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      Using Police to Clear Protesters, Universities Struggle to Calm Campuses

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      Students were arrested at N.Y.U. and Yale on Monday. But at Columbia, that approach led to a new encampment and demonstrations outside its gates.Police arrest protesters outside of New York University on Monday night. Adam Gray for The New York TimesAt New York University, the police swept in to arrest protesting students on Monday night, ending a standoff with the school’s administration.At Yale, the police placed protesters’ wrists into zip ties on Monday morning and escorted them onto campus shuttles to receive summonses for trespassing.Columbia kept its classroom doors closed on Monday, moving lectures online and urging students to stay home.Harvard Yard was shut to the public. Nearby, at campuses like Tufts and Emerson, administrators weighed how to handle encampments that looked much like the one that the police dismantled at Columbia last week — which protesters quickly resurrected. And on the West Coast, a new encampment bubbled at the University of California, Berkeley.Less than a week after the arrests of more than 100 protesters at Columbia, administrators at some of the country’s most influential universities were struggling, and largely failing, to calm campuses torn by the conflict in Gaza and Israel.Despite arrests at Columbia last week, protests continued on campus on Monday.C.S. Muncy for The New York TimesWe 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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      Dozens of Yale Students Arrested During Campus Protests

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      At least 47 people were arrested at Yale University on Monday during pro-Palestinian protests, as student-led demonstrations that roiled Columbia University and other campuses last week spread to the center of the school’s community in New Haven, Conn.Demonstrators set up an encampment at the campus’s Beinecke Plaza on Friday night. The group said in a statement on social media that it was calling on the university to disclose its investments in military weapons manufacturers and to divest from those companies.The first of the Yale students arrested today has been released and just gave a speech to the crowd, met with some of the loudest cheering I’ve heard in the last three days.47 students were arrested, according to organizers.“For our friends, we shall not be moved,” they sing. pic.twitter.com/25yAjMLgVo— Thomas Birmingham (@thomasbirm) April 22, 2024

      In a statement on Monday morning, Yale said it had repeatedly asked protesters to leave and warned that they could be arrested or face university discipline. The university also said it had offered the protesters audiences with leading trustees but had decided by late Sunday that negotiations were at an impasse.According to the university, the police issued 47 summonses on Monday and said arrested students could be disciplined by Yale itself, which could impose suspensions.“The university made the decision to arrest those individuals who would not leave the plaza with the safety and security of the entire Yale community in mind and to allow access to university facilities by all members of our community,” a university spokesperson said in a statement.The police action at Yale came four days after more than 100 students were arrested at Columbia University in New York at an encampment set up by pro-Palestinian demonstrators on the campus.This is a developing story. More

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      What We Know About the Protests at Columbia University

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      Demonstrations outside the school gates have added to the upheaval, with protesters who appear unconnected to the university targeting Jewish students.Columbia University is grappling with the fallout from its president’s promise to Congress that she would crack down on unsanctioned protests, and her decision to ask the police to clear an encampment on campus.Demonstrations just outside Columbia’s gates, which are currently closed to the public, took an especially dark tone over the weekend, when protesters who did not appear to be connected to the university were accused of celebrating Hamas and targeting Jewish students.“The decibel of our disagreements has only increased in recent days,” Nemat Shafik, Columbia’s president, said in a statement early Monday. “These tensions have been exploited and amplified by individuals who are not affiliated with Columbia who have come to campus to pursue their own agendas. We need a reset.”All classes on Monday would be held virtually, Dr. Shafik said, and university officials urged students to stay away from the campus in Upper Manhattan if they did not live on it.How Columbia got hereSince the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel, American college campuses have been hubs of protest and debate. The scene at Columbia has been particularly contentious, with protests drawing hundreds of demonstrators, and some faculty members drawing attention for statements that critics considered to be antisemitic.Columbia administrators, like their counterparts on campuses across the country, have struggled to fine-tune a response that balances discipline, free speech and institutional and national politics. For example, Columbia suspended two pro-Palestinian student groups after a walkout, and it has rewritten its protest policies, suspended some students and moved to cut or reduce ties to some faculty members.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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      As Protests Continue at Columbia, Some Jewish Students Feel Targeted

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      After reports of harassment by demonstrators, some Jewish students said they felt unsafe. Others rejected that view, while condemning antisemitism.Days after Columbia University’s president testified before Congress, the atmosphere on campus remained fraught on Sunday, shaken by pro-Palestinian protests that have drawn the attention of the police and the concern of some Jewish students.Over the weekend, the student-led demonstrations on campus also attracted separate, more agitated protests by demonstrators who seemed to be unaffiliated with the university just outside Columbia’s gated campus in Upper Manhattan, which was closed to the public because of the protests.Some of those protests took a dark turn on Saturday evening, leading to the harassment of some Jewish students who were targeted with antisemitic vitriol. The verbal attacks left some of the 5,000 Jewish students at Columbia fearful for their safety on the campus and its vicinity, and even drew condemnation from the White House and Mayor Eric Adams of New York City.“While every American has the right to peaceful protest, calls for violence and physical intimidation targeting Jewish students and the Jewish community are blatantly antisemitic, unconscionable and dangerous,” Andrew Bates, a spokesman for the White House, said in a statement.But Jewish students who are supporting the pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campus said they felt solidarity, not a sense of danger, even as they denounced the acts of antisemitism.Grant Miner, a Jewish graduate student at Columbia University, says he doesn’t feel unsafe on campus.Bing Guan for The New York TimesWe 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 Students Who Were Arrested Face Uncertain Consequences

