in a statement. Sunday.
It was not immediately clear how the university was trying to get hundreds of students off its lawn.
“We call on those in the camp to disperse voluntarily,” Shafiq said. “We are consulting with the wider community in our community to explore alternative domestic options to end this crisis as soon as possible.”
The pro-Gaza camp first emerged on campus on April 17, when Shafiq testified before Congress about efforts to curb anti-Semitism. Thirty hours later, university officials stopped the students involved and called the NYPD, with officers arresting more than 100 students while clearing the lawn.
The protestors quickly returned and set up a second camp. University administrators vowed over the weekend not to bring in the NYPD to clean up the encampment, saying police intervention would only inflame the tense situation.
Columbia’s campus is privately owned, and the NYPD can only enter upon the university’s request.