STUDENTS AND COMMUNITY MEMBERS CLAIM HIND’S HALL

APRIL 30th 2024

40,000 murdered Palestinians and the hundreds of thousands displaced in Gaza are apparently not enough for Columbia’s administration and its board to sever ties with genocidal Israel. Since October, Columbia students have increased mobilization and continued to put pressure on Columbia to divest from companies that aid in Israel's continued ethnic cleansing campaign. Further, students have demanded an academic boycott, which includes canceling the Global Center in Tel Aviv, the Dual Degree Program with Tel Aviv University, and all study-abroad programs, fellowships, and research collaborations with Israeli academic institutions. 

On April 17th, students took significant, escalatory action by establishing a vibrant Gaza Solidarity Encampment which helped to ignite a wave of student solidarity with Palestine around the globe. In response, Columbia marshaled all the repressive arms of the state. They have rejected the terms representative of the students’ moral clarity, stating they will not divest. 

Last night, in the wake of President Shafik’s email stating that the university “will not divest from Israel,” students of Columbia and members of the wider NYC community took forceful autonomous action to end this regime of impunity. ​​​​​​​Among the tactics taken up by students was the taking over of "Hamilton Hall," and renaming the building to Hind's Hall with a celebratory banner drop. This takeover has set the stage for a new period of escalations as students' demands remain clear: a total liberation from the university's participation in the Western imperial system.

Hind Rajab was a six-year-old Palestinian girl who was murdered by the IOF in Gaza. After an Israeli tank fired at her family's car, murdering six of her relatives, Hind, the sole survivor, called the Palestine Red Crescent Society. In a released recording of their call, Hind pleaded with the dispatcher: "I'm so scared, please come. Please, will you come?" Hind was later discovered murdered alongside the two medical workers deployed to rescue her.

Since the reclaiming of Hind’s Hall, the police state of Columbia University has further oppressed its own students and isolated them from their community. As of this morning, students have been arbitrarily suspended in droves for simply being on campus last night. Many of these students swiped into their own library to study for finals. For many of them, simply entering and exiting the library to watch history - the liberation of Hind’s Hall, the unfurling of banners of the “Student Intifada”, and the honoring of 40,000 martyrs - is cause for the university to strip them of food, housing, healthcare, and educational access.

Columbia is terrified of collective action and their fearful responses serve to punish and endanger their own students who stand on the side of justice. We as students of Columbia have a long history of protest, from 1968, 1985, 1992, and now 2024. In the moment, Columbia cracks down on student protests with utmost brutality. Then, once their evil investments are no longer profitable, they turn to celebrate the actions of the same students they suspended, evicted, arrested, and subjected to violence. The Gaza Solidarity Camp, on its thirteenth day of existence, still stands strong - a testament to the resilience of this multi-cultural and interfaith community made up of students, faculty, and New York neighbors, all of whom demand this university divest from genocide. 

The University seeks to destroy the encampment, weaken the student protestors, and starve out those brave individuals who hold Hind’s Hall. As of this morning, they closed the gates, preventing anyone who does not live in a dorm from accessing campus. They prevent food and water from reaching the encampment and they prevent any student not in a dorm from access to bathrooms and inside shelter. 

What is Columbia’s end goal? The university clearly values genocidal companies and capitalist interests of trustees over student consensus and basic morality. In the past two days alone, Barnard College and Teachers College followed in the footsteps of previously passed referendums with overwhelming student support for divestment. At Barnard, 55% of students participated in the vote and support for divestment passed with an incredible 90%. Despite these clear wins, despite an escalation of student protest to Hind’s Hall, and despite the mass mobilization of nearly a thousand students to protect the encampment along with comrades who are liberating this campus from its warmongering admin, Columbia believes that protecting Israeli interests is more important than protecting the safety of its own students.

Our community must now defend Hind’s Hall. Admin has placed the students under siege, hoping to strangle them of food and water and basic necessities. The same administration that talks about “peaceful protest” hopes to send in riot police to an empty campus when no one is there to watch their brutalities. Let’s learn from the lessons of our comrades at Cal Poly Humboldt, where the police attacked the students and arrested them after a week of taking over the administrative building. What can we do now - what do we need now - to perpetuate student and community control? Admin has abandoned the campus—how do we fill that gap?

Earlier this morning, the White House said that the student takeover at Columbia was “absolutely the wrong approach.” If our actions conflict with the morality of genocide, if we have transgressed the rules that protect and perpetuate genocide, then yes—our actions are absolutely wrong by the logic of the executioner. But for those fighting for liberation, progress, life—Hind’s Hall, the takeover of campus, the Student Intifada—these are all absolutely correct.

PRO-GENOCIDE COLUMBIA ADMINISTRATION IMPLEMENTS EXTREME PUNISHMENTS FOR STUDENT PROTESTORS 

Earlier today, Columbia press issued a media brief stating that students de-occupying Hind’s Hall face expulsion and that students in the encampment are being suspended. Based on first-hand accounts, students who were not part of the encampment also received notices of interim suspension. Some seem to have received the notices for simply swiping into buildings near the camp, such as Butler Library, where many students study for their finals. Among the most egregious of these unaffiliated suspensions are three Palestinian students, all unaffiliated with the encampment, who received suspension notices this morning. One of these students was entirely off campus all day. 

Columbia claims their disciplinary wrath is in response to the "actions of protestors, not their cause.” If that sentiment is true, why are we harassed, censured, and doxxed for wearing keffiyehs and saying "Free Palestine" with no university support? Why did the university refuse to listen to student consensus for divestment in the recent referendums or to read the divestment proposal submitted to ACSRI in December? Why were students suspended and pulled into disciplinary hearings for peaceful sit-ins while anti-Palestinian hate speech, Islamophobic rhetoric, and chemical attacks committed by IOF affiliates were ignored by the university?

Discontent towards the administration is not only rampant among the student body but the faculty as well. We saw faculty defend student protestors during the walkout on April 22 and again yesterday when they barricaded the encampment. Barnard faculty in particular have taken this discontent to a vote of no confidence in Laura Rosenbury, where the measure won support from 77% of the participating faculty. This unprecedented measure concretely highlights the sharpening contradictions between the university's administration and the faculty. 

The disciplinary actions from today are all part of the continuing harassment, violence, and bad-faith behaviors carried out by the Columbia University administration. To the administration that has violated all moral standards in this ongoing genocide, we say:

DIVEST AND BOYCOTT THE GENOCIDAL APARTHEID STATE OF SO-CALLED ISRAEL

GRANT COMPLETE AMNESTY TO STUDENT PROTESTORS

OPEN THE GATES

STOP WEAPONIZING HOUSING, HEALTHCARE, AND ACCESS TO FOOD FOR COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT 

SHAME ON MINOUCHE SHAFIK, LAURA ROSENBURY, CAS HOLLOWAY, LESLIE GRINAGE, AND ALL OF COLUMBIA'S LACKEYS

LONG LIVE THE STUDENT INTIFADA

LONG LIVE THE PALESTINIAN NATIONAL RESISTANCE

FREE PALESTINE FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA WITHIN OUR LIFETIME

GLORY TO ALL OUR MARTYRS