Columbia University students staged a sit-in at Hamilton Hall.
Hundreds of students at Columbia University in the US staged a sit-in at a camp they had set up in the main square on the university campus since the start of protests against President Joe Biden’s administration’s support for the Israeli war. Gaza, but they moved on to a sit-in in the Hamilton Hall building, prompting calls to police to break up the sit-in, not just from university president Nemat Shafiq. in the building, but drew responses from the highest levels of America’s political hierarchy, including Chuck Schumer, the most prominent Jewish leader in Congress, who called the “takeover of a university not free speech. It’s messed up” and that students should be given “severe punishments.” In honor of Rajab, the students renamed the building “Hind Building”.
The historical, symbolic and principled reasons behind students sitting in the above building are difficult for the leadership of a neoliberal university and politicians driven by interest, ideology and lobbies to understand… This building is of historical importance. This action came as a continuation of Indivisible, against the wars of Columbia University students, for the defense of human justice, and for the victory of their suffering suppressed by the authorities in this particular building. Student struggles throughout history. In 1968, historic student demonstrations against the war in Vietnam began especially from this building in Hamilton Hall, where they faced a fierce response from the police, who entered through an underground tunnel and assaulted the students. Dragging them through the corridors were about 700 students from the campaign. A student sit-in in this building was repeated in 1972 without any arrests being recorded.
The historical, symbolic and policy reasons behind the students’ sit-in in the Hamilton Hall building are difficult for the leadership of a neoliberal university and for politicians driven by interest, ideology and lobbying to understand.
In 1985, Columbia students staged a sit-in in Hamilton Hall, and this time they focused their demands on Columbia University’s withdrawal from the apartheid regime in South Africa. Not only that, but in 1992, students besieged the Hamilton Hall building to protest against authorities moving the theater home to Black President Malcolm. For the fourth time, in 1996, students besieged the building for four days and declared a hunger strike, demanding that the university establish a specialized department for “Ethnic Studies”.
Returning to the events of 1968, a course at Columbia University on “Social Movements” and the importance of student movement during that period is taught today in the Hamilton Hall building. This course discusses what happened in this building and celebrates its role in ending the Vietnam War, while students were taken back during the event. While the names of those who led protests against the war in Vietnam are immortalized and their bravery and defiance to the American repressive authorities of the time are attributed, no one mentions the university administration and its board of trustees. By disqualifying students, when they mention it, they cause shame and humiliation because of what they have done against the students.
In the eyes of Columbia students, it was necessary to blockade the Hamilton Hall building so that history could not be pieced together.
The same applies to today’s events, in which the president of the university ordered the New York police to arrest students and make them live in the university, i.e. turn it into security camps until May 18, when the semester ends. Students should be prevented from returning to the sit-in. The Genocide in Gaza will stop, and the removal of apartheid in South Africa will end with the immortals, US administration funding and politicians complicit in rejecting the genocide in Gaza. Columbia University’s administration and board of trustees are hoping to retain their positions. Go to the dustbins of history, which will remind them of shame and disgrace, as they did with their predecessors from previous administrations who behaved in the same way. Students have won sit-ins at Hamilton Hall every time, and this time will be no exception.
With this in mind, in the eyes of Columbia students, it is necessary to attack the building to tie history together, indivisible, and to affirm the unity of students throughout the history of Columbia University. , confirming their connection with the same principle of opposition to injustice, persecution and illegal wars. After all, Columbia students had to stage a sit-in in the Hamilton Hall building, paying tribute to the suffering of their colleagues who were repressed by order of the police and university administration in 1968. Rather than standing up against the genocide in Gaza, students commemorated the 55th anniversary to harass Colombian students who stood up against the Vietnam War.
For the president of a university with an authoritarian ideology, which doctorates have not succeeded in changing, it is difficult for students to understand these meanings related to loyalty to the struggles of their predecessors, among their colleagues, “No. “The Vietnam War” and “no apartheid in South Africa” and paid a high price for victories for human justice, where his thoughts never went beyond defending his job. The ultra-Zionist right in Congress saw his testimony in Congress, as the New York Times described it, “to save his own skin and sacrifice academic freedom. until done”, trembling in his testimony before them.
