The New Yorker:

Scenes of dissent and defiance at Columbia University, where scores of students have been arrested for participating in pro-Palestine protests.

Photography by Nina Berman

In the late morning of April 18th, as police amassed outside the gates of Columbia University and chants of “Free Palestine!” rang across the campus, I ran into Nina Berman, a colleague at the Journalism School, where she teaches photojournalism and I serve as dean. Nina was walking toward the east lawn, where a sign declared the area a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment.” She has, for four decades, specialized in documenting precisely these types of events—labor strikes, Black Lives Matter protests, reproductive-rights rallies—though usually at a slightly greater remove from her place of employment.

A bit of context: Just before dawn on the seventeenth, dozens of students had fanned out across the east lawn to demand that the university curtail investments in companies with ties to Israel. The campus lawns had been an area of contention since the week following October 7th, when duelling gatherings in support of Israelis and Palestinians began cropping up. So it was not uncommon to see the Palestinian flag unfurled in front of the nearby Butler Library. But the protests intensified that morning, when students erected tents and hung a sign reading “Liberated Zone.” The same day, Minouche Shafik, Columbia’s new president, was in Washington, D.C., testifying about antisemitism at the university before a House committee. After the hearing, Shafik was confronted with another challenge: how to respond to the encampment that now filled the entire east lawn. She ultimately called in the N.Y.P.D., which arrested more than a hundred students. Soon, protesters erected their tents again. I subsequently spent ten days as part of an administration team trying to negotiate a peaceful end to the encampment. On April 30th, after similar demonstrations began to take hold at college and university campuses across the country, a contingent of protesters occupied Hamilton Hall—an academic building—until, once more, the police were called in. That night, they took back the building, removed the encampment, and made a hundred and nine arrests.

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