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      Students who camped in tents to protest the war in Gaza, including the daughter of Representative Ilhan Omar, may be barred from finishing the semester.Many of the more than 100 Columbia University and Barnard College students who were arrested after refusing to leave a pro-Palestinian encampment on campus on Thursday woke up to a chilly new reality this week: Columbia said that their IDs would soon stop working, and some of them would not be able to finish the semester.The students who were arrested were released with summonses. The university said all of the 100 or so students involved in the protest had been informed that they were suspended.For some of those students, that means they must vacate their student housing, with just weeks before the semester ends.Yet whatever the consequences, several of the students said in interviews that they were determined to keep protesting Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza.They said that after being loaded onto buses with their hands tied, they had sung all the way to police headquarters. Many expressed a renewed belief in their cause, and were glad that the eyes of the nation were on Columbia and Barnard, its sister college.The protests, the arrests and the subsequent disciplinary action came a day after the congressional testimony this week of Columbia’s president, Nemat Shafik, at a hearing about antisemitism on campus. Columbia has said there have been a number of antisemitic episodes, including one attack, and many Jewish students have seen the protests as antisemitic.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 University President Faces Difficult Road Ahead as Students Protest on Campus

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      For Columbia’s president, Nemat Shafik, a hearing on antisemitism went relatively well. But on campus, intense protests suggest a difficult road ahead for the university.Representative Elise Stefanik leaned into the microphone and volleyed a series of questions at the university president sitting in front of her. It was about three hours into a congressional hearing examining antisemitism at Columbia University, and the president, Nemat Shafik, paused, sighed and gave a nervous laugh.Ms. Stefanik had asked whether the university would remove a professor who praised the Oct. 7 Hamas attack from a role as chair of the university’s academic review committee.After a few seconds, Dr. Shafik responded. “I think that would be — I think, I would, yes. Let me come back with yes,” she said.Republican lawmakers on the House Committee on Education and the Work Force had come ready to pounce. They tested for weaknesses and prodded vulnerabilities, while their witnesses, a group of Columbia leaders, seemed conciliatory.And yet, by the end, it seemed Dr. Shafik and other campus leaders had successfully diffused Republican lines of attack, repeatedly and vigorously agreeing that antisemitism was a serious problem on their campus and vowing that they would do more to fight it.But as Dr. Shafik spoke, the tempest that she had been brought in to account for appeared to intensify. Back on campus in Manhattan, pro-Palestinian students erected an encampment with dozens of tents on a central campus lawn, vowing not to move until Columbia divested from companies with ties to Israel and met other demands. Hundreds of other students joined them to rally throughout the day.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.I. Has a Measurement Problem

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      There’s a problem with leading artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude: We don’t really know how smart they are.That’s because, unlike companies that make cars or drugs or baby formula, A.I. companies aren’t required to submit their products for testing before releasing them to the public. There’s no Good Housekeeping seal for A.I. chatbots, and few independent groups are putting these tools through their paces in a rigorous way.Instead, we’re left to rely on the claims of A.I. companies, which often use vague, fuzzy phrases like “improved capabilities” to describe how their models differ from one version to the next. And while there are some standard tests given to A.I. models to assess how good they are at, say, math or logical reasoning, many experts have doubts about how reliable those tests really are.This might sound like a petty gripe. But I’ve become convinced that a lack of good measurement and evaluation for A.I. systems is a major problem.For starters, without reliable information about A.I. products, how are people supposed to know what to do with them?I can’t count the number of times I’ve been asked in the past year, by a friend or a colleague, which A.I. tool they should use for a certain task. Does ChatGPT or Gemini write better Python code? Is DALL-E 3 or Midjourney better at generating realistic images of people?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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      Harvard Will Require Test Scores for Admissions

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      The university is the latest in a series of highly selective schools to end its test-optional policy.Harvard will reinstate standardized testing as a requirement of admission, the university announced Thursday, becoming the latest in a series of highly competitive universities to reverse their test-optional policies. Students applying to Harvard in fall 2025 will be required to submit SAT or ACT scores, though the university said a few other test scores will be accepted in “exceptional cases,” including Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate tests. In making the decision, the college said it had been persuaded by research that found that standardized testing was a valuable tool to identify promising students in disadvantaged environments and struggling schools, especially when paired with other credentials.“Standardized tests are a means for all students, regardless of their background and life experience, to provide information that is predictive of success in college and beyond,” Hopi Hoekstra, dean of the faculty of arts and sciences, said in a statement announcing the move.“When students have the option of not submitting their test scores, they may choose to withhold information that, when interpreted by the admissions committee in the context of the local norms of their school, could have potentially helped their application,” Ms. Hoekstra added. “In short, more information, especially such strongly predictive information, is valuable for identifying talent from across the socioeconomic range.”Harvard was one of about 2,000 colleges across the country that dropped test score requirements over the last few years, a trend that escalated during the pandemic when it was harder for students to get to test sites. Critics of standardized tests have long raised concerns that the tests helped fuel inequality because some wealthier students raised their scores through high-priced tutoring.But new research has challenged the conventional wisdom, finding that bright students from disadvantaged backgrounds had been overlooked by admissions offices because they had chosen not to submit test scores, even though they outperformed their peers.A growing number of schools have now reversed their policies, including Brown, Yale, Dartmouth, M.I.T., Georgetown and Purdue.This is a developing story. More