Tipsheet

Columbia Issues Warning to Students and Staff After Pro-Hamas Agitators Occupy Building

Pro-Hamas demonstrators at Columbia took over an academic building early Tuesday to continue their “protests” over the war in Gaza.

University officials urged students and staff to keep away from campus as dozens of the anti-Israel activists occupied Hamilton Hall in defiance over the school beginning to suspend students who refused to leave an encampment set up on the quad last week. 

Images on social media show students breaking windows, barricading themselves in the building, and holding banners that say "intifada." According to the school's student newspaper, a facilities worker said the pro-terrorist activists temporarily held him hostage when they gained access to the building. 

The radical Columbia Apartheid Divest group praised the escalation, saying in a statement that "resistance is justified in the movement for liberation."