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Columbia University: Ihlan Omar's daughter suspended and dozens arrested for Gaza
protest
30 minutes ago
By Bernd Debusmann Jr,
BBC News

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0:37
Watch: NY police arrest dozens at US college Gaza protest
Dozens of students have been arrested after police cleared an encampment set-up by
pro-Palestine protesters at Columbia University in New York.

The university's president said that the "extraordinary step" came after multiple
warnings and was necessary to provide a safe environment.

Among the participants in the protest was Minnesota politician Ilhan Omar's
daughter, who has been suspended.

Protests have been held at US colleges since the war in Gaza began last year.

Protestors had constructed an encampment of about 50 tents on campus on Wednesday -

and overnight hundreds of students and others had rallied with them.

On Thursday, they were joined by independent presidential candidate Cornel West,

who told the students that he stands "in solidarity with human suffering".

In a statement sent to faculty earlier on Thursday, Columbia University president

Dr Nemat Shafik said that she had hoped that her decision to authorise the New York
Police Department to clear the encampment would "never be necessary".

"The individuals who established the encampment violated a long list of rules and
policies," Dr Shafik said. "Through direct conversations and in writing, the
university provided multiple notices of these violations."

Additionally, Ms Shafik said that she regretted that "all of these attempts to
resolve the situation were rejected by the students involved".

The number of students arrested on campus remains unclear. The BBC has contacted
the New York Police Department for comment.

A protester is led away by police outside Columbia on Wednesday

A protester is led away by police outside Columbia on Wednesday
Police intervened in protests around the university on Wednesday, as Dr Shafik
testified about antisemitism before Congress.

The Columbia Spectator, a student newspaper, reported that the incident marks the
first time mass arrests have been made on campus since Vietnam War protests in
1968.

On X, the platform formally known as Twitter, Ilhan Omar's daughter Isra Hirsi, 21,
said that she had been suspended from Barnard College for "standing in solidarity
with Palestinians facing a genocide" despite never having been reprimanded or
disciplined in the three years she has been a student at the private women's
university.

Her mother is among the most vocal critics of Israel on Capitol Hill.

One of the organisations that organised the protest, Columbia University Apartheid
Divest, said that the suspension of Ms Hirsi and the two other students -
identified as Maryam Iqbal and Soph Dinu - means that "they have lost access to
their food, housing, and medical centre".

"Two of the three live in student housing and have been illegally locked out with
no notice," the statement adds, noting that the suspension is effective
immediately.

An email to the students cited by Apartheid Divest, which the BBC has not
confirmed, said that the suspension came after the students were involved in an
"unauthorised encampment" and have not stopped participating "despite repeated
requests from Barnard and Columbia" to do so.

Reuters Police stand guard next to a lorry with confiscated camping

equipmentReuters
Police stand guard next to a lorry with confiscated camping equipment
'Subject to sanctions'
Barnard University told the BBC that it does "not provide information about
confidential student conduct proceedings".

A separate Barnard community update sent out on Thursday said only that staff
members had asked students to leave and warned them they would be "subject to
sanctions" if they failed to do so.

Written warnings were also provided on Wednesday evening, warning of interim

suspensions if they did not leave the encampment later the same night.

"This morning... we started to place identified Barnard students remaining in the

encampment on interim suspension, and we will continue to do so," the statement
added.

Barnard's Student Government Association said in a statement that the suspensions

are "illegitimate" and a violation of "the sanctity of the academic institution and
its purpose to facilitate open dialogue."

At least one professor - classics lecturer Joseph Howley - has publicly expressed
support for the protest, telling the Spectator that "Columbia can either be a
world-class place of research and learning, or we can be an institution that
resorts to law-and-order responses to protest even when there's no threat to safety
or operations, but we can't be both".

"I wish the last few months had left me with greater confidence that the
University's response today was about how the students were protesting rather than
what they were protesting," he added.
The protest at Columbia comes just days after pro-Palestinian protesters blocked
major roads across the country, paralysing access to airports including Chicago's
O'Hare International and Seattle-Tacoma International, as well as major
thoroughfares such as those crossing the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and
Brooklyn Bridge in New York.

0:58
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