On a hot day last week, the pavements outside Columbia University were heaving. About 200 protesters were gathered, making a noise that was bigger than their numbers, raising pro-Palestine chants and signs. It was a disparate crowd, diverse across ethnicities and generations. “I’ve lived in this neighbourhood all my life,” said one of them when I asked him why he was there. One smiling elderly lady walked through the crowd offering small bottles of water. A helicopter circled overhead. The police who encircled the crowd were jittery, yelling at passersby to keep moving, and raising the temperature of what was a loud but perfectly orderly and amiable crowd.

Once inside the campus, I made my way to the reason for protesters, the police and the high security at the university gates: an encampment of students on a patch of lawn at the heart of campus. It had been up for about two weeks at this point, after a series of demands to university administrators, including divestment from “companies and institutions that profit from Israeli apartheid”, were not met.

The media swarmed. Reporters from local and foreign news outlets spoke breathlessly into cameras; others livestreamed on their phones. Near the encampment, a cluster of reporters gathered around one Jewish student standing on a raised platform, waving a large Israeli flag as he repeated to the interviewers that the Jews on campus were not going to be intimidated and were “not going anywhere”. On the lawn right next to the one housing the encampment, there was a garden of small Israeli flags planted in neat rows.

The encampment itself was jarringly small and peaceful, almost festive: a handful of tents with a few students milling around, occasionally breaking into song or chanting, as students outside the short fence around the grass joined in. From one side of the encampment, a student urged others to stay hydrated. He stood in what looked like the........

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