Inside the Columbia University Protests that Led to 100 Arrests

In a matter of days, Columbia University’s campus has become a flashpoint for national political unrest—the site of impassioned youth protests over Israel’s war in Gaza and U.S. support for it, which has in turn fueled vociferous backlash, a flurry of national media coverage, and more than a hundred arrests. And since it all began, with a handful on student protesters pitching tents on the lawn at 4 a.m. on Wednesday morning, the university radio station, WKCR, has kept their news coverage of the situation going all day and night.

“We’ve been covering in shifts,” Ted Schmiedeler, an undergraduate member of the station’s executive board, told me on Saturday morning as we toured the small studio at Broadway and West 114th Street. It was a rare quiet moment during a week of nonstop action; out front, a dozen NYPD officers were setting up new metal barricades in anticipation of a surge of demonstrators.

In the studio, one student journalist was playing a field recording from that morning. Two others monitored the broadcast. Nearby, a folding table was strewn with snacks, and a futon and couch were piled high with pillows and blankets. “I just got done with a 3 a.m. to 10 a.m. shift reporting from the lawn,” said Georgia Dillane, another undergraduate member of the station’s executive board. She pointed toward the couch. “And that was where I napped.”

Normally, WKCR is a pretty heavy on music programming—jazz is one of the station’s calling cards—but since Wednesday, just 19 student volunteers, field reporters, and studio producers have been racing around to broadcast 24/7 coverage of the demonstrations, mass arrests, crackdowns from the president’s office, and divisions heightening between professors, students, and other faculty over the students’ rights to protest and the chaos that has unfolded. Oh, and the mayor of New York City and the White House weighing in.

The tents that popped up on the east lawn on Wednesday were timed to coincide with university President Nemat Shafik’s appearance before Congress last week; the students’ stated demands were that the university divest from its financial holdings in firms that profit from Israel’s war and occupation in Palestine.

But really, the anger on campus had been building for months. Just days after the deadly Hamas terrorist attack on Oct. 7, dozens of students at Columbia were doxed after they signed an open letter that stated that the “weight of responsibility for the war and casualties undeniably lies with the Israeli extremist government and other Western governments.” In November, the university, facing sustained pressure from right-wing donor groups and conservative politicians, suspended the charters of student groups Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine after the groups held unsanctioned demonstrations calling for a cease-fire in Gaza. Complaints of antisemitism and Islamophobia have been on the rise at colleges across the country. Barnard College, which is affiliated with Columbia, banned doorway decorations to keep political speech out of the dorms; both schools have tried to restrict protest to designated areas on campus.