Columbia Cancels Main Commencement After Anti-Israel Protests Roil Campus, Lead to Arrests

Columbia University is canceling its main commencement ceremony following weeks of disruptive and violent protests on campus over the war in Gaza, making it the second large university to do so. This could pave the way for even more colleges to scrap their traditional graduation festivities this year. Columbia, situated in Manhattan’s Morningside Heights neighborhood, will instead host smaller ceremonies for each of its schools. The ceremonies are being relocated to new venues, including the school’s athletic complex roughly 100 blocks north and away from the Morningside campus’s iconic south lawn, which had been the site of a pro-Palestinian tent encampment for two weeks until the police disbanded it last week. “We have decided to make the centerpiece of our Commencement activities our Class Days and school-level ceremonies, where students are honored individually alongside their peers, rather than the University-wide ceremony that is scheduled for May 15,” the university said in a statement on Monday. The full commencement events will run between May 10 and May 16. Tickets are required to attend the ceremonies, though that might not necessarily stop people without tickets from trying to disrupt the celebrations. Outside agitators accounted for nearly a third of the 112 protesters who were arrested by the New York Police Department for breaking into Hamilton Hall last week.Before calling in the police on April 30, Columbia’s president, Nemat Shafik, made clear her desire to host graduation on campus. While pleading with the students to disperse from the encampment on the campus’s central lawn, she asserted, “We also do not want to deprive thousands of students and their families and friends of a graduation celebration.”For many members of the class of 2024, this marks the second graduation blow after their high school graduation ceremonies in 2020 were derailed by the Covid pandemic. As Ms. Shafik reminded students in her statement last week, “many in this graduating class did not get a celebration when graduating from high school because of the pandemic, and many of them are the first in their families to earn a University degree.”Last week, the University of Southern California, a prestigious private university at Los Angeles, also announced plans to cancel its main commencement, citing “safety measures” as student protests intensified over the war in Gaza. Tensions rose on campus after the university chose to ban its valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, from speaking at the commencement. Pro-Israeli groups charged that Ms. Tabassum had liked and shared anti-Israel posts on her Instagram page.In place of a traditional ceremony, USC will now host a “Trojan Family” graduation event on Thursday at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, featuring a drone show, fireworks, and surprise performances. New security measures have also been put in place.

Columbia Cancels Main Commencement After Anti-Israel Protests Roil Campus, Lead to Arrests

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