The New York Police Department action on Columbia’s Hamilton Hall Tuesday evening comes 56 years after police took action on student protests in the same building, according to Columbia Daily Spectator archives.
More than 700 people were arrested on April 30, 1968, after protesting the Vietnam War and other issues. Hamilton Hall, which police entered through tunnels, was among five occupied buildings cleared by police.
“TO BE CLEAR, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY HAS CALLED THE COPS ONTO ITS OWN STUDENTS FOR THE SECOND TIME IN TWO WEEKS, ON THE 56TH ANNIVERSARY OF WHEN THEY LAST CALLED THE POLICE ONTO CAMPUS TO ARREST OVER 700 PROTESTING THE VIETNAM WAR & HARLEM GENTRIFICATION ON APRIL 30TH , 1968,” Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine posted on X Tuesday night.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators at Columbia University occupied Hamilton Hall in protest against Israel’s war in Gaza. Several other student-led movements at the university have occupied Hamilton Hall, built in 1907 and containing multiple language departments, to take an escalated stance against a war.
In 1985, Columbia University students protesting South Africa’s apartheid regime and demanding the university divest from business in South Africa chained the doors to Hamilton Hall shut and blocked the entrance for nearly a month.
The university threatened to expel students and sent out disciplinary notices, as community leaders such as Jesse Jackson and Desmond Tutu expressed their solidarity with the students, according to the Global Nonviolent Action Database. Immediately after the blockade ended, university trustees agreed to consider divesting the university’s $39 million portfolio of stocks in US companies doing business in South Africa.
Later that year, Columbia became the first Ivy League school to agree to divest holdings in companies that supported South Africa.
Columbia University students also occupied Hamilton Hall in 1972 in protests against the Vietnam War, and again in 1992 and 1996.
Tags: Columbia University asks NYPD maintain presence campus
