As Columbia protests intensify, police numbers increase--right off campus

MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS, N.Y. (PIX11) -- In the wake of reports of physical attacks, threats, and intimidation of Jewish students at Columbia University, the NYPD made its presence well known just outside of campus on Monday.

Also present either just off-campus or on were a half-dozen members of Congress, who held separate, partisan news conferences.

After the conferences, faculty at the Upper Manhattan Ivy League college walked out in protest of academic punishments the university has carried out against student protesters. It all happened as demonstrations on both sides of the Israel-Gaza issue are intensifying on campus. 

For most of the day, protesters stood just outside of the campus's locked gates yelling slogans, and waving banners and signs. 

There were more pro-Palestinian demonstrators than there were pro-Israeli ones, but both sides were well-represented. Police in riot gear were present by the many dozen, ensuring that both sides did not encounter each other.

Officers were intentionally stationed just off campus, with NYPD top brass pointing out that because Columbia is private property, cops can't enter without being requested by the university. 

The result was a scene of Columbia students inside the gates leading protests that non-Columbia supporters joined in from the other side of the gates. 

Lauren Wolf was one of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators. "I'm Jewish," she said. "People who are saying we are antisemitic, no. We're anti-Zionist." 

She was standing in a group of demonstrators behind police barricades that were separated by about 20 feet from another barricaded group of pro-Israel demonstrators. 

Omry Hananya was in the pro-Israel group. "I'm Israeli," he said, as he pointed to the opposing group. "What they're talking about is like killing and/or deporting my family from the place where they've been for like 100 years now."

Monday's developments came days after the NYPD, at the request of the university, physically removed protesters who'd set up tents on a Columbia lawn to call for the ceasefire. 

Now, those tents are back, but they're occupied only by people affiliated with the university. A valid I.D. is now required to be let through the gates onto campus.

In fact, some of the members of Congress who visited the area on Monday decided to stay outside of the gates. Two Republican congressmen, Mike Lawler from Rockland County, and Anthony D'Esposito, from Long Island, joined with Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman to condemn protests on campus. 

"I have never seen a more disgraceful act," Lawler said at a midday news conference. 

Around the same time, four Jewish Democratic members of Congress – Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, Dan Goldman of New York, Jared Moskowitz of Florida, and Kathy Manning of North Carolina – toured campus. They said that it was done to ensure that students are protected, especially during Passover, this week.

"Jewish students feel unsafe, insecure and broadly harassed," Goldman said at a press conference outside of the university's Hillel center. 

All day on Monday, all classes met remotely by order of the university. However, just before 2:00 p.m., many of the people teaching the classes walked out en masse to the stairs at the center of campus, Low Library, and in a protest, they sent a message to the university's president and administrators. 

"We condemn, in the strongest possible terms," said a representative of the faculty group, "the administration's suspension of students engaged in peaceful protests and their arrest by the NYPD."

More than 100 students have been suspended by the university, after they were arrested following last Thursday's protests. The faculty members called for the students to be unsuspended.