Protesters at Columbia University marched across the campus and occupied a building after midnight early Tuesday, hours after the university moved to suspend students who had failed to leave a pro-Palestinian encampment.

Dozens of students left the encampment about 12:35 a.m. and entered Hamilton Hall, a neoclassical building on the campus that is home to the department of classics and Columbia College.

The late-night developments began with protesters marching around campus to chants of “free Palestine.” Within 20 minutes, they had seized Hamilton Hall, with dozens linking arms and blocking the main entrance.

The unrest came just hours after the university said it had started suspending students who had not left the encampment after a Monday afternoon deadline.

Tuesday promises to be another tense day at the Columbia campus in Manhattan, with students bracing for possible further action against the pro-Palestinian encampment and administrators waiting to see if their decision to suspend demonstrators who remained at the site would blunt the protest.

On the West Coast, demonstrations were also heating up at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, where students had occupied the president’s office for a week and at Portland State University in Oregon, where a library was taken over by students.

Pro-Palestinian protesters gather on the campus of Columbia University in upper Manhattan on Monday, April 29, 2024. (Bing Guan/The New York Times)

Columbia announced Monday evening that it had begun to suspend students who had failed to leave the encampment on its Manhattan campus by a deadline the university had set earlier in the day. After a day of protest and confusion, the measure reflected the difficult balance Columbia administrators are seeking to strike as they try to avoid bringing the New York Police Department back to arrest those in the encampment, but also commit to the stance that the protest must end.

Students in the encampment, along with hundreds of supporters, had spent a tense afternoon rallying around the site in a show of force meant to deter the removal of its tents. But with no sign of police action, most of the protesters had begun to disperse by the end of the afternoon, leaving what appeared to be several dozen students and about 80 tents inside the encampment.

Just outside, about a dozen faculty in yellow and orange safety vests also stayed behind, with several saying that they planned to remain overnight to make sure their students’ right to protest was respected.

Columbia’s move appeared to be an effort to get the nearly two-week-old encampment to peter out gradually before the university’s May 15 graduation, rather than to root it out with force, a step that administrators fear will incite more protest. The university said it had identified some but not all of the students in the encampment. They are likely to be notified of their suspensions one by one via email.

“We have begun suspending students as part of the next phase of our efforts to ensure the safety of our campus,” said Ben Chang, a spokesperson for the university.

According to the university, only the students who remained in the encampment after its deadline of 2 p.m. Monday would face immediate suspension, not the hundreds of others who came during the afternoon to encircle the camp to protect it and show their support.

So far, at least, a core group of student protesters has vowed to stay put. At a news conference, Sueda Polat, a student organizer with the encampment, said that the university had not made significant concessions to the protesters’ main demand: divestment from companies with links to the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip. Columbia had also stopped negotiating. As a result, she said, the students inside the encampment “will not be moved unless by force.”

Faculty members block the entrance to the protest encampment at Columbia University in New York on Monda, April 29, 2024, as a deadline set by the university to clear its central lawn passed and students inside had not dispersed. Columbia had given students until 2 p.m. to clear out from the encampment, warning them that they would face immediate suspension if they did not leave by then. (Bing Guan/The New York Times)

“We’ve been asked to disperse, but it is against the will of the students to disperse,” she said. “We do not abide by university pressures. We act based on the will of the students.”

Elga Castro, 47, an adjunct professor in the Spanish department at Barnard College, Columbia’s sister school, was among the faculty and staff members guarding access to the tents. “I have my opinions on Gaza and Palestine, but I am mainly here to protect my students,” she said.

Castro said she had not received any word from Columbia about whether faculty participating in the protest would face censure.

The protesters at Columbia have inspired similar pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campuses across the country. Hundreds of students have been arrested.

At New York University, administrators facing a renewed pro-Palestinian encampment there took a similar step to Columbia on Monday. Rather than call in police to clear the encampment, as it did a week ago, leading to more than 100 arrests, it said that it was “moving forward with disciplinary processes” against students who did not disperse.

At Princeton University in New Jersey, a group of protesters briefly occupied Clio Hall, home of the graduate school, on Monday night. Thirteen people were arrested, including five undergraduates, six graduate students, one postdoctoral researcher and one person not affiliated with the university. All those arrested received summonses for trespassing and have been barred from campus. The students will also face university discipline, which may extend to suspension or expulsion, the president of Princeton, Chris Eisgruber, said in a statement.

About 20 miles north, students erected neon-colored tents on a lawn of Rutgers University’s New Brunswick campus after a noon rally.

At Columbia, administrators distributed a notice Monday morning to the encampment stating that negotiations with student protest leaders were at an impasse. It urged the students to clear out voluntarily to allow the school to prepare the lawn for graduation ceremonies.

The university has been trying to avoid calling back the police, whose intervention April 18 at the request of Columbia administrators led to more than 100 student arrests and attracted a wave of angry protests outside the school’s gates, some of which included blatantly antisemitic rhetoric.

“We called on NYPD to clear an encampment once,” Nemat Shafik, Columbia’s president, wrote in a statement to the community last Friday co-signed by the co-chairs of Columbia’s board of trustees. “But we all share the view, based on discussions within our community and with outside experts, that to bring back the NYPD at this time would be counterproductive, further inflaming what is happening on campus.”

The notice given out Monday warned the protesting students that the “current unauthorized encampment and disruption on Columbia University’s campus is creating an unwelcoming environment for members of our community.”

It said students would not be punished for their participation in the encampment if they signed a form promising not to break any university rules through the end of the next academic year. Students in the encampment who already faced discipline from previous violations may not be eligible for the same deal, the document stated.

Columbia had already suspended about 50 students for their involvement in the original encampment on a neighboring lawn. But that measure did not deter a wider group of protesters from setting up the current encampment.

The New York Times News Service