Protests against the war in Gaza intensified Tuesday night at Columbia University in New York, when demonstrators took over an academic building.
Pro-Palestinian activists barricaded themselves in the so-called Hamilton Hall, which they renamed after Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old girl found dead in Gaza earlier this year.
This occurred after some students were suspended by the university for defying the deadline given by the authorities for them to leave the camp set up on campus.
Following the occupation of the building, Columbia urged students and staff to stay away from campus and warned of possible expulsions.
Ben Chang, spokesman for the institution, said that “students occupying the building face expulsion.”
“Protesters have chosen to escalate to an unsustainable situation – vandalizing property, breaking doors and windows, and blocking entrances – and we are enforcing the consequences we outlined yesterday,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
Student Jessica Schwalb described the campus as “lawless, absolute anarchy.”
Speaking to CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, he said the group had entered with “bags full of stuff” and added: “I assume they will live there indefinitely.”
The president of the United States, Joe Biden, said this Tuesday that the seizure of Hamilton Hall was “an absolutely wrong approach” by the students.
The Democratic president has opposed “disgusting, anti-Semitic slurs and violent rhetoric” his entire life, White House spokesman Andrew Bates said.
Biden “respects the right to free expression,” Bates said, but protests must be “peaceful and legal.”
“Taking control of the building by force is not peaceful, it is wrong,” Bates added.
“And hate speech and hate symbols have no place in the US,” he said.
Former Republican President Donald Trump called the occupation “the Biden protests.”
“Everything is caused by him because he doesn’t know how to speak. He can’t put two sentences together. He has to come out and make a statement because universities are being invaded in this country,” he said.
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