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      Eric Adams Seizes Role as Face of the Crackdown on Student Protests

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      Mayor Eric Adams on Wednesday defended the overnight arrests of nearly 300 campus protesters in New York City, praising the police for using restraint and arguing that protesters were antisemitic and led by outsiders who were part of a global effort to “radicalize young people.”Mr. Adams said at a news conference at the police headquarters that he had advised Columbia University’s leaders that the police had seen a shift in tactics at the protests led by “outside agitators” and that “you have more than a peaceful protest on your hands.”“They are attempting to disrupt our city and we are not going to permit it to happen,” Mr. Adams said.The police arrested 119 protesters at Columbia University on Tuesday and 173 people at the City College of New York after leaders at both schools requested assistance from the New York Police Department, the police said.For much of the weekslong protest at Columbia, university leaders have remained in the background, making much of their public pronouncements through campuswide advisories.In their absence, Mr. Adams, a Democrat and former police officer, has forcefully stepped in, embracing a role that adheres to his law enforcement background, his reputation as a mayor focused on reducing disorder and strong support for Israel over many years.As pro-Palestinian protests have erupted on campuses across New York City, Mr. Adams has gone beyond calling for order, calling protesters “despicable” and encouraging university leaders to quickly remove encampments.Mr. Adams said on Wednesday that he was proud of the police officers who removed a Palestinian flag that was hung from a flagpole at Columbia University and replaced it with an American flag — an image the police promoted widely.“Blame me for being proud to be an American,” Mr. Adams said. “We’re not surrendering our way of life to anyone.”City officials and the police said that the use of large chains to block doors and other tactics showed that “professional” activists were influencing student protesters. They have not named the outsiders who were involved in the protests and declined on Wednesday to say how many of the protesters who were arrested were not affiliated with the colleges.Left-leaning Democrats have criticized the mayor’s approach. Ana María Archila, a director of the New York Working Families Party, said that the police response on Tuesday was “reckless, escalatory and put the entire university community in harm’s way.”“This is a shameful day in our city’s history, and one that will not be forgotten,” she said.Jeffery C. Mays More

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      Ilhan Omar Plunges Into Democrats’ Political Storm Over War in Gaza

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      Suggesting that some Jewish students are “pro-genocide,” the Minnesota congresswoman seemed to further polarize an already polarizing debate.It was just one sentence, uttered to reporters who had gathered around Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota last week when she turned up at a Columbia University encampment to offer a show of support for pro-Palestinian protesters — among them, her daughter, a student activist — demonstrating against the Israeli attacks on Gaza.Ms. Omar, one of the leading pro-Palestinian voices in Congress, rejected the argument that the protests were antisemitic, noting that many of the participants were Jewish. “All Jewish kids” should be kept safe, she said, no matter which side they were on in the debate — or, as she framed it, “whether they’re pro-genocide or anti-genocide.”But with her formulation that Jews who support the Israeli military campaign are “pro-genocide,” Ms. Omar plunged into what has become an increasingly turbulent storm for many on the American left as it confronts questions about the extent to which antisemitism is shadowing demonstrations that have broken out on campuses from New York to Los Angeles.Ms. Omar is a Democrat and one of two Muslim women in the House, and she was elected with the endorsement of, among others, President Biden.“That phrasing is despicable,” said Rabbi David Wolpe, a visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School, who resigned from a Harvard antisemitism panel after the university was swept by protests against Israel.“I don’t know anyone who is pro-genocide,” said Mr. Wolpe, who said he was walking by an encampment at Harvard as he spoke on his cellphone. “In the course of condemning antisemitism, it displays antisemitism. Which is an astonishing paradox — I mean it’s a sad paradox.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      College Protests Over Gaza Deepen Democratic Rifts

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      Scenes of chaos unfolding on campuses across the country are stoking internal divisions and carry political risk as a major election year unfolds.Nearly seven months after the Israel-Hamas war began, the demonstrations convulsing college campuses nationwide are exposing fresh tensions within the Democratic Party over how to balance free speech protections and support for Gazans with concerns that some Jewish Americans are raising about antisemitism.From New York and Los Angeles to Atlanta and Austin, a surge in student activism has manifested in protest encampments and other demonstrations, drawing significant police crackdowns and sometimes appearing to attract outside agitators. The protests also have emerged as the latest flashpoint in the internal Democratic debate over the war.As scenes of campus turmoil play out across the country in the final days of the school year, the moment also carries political risk for a party that has harnessed promises of stability and normalcy to win critical recent elections, and faces a challenging battle for control of the government in the fall.“The real question is, can the Democrats again portray themselves as the steady hand at the helm?” said Dan Sena, a veteran Democratic strategist. “Things that create national chaos like this make that harder to do.”Mr. Sena and other Democrats have argued that Americans have good reason to associate their opponents with chaos: Former President Donald J. Trump faces multiple criminal cases; the narrow, fractious House Republican majority has its own divisions concerning Israel and free speech; some Republicans have urged National Guard deployments to college campuses; and for years, Republicans have faced criticism over antisemitism in their own ranks.But since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, and the Israeli military response that has killed more than 30,000 people, according to local authorities, the fight over American policy toward Israel has been especially pronounced on the left.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      More Than 170 Protesters Arrested at Northeastern and Arizona State University

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      The police made arrests at Northeastern University, Arizona State and Indiana University on Saturday, as more schools move in on encampments protesting the war in Gaza.Nearly 200 protesters were arrested on Saturday at Northeastern University, Arizona State University and Indiana University, according to officials, as colleges across the country struggle to quell growing pro-Palestinian demonstrations and encampments on campus.More than 700 protesters have been arrested on U.S. campuses since April 18, when Columbia University had the New York Police Department clear a protest encampment there. In several cases, most of those who were arrested have been released. More

