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Columbia University’s move to use police force to clear demonstrators from a campus building last spring could potentially have been avoided, as some students were urgently asking if they could leave voluntarily, according to a report released Tuesday by the university’s senate.
The students, who early that morning had broken into Hamilton Hall and barricaded the doors, told faculty intermediaries that they had enlisted the help of a Harlem pastor to help them depart safely. But university administrators, saying time had run out, allowed hundreds of police officers to come onto the campus to remove protesters from the building.
The new details of the final hours of the occupation of Hamilton Hall on April 30 were among the key revelations of the 335-page report, which was written by a group within the senate, a Columbia policymaking body that includes faculty members, students and administrators, with faculty in the majority. The senate is independent from the administration and has been critical of its protest response.
Called the “The Sundial Report,” it provides a play-by-play chronology of the events surrounding the protests on campus related to the war in Gaza beginning in October 2023.
The demonstrations and Columbia’s response put the school at the center of a national debate over how to protect students from harassment by demonstrators while also protecting the free speech and rights of protesters.
The events of last spring resulted in significant disruption on the university’s Morningside Heights campus, and some critics of Columbia’s response said administrators waited too long to take action. The unrest culminated on April 30, when a smaller group of protesters — including some who were unaffiliated with Columbia — broke off from a tent encampment and took over Hamilton Hall.
The report released Tuesday represents the latest volley in the yearlong debate about the demonstrations and Columbia’s handling of them. While many faculty members and students stood by the right to protest peacefully, some groups felt the demonstrations were tinged with antisemitism and threatening to Jewish students.
The report argues that the university made significant missteps.
“The primary purpose of this report is to understand how instability was introduced into the daily life of the university and what can be done to set things right,” the report said.
It arrives as Columbia contends with the move by the Trump administration to cut about $400 million in federal research money over allegations that Columbia has not done enough to combat antisemitism, and as the university pledges to take additional steps to rein in protests. Amid the turmoil, the school is on its third president in less than a year.
A university spokeswoman said that officials had not seen the report before its release Tuesday evening and were reviewing it. Columbia leaders have repeatedly defended their decisions regarding the protests over the past year and a half, including their decision to ask the New York Police Department to remove demonstrators from campus on the night of the takeover. During the ensuing arrests, a police officer accidentally discharged his gun, though no one was hurt.
“Students and outside activists breaking Hamilton Hall doors, mistreating our public safety officers and maintenance staff, and damaging property are acts of destruction, not political speech,” Columbia’s former president, Nemat Shafik, said in a statement to the community on May 1.
The report did not disclose who among the 111-member senate participated in its creation, although the senate website states that the effort was led by Jeanine D’Armiento, a professor of medicine who is chair of the executive committee of the senate.
“There were concerns over the doxxing that had occurred, and it was voted on the executive committee that names not be given,” Dr. D’Armiento said in an interview. Additional faculty members outside the senate were consulted as well, she said.
Dr. D’Armiento herself emerges in the report’s chronology as a key intermediary during negotiations between demonstrators and administrators. “The report was written by people involved in the senate who were trying to bring the protests to a peaceful resolution,” said James Applegate, a Columbia astronomer and a member of the senate’s executive committee.
The report concluded that the university administration had repeatedly failed to address the concerns of pro-Palestinian demonstrators and, instead, treated them with suspicion.
It also said that police actions on Columbia’s campus last spring upended a proud tradition of student-led political protest in the half-century before. In 1968, Columbia protests spurred largely by opposition to the Vietnam War led to an aggressive police response. A panel known as the Cox Commission, led by Archibald Cox, a Harvard professor and later the Watergate special prosecutor, critiqued the school’s response, leading to the expansion of faculty power at the university.
“Not once in the five-and-a-half decades from 1968 to 2024 were pressures so great and the integrity of the university so weakened that the university administration called close to 600 heavily armed police officers onto campus to quell an unarmed student protest,” the report said.
The university senate said it had envisioned a collaborative investigation led by an independent external figure, similar to Mr. Cox. Despite an initial agreement to assist with the report, the university declined to participate.
The report said that the only senior leader who agreed to respond to their questions was Dr. Shafik, who resigned in August after confidence in her leadership was severely undermined.
The administration’s decision to call in police against the advice of the senate’s executive committee drew particular criticism in the report.
“The guardrails protecting these crucial university functions have been battered and in some cases breached,” the report said. “The result has been disorientation and alienation.”
It also accuses the school of hiring private investigators to monitor students and observe faculty, and of trying to interrogate students in their apartments without due process, fueling a “growing atmosphere of intimidation.”
Cas Holloway, Columbia’s chief operating officer, confirmed that the university had enlisted an outside security firm, the report said.
The report provides inside details about one of the most significant moments in the demonstrations, the occupation and clearing of Hamilton Hall. It suggests that the decision to call in the police to remove the demonstrators — which led to officers surrounding campus buildings and climbing through windows — could have been avoided.
That evening at about 7:20, before police arrived, representatives of the demonstrators contacted members of the senate to ask if students could leave the building without the police entering, the report said. Dr. D’Armiento called Dr. Shafik at 7:49 p.m. to relay that information.
“Call them at 8:15 p.m. and tell them they have a half an hour left,” Dr. Shafik responded, according to the report.
With police helicopters circling, Dr. D’Armiento again reached out to Dr. Shafik at 8:03, but got no response, the report said.
Students also said they were promised assistance by a Harlem pastor who was in contact with Mayor Eric Adams’s office and who “would help them come out of Hamilton” without the police, according to the report.
At 8:31 p.m., the report said, Dr. D’Armiento asked Dr. Shafik for 30 more minutes to work with the students. “I know many of the students want the deal and they are trying to get others on board,” she wrote in an email.
Dr. Shafik responded 35 minutes later: “The best is if they left on their own now. Please encourage them to do so for everyone’s sake.” Twenty minutes later, at 9:26 p.m., police officers entered the building and made dozens of arrests.
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