Columbia University cancels main commencement ceremony after protests

FILE PHOTO: Protesters link arms outside Hamilton Hall barricading students inside the building at Columbia University, despite an order to disband the protest encampment supporting Palestinians or face suspension, during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in New York City, U.S., April 30, 2024. REUTERS/Caitlin Ochs/File Photo

By Julia Harte

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Columbia University on Monday canceled its main graduation ceremony after weeks of pro-Palestinian protests roiled the Ivy League college’s campus, but it will still hold smaller, school-based events.

“Security concerns were one of the main reasons for our decision on whether to hold a large commencement ceremony,” a university official, who declined to be identified, said. Graduation had been scheduled for May 15.

Columbia in a statement called the past few weeks “incredibly difficult for our community.”

The protests at Columbia, which drew national attention, have inspired similar demonstrations at dozens of universities around the U.S. Students have called for a ceasefire in Gaza and have demanded their schools divest from companies with ties to Israel.

On Monday, Hamas said it agreed to a ceasefire proposal with Israel in Gaza. Israel said it was a “softened” Egyptian proposal that was not acceptable to Israel.

During the seven-month-old war more than 34,600 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military operations in Gaza, according to health officials in the Hamas-ruled Palestinian enclave. The war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people and abducting 252 others, of whom 133 are believed to remain in captivity in Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.

As protests gathered steam at U.S. colleges, some universities, including Columbia, called in riot police wielding batons and flash-bang grenades to disperse and arrest hundreds of protesters, citing a paramount need for campus safety. Civil rights groups have decried such tactics as unnecessarily violent infringements on free speech.

The turmoil on campuses has prompted colleges across the United States to relocate, modify or cancel commencement ceremonies altogether.

In April, the University of Southern California also called off its main-stage ceremony, one week after canceling the valedictorian speech by a Muslim student who said she was silenced by anti-Palestinian hatred.

Columbia said on Monday it had consulted with student leaders in deciding how to handle graduation. The majority of the smaller ceremonies, which had been set to take place on its upper Manhattan campus, where most of the protests have taken place, will take place at the main athletic complex about five miles (8 km) away.

The demonstrations have emerged as a political flashpoint during a contentious U.S. election year as Democratic President Joe Biden and Republican former U.S President Donald Trump face off in a rematch for the White House.

RALLY FOR ISRAEL, JEWISH STUDENTS

Republican U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson — who condemned Columbia’s administrators, accusing them of being too lenient on demonstrators during a campus visit in April — blasted them again on Monday, saying the decision to cancel commencement denied thousands of graduates the recognition they deserved.

Johnson also called on the school’s board of trustees to remove university President Nemat Minouche Shafik, adding that the cancellation showed she would rather “cede control to Hamas supporters than restore order.”

A rally to support Jewish, Israeli-American and Israeli students was planned for Monday evening near Columbia’s campus by an Israel advocacy group, the Israeli-American Council, which called the campus protests “anti-Israel and antisemitic”.

New York City police cleared a Columbia building last week that had been barricaded by pro-Palestinian protesters, arresting more than 100 people in and around the campus and dismantling an encampment.

Other U.S. universities have continued grappling this week with how to clear their campuses of protesters.

At Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, interim President Alan Garber said on Monday that protesters who continued participating in a two-week-old encampment would be referred for “involuntary leave,” meaning they may not be able to sit for exams, reside in Harvard housing or be on campus until reinstated.

“As we begin our extensive preparations for Commencement, this ongoing violation of our policies becomes more consequential,” said Garber, citing reports from some students that the camp disrupted their ability to sleep, study and move freely about the campus.

At the University of California, Los Angeles, where pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian protesters clashed last week and where police arrested more than 200 people while clearing a pro-Palestinian encampment on Thursday, Chancellor Gene Block on Sunday announced a new Office of Campus Safety.

(Reporting by Julia Harte, Doina Chiacu, Joseph Ax, and Ross Kerber; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Cynthia Osterman)