Dozens of protesters breached an administrative building at Columbia University early Tuesday morning, barricading entrances while flying a Palestinian flag out a window on the Ivy League campus in Manhattan.
Students used furniture to barricade Hamilton Hall, which was occupied during a 1968 civil rights and anti-Vietnam War protest, AP reports. The student radio station, WKCR-FM, broadcast a play-by-play of the takeover.
Reports state protesters locked down the building in fewer than five minutes once they’d entered, according to the Columbia Spectator, which detailed how the demonstrators carried out the takeover starting just past midnight.
Axios reports that a coalition of student groups behind the protest has called for, among other things, divesting university endowment funds from companies that do business with the Israeli government.
Columbia President Minouche Shafik said in a statement Monday: “We are consulting with a broader group in our community to explore alternative internal options to end this crisis as soon as possible.”
A Columbia protester told reporters: “We will not be moved unless by force.”
Axios has also compiled information from anti-Israel protests on college campuses around the country:
At Cal Poly Humboldt, north of San Francisco among ancient coastal redwoods, student protesters have barricaded themselves for a week in a building that includes the president’s office, tagging walls and renaming it “Intifada Hall,” the New York Times reports.
Cornell and NYU — said they’ll suspend or discipline students involved in encampments. At least 40 people involved in a tent encampment were arrested at the University of Texas in Austin on Monday afternoon.
Nine protesters at the University of Florida were taken into custody and police in riot gear arrested multiple people at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va.
