Crisis on campus: Tensions swell at Yale, Columbia, NYU

New York City Mayor Eric Adams said he is “horrified and disgusted” with the antisemitism being spewed at and around Columbia University’s campus, according to a statement from the mayor’s office on Sunday night. 

Adams said he condemns the hate speech heard during the protests such as a woman who yelled ‘We are Hamas’ and another woman who held a sign with an arrow pointing to Jewish students stating ‘Al-Qasam’s Next Targets.’

Adams said supporting an organization that threatens to kill Jews is “sickening and despicable.”

“As I have repeatedly said, hate has no place in our city, and I have instructed the NYPD to investigate any violation of law that is reported,” Adams said. “Rest assured, the NYPD will not hesitate to arrest anyone who is found to be breaking the law.”

Adams said New York City will not be a city of lawlessness, and those professional agitators seeking to seize the ongoing conflict in the Middle East to sow chaos and division in our city will not succeed.

US Representative Virginia Foxx, Chairwoman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, wrote a letter to Columbia University President Minouche Shafik on Sunday charging the university with a failure to meet its obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to ensure an environment of equal opportunity for Jewish students.  

Foxx, a Republican who represents a constituency in North Carolina, wrote that "Columbia’s continued failure to restore order and safety promptly to campus constitutes a major breach of the University’s Title VI obligations, upon which federal financial assistance is contingent, and which must immediately be rectified.

"If you do not rectify this danger, then the Committee will not hesitate in holding you accountable," the congresswoman wrote. 

Anti-Israel protest encampments have emerged on at least eight American universities in emulation of the Columbia University campus occupation, following National Students for Justice in Palestine and several other pro-Palestinina groups calling to do so on Saturday night.

In addition to the Columbia encampment that had started on Wednesday, encampments were started at Yale University, University of Michigan, New York University, The New School, Tufts University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Emerson College, and Rutgers University. A encampment was also established on Friday at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, but the local SJP chapter said on Instagram on Monday that they had moved from the location.

I was proud to stand with my colleague @ANTHONYDESPO, @NassauExec Bruce Blakeman, @sidrosenberg, @MichaelRapaport, and so many others at @Columbia today to oppose the antisemitism we’ve seen.

Here’s the reality: hate is taught. It is taught in the schools of Gaza and… pic.twitter.com/My316eIrmt

— Mike Lawler (@lawler4ny) April 22, 2024

In a social media post by NSJP entitled "campuses in revolt," the organization promised that more encampments would be established.

"Over the last 72 hours, the Students for Justice in Palestine chapters across the country have erupted in a fierce display of power and pressure targeted at their universities for their endless complicity and profiteering off the genocide on Gaza and the colonization of Palestine," said NSJP on Sunday. "The encampments transform mass mobilization into long-term sustained occupation, leveraging our tangible power as students to give our institutions no other option but to divest."