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      Beyond Pulling Donations

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      Business executives who are concerned about antisemitism on college campuses have other options for influencing the schools’ actions, Andrew Ross Sorkin writes.Many business leaders have told me they are deeply concerned about incidents of harassment against Jewish students that have taken place at and around universities like Columbia and appear to be increasing.Inside corner offices, there has been a lot of hand-wringing about the most blatant examples, like antisemitic signs and chants or the assault of an Israeli student. But there has been little action from corporations, which have a synergistic relationship with the schools where they recruit employees.Some executives are privately pondering what they can do. The most common course of action so far has been to pull back on individual donations. The New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, for example, said this week that he was “no longer comfortable supporting Columbia University.”But businesses have other levers that affect universities, and some of those levers would undoubtedly put more pressure on universities to take action against antisemitism.Here’s one out-of-the-box thought experiment: Most businesses scrutinize their vendors quite carefully and maintain approved lists of vendors whose policies align with their own. Companies could scrutinize universities, a main source of their talent, as they would any other vendor. They could tell universities that they won’t hire their students unless the schools take decisive action to stem antisemitism.After all, no company in this day and age would use an executive search firm with employees who openly engaged in antisemitism.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Dispatch From Inside Columbia’s Student-Led Protest for Gaza

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      On Wednesday morning, on a corner across the street from Columbia University, a man dressed in black, a huge gold cross around his neck, brandished a sign that featured a bloodstained Israeli flag and the word “genocide” in capital letters. He was also shouting at the top of his lungs.“The Jews control the world! Jews are murderers!”I watched as a pro-Palestine protester approached the man. “That is horribly antisemitic,” she said. “You are hurting the movement and you are not a part of us. Go away.”The man shouted vile, unprintable epithets back at her, but the woman, who told me she had come to New York from her home in Baltimore to support the protesting students, walked away.Hours later, a well-known congressional reporter covering House Speaker Mike Johnson’s visit to Columbia’s campus posted a photograph of the same man. “One sign here at the Columbia protest,” the reporter, Jake Sherman, wrote. “This man is ranting about Jews controlling the universe.”The man wasn’t “at the Columbia protest.” The university’s campus has been closed to outsiders for over a week — even as a journalist and an alumnus, I had trouble getting in. He was, several people on social media told Sherman, a well-known antisemitic crank completely unconnected from what was unfolding on campus. Indeed, last week I had seen a man wearing an identical cross carrying a similarly lettered sign that read, “Google it! Jews vs. TikTok” protesting outside Donald Trump’s criminal trial in Lower Manhattan. He was, for the record, standing on the pro-Trump side of the protest area.But the incident is emblematic of how difficult it has become to make sense of what is actually happening on college campuses right now. As the protests have spread to dozens of campuses and counting, competing viral clips on social media paint vastly different versions of what’s happening inside these pro-Palestine camps. Are they violent conflict zones, filled with militant protesters who hurl antisemitic abuse and threaten Jewish students, requiring, as some political leaders have suggested, deployment of the National Guard? Or is it a giant love-fest of students braiding daisy chains and singing “Kumbaya”?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Columbia’s University Senate Calls for an Investigation Into the Administration

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      The senators voted for a resolution that accused the administration of breaching the due-process rights of students and professors.Columbia University’s senate voted on Friday to approve a resolution that called for an investigation into the school’s leadership, accusing the administration of violating established protocols, undermining academic freedom, jeopardizing free inquiry and breaching the due process rights of both students and professors.The university’s president, Nemat Shafik, has been under attack for her decision last week to summon the New York Police Department to campus, resulting in the arrest of more than 100 student protesters, and for her earlier congressional testimony, in which professors accused her of capitulating to the demands of congressional Republicans over free speech and the disciplining of students and professors.The resolution, adopted by a vote of 62-14, with three abstentions, fell short of a proposal earlier in the week to censure Dr. Shafik, which many senators worried could be perceived as yielding to Republican lawmakers who had called for her resignation over her handling of antisemitism claims.The senate resolution was based partly on a damaging report by the senate executive committee, which accused Dr. Shafik’s administration of engaging in “many actions and decisions that have harmed” the institution — including the hiring of an “aggressive” private investigation firm.The report, which was discussed in Friday’s meeting, said that investigators harassed students and used “intrusive investigation methods,” which included “investigators’ attempt to enter student rooms and dormitories without students’ consent.”Investigators, the report said, demanded “to see students’ phones and text messages with threats of suspension for noncompliance.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Compares Campus Protests to Violent White Supremacist Rally in Charlottesville

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      Former President Donald J. Trump on Wednesday played down the violence at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 while portraying a recent wave of vocal but predominantly peaceful pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses as “riots.”One woman was killed and nearly 40 people were injured when an avowed neo-Nazi plowed his car through a crowd of counterprotesters during violent clashes in Charlottesville. Earlier, hundreds of white supremacists had marched through the city, carrying torches and chanting, “Jews will not replace us.”The current campus protests, while resulting in dozens of arrests, have had no reports of significant violence.In a post on his social media site, peppered with random capitalization, Mr. Trump said: “Joe Biden would say, constantly, that he ran because of Charlottesville,” he wrote of the 2020 election. “Well, if that’s the case, he’s done a really terrible job because Charlottesville is like a ‘peanut’ compared to the riots and anti-Israel protests that are happening all over our Country, RIGHT NOW.”Mr. Trump also repeated an attack on President Biden, saying that he “HATES Israel and Hates the Jewish people,” while adding “the problem is that he HATES the Palestinians even more, and he just doesn’t know what to do!?!?”Representatives for the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Biden campaign also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More