City Demands Columbia ‘Immediately’ Reopen Gates Closed Amid Pro-Palestine Protests as October 7 Anniversary Approaches

The mayor who grew up on Columbia University’s campus is threatening legal action if the university doesn’t re-open its campus to the public “immediately,” just days ahead of the third anniversary of the October 7 attacks. Mayor Zohran Mamdani has reversed the city’s position under his predecessor and former police captain, Mayor Eric Adams, who supported Columbia’s decision to close its gates over security concerns in April 2024, amid months of upheaval as a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” took hold on the school’s quad. Mr. Adams backed the school against a gaggle of elderly and mobility-limited neighborhood residents who say closing College Walk, the pedestrian walkway that connects Broadway to Amsterdam Avenue at 116th Street, has burdened them by forcing them to walk eight blocks farther to get around the campus. On Wednesday, Mr. Mamdani’s administration moved to settle the neighbors’ suit against the school, promising to sue Columbia anew “if College Walk is not immediately opened to the public.” When asked at a press conference Thursday whether the city would give Columbia any leeway in the timing of the reopening, given the potential for protests around the approaching anniversary, the mayor offered none. Instead, he referenced his upbringing nearby on Riverside Drive and his father, anthropologist Mahmood Mamdani, who sits on the university’s faculty.By locking its gates, the university was “taking a very different path” than the “protection for academic and public freedom” that it is supposed to represent, and “quite literally you are forcing so many members of the community to take very different paths to get around their day-to-day life.”“As to the definition of ‘immediate,’ I would say it speaks for itself,” the mayor said. The city’s new legal argument hinges on a 1953 agreement where the city sold Columbia the stretch of 116th street running through its campus for $1, with the understanding it would remain accessible to city agencies such as the fire department. Representatives for Columbia did not immediately respond to queries from The New York Sun. The university’s website says it is “evaluating requests from neighbors who live in the area surrounding the Morningside Heights campus” for access. The university first closed itself to the public amid competing pro-Israel and “Free Palestine” demonstrations in the days after the Hamas-led terror attacks that left more killed more than 1,200 people and saw 251 people taken hostage. The gates were permanently locked to anyone without a Columbia University ID the following April, as activists erected a two-week long encampment and occupied an academic building. Police arrested 109 people in clearing the campus. Anitsemitic incidents on American college campuses spiked in the immediate aftermath of October 7, jumping from 259 the year before the attacks to 1,853 in the 2023-24 school year, according to data collected by Jewish student life organization Hillel International. Harassment and discrimination against Jewish students have remained high, with 1,889 incidents reported last year.

City Demands Columbia ‘Immediately’ Reopen Gates Closed Amid Pro-Palestine Protests as October 7 Anniversary Approaches

City Demands Columbia ‘Immediately’ Reopen Gates Closed Amid Pro-Palestine Protests as October 7 Anniversary Approaches

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