After entering the site shortly after 9pm on Tuesday (01:00 GMT on Wednesday), some officers approached Hamilton Hall, the administration building that students began occupying early on Tuesday morning after the management said it had begun suspending students who had refused to meet a previous deadline to disperse.
They had renamed the building “Hind’s Hall”, in memory of six-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab who was killed in Gaza in February.
“We’re clearing it out,” police in a riot unit yelled as they marched up to the barricaded entrance to the building, while dozens more officers moved on the main protest camp.
Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine said in a post on X that the police officers were “wearing riot gear” and that “multiple blocks have been barricaded off”.
A long line of police officers were seen climbing into the building via a ladder extended from the top of a truck into a second-storey window.
Shortly afterwards, officers were seen leading multiple protesters, their hands tied behind their backs with plastic zip ties, to police vehicles outside the campus gates. Between 30 and 40 people were taken from Hamilton Hall, the Associated Press reported.
“Free, free, free Palestine!” chanted protesters outside the building. Others yelled, “Let the students go!”
The move to clear the protest came exactly 56 years since police swept into Hamilton Hall to end a 1968 protest by students against racism and the Vietnam War.
