A student protester leans out a window of Hamilton Hall on the campus of Columbia University on April 30, 2024 in New York City. Photo by Mary Altaffer-Pool/Getty Images

I had been a college freshman at Columbia University for only six weeks when Oct. 7 — the largest massacre of the Jewish people since the Holocaust — took place. Typically, there is mourning after a massacre and a general feeling of grief and sorrow for those affected. Instead, at Columbia, there were chants in support of Hamas and the belief that Israel “got what they deserved” from the student body.

Fast forward almost seven months after the Hamas terror attack, and I watched my classmates begin erecting tents on Butler Lawn. Early this morning, a group of protesters violently took over Hamilton Hall, breaking windows and briefly holding facility staff hostage.

Protests have a history of bringing the student body together at Columbia. That is not what is happening today.

I’m studying computer science and Jewish history at Columbia and the Jewish Theological Seminary. I was attracted to Columbia for its highly touted Core Curriculum, prestigious academics and great campus and Jewish life. I was excited to have what I imagined to be the normal college experience: hanging out with friends far too late, getting good grades and meeting new people with very different backgrounds to learn more about the world and myself. I pictured my life as a normal student, carefree in vibrant New York City, where countless cultural and academic experiences are at my disposal. But my college experience has been anything but normal.

Right now my campus is, to put it bluntly, a giant mess. Campus access has been restricted to students living in the seven residential halls on Morningside campus and the essential workers. I am a paying student just like everyone else at the university and I am currently restricted from my own campus, kosher dining halls and any peace of mind. These rioters are calling themselves a part of the “student intifada” and have been physically moving Jewish students, or anyone who believes in Israel’s right to exist, away from Hamilton Hall. Not only do my friends and I feel unsafe walking near campus, but this is all happening the week before I am taking final exams for this semester. How can I be expected to focus on classes when people are calling, whether they know it or not, for me to be killed for being me?

Unlike the historic protests at Columbia in 1968, where university policies were targeted and not fellow students, Jewish students are now being threatened for just being Jewish. These protests are no longer a moment of unity for the Columbia student body.

My classmates are trying to emulate the 1968 protests at Columbia and failing; in doing so, they create a toxic environment on campus that negatively affects the Jewish community. In 1968, as the Vietnam War ramped up, students started calling for Columbia to stop working with a company that had contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense. Students also protested Columbia’s plans to construct a gym that students called “Gym Crow,” out of concerns that it would have racially segregated entrances and would expropriate land from Harlem.  After mass arrests of students, Columbia ultimately agreed to the protesters’ demands, cutting ties with the Defense Department and halting the construction of the gym. The protests are now looked back upon as a defining moment in Columbia University’s history.

Today, the members of Columbia’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter are terrorizing the Jewish students on campus as they try to force the administration’s hand like in 1968. SJP claims that they are protesting the “genocide in Gaza” and that the school “divest from ‘Israel.’” Their favored chants include: “There is only one solution, intifada revolution,” which calls for the murder of Jews and their removal from the land of Israel. Upon taking over Hamilton Hall early this morning, students screamed “Intifada, intifada” over and over.

I don’t believe that all of the protesters are antisemitic and trying to terrorize Jews. But when one of the encampment student leaders said in January that he wanted to “kill Zionists” and that “Zionists have no right to live,” he was allowed to remain on campus until video of his comments were discovered by outside organizations. This doesn’t give me or my Jewish friends a lot of faith in our safety. When a majority of Jewish students are Zionists, these are just calls for attacks on Jewish students.

In addition to harassing Jewish students, many of my non-Jewish friends are sick of the campus gates always being closed, hearing annoying banging and chanting on their way to class, and being told that because they do not support the protests, they are therefore complicit in the mass death in Gaza. There is a sense of fatigue, particularly approaching finals, at dealing with yet another escalation, another action that brings news helicopters, journalists, and outside attention to campus. Instead of being able to access Butler Library to study, we are either trapped in our dorms, too afraid to leave, or barred from campus entirely. Here we go again.

These protesters are destroying any semblance of campus unity by occupying the lawns and Hamilton Hall. In 1968, the student body was unified and believed in what they were protesting for. Today, the protests actively divide students and pit them against one another. I have laughed about how truly idiotic the “liberated zone” form of protest is with both Jewish and non-Jewish students alike. I would love to have a conversation with someone protesting to hear their perspective, but as an openly Zionist, kippah-wearing Jew, I have not found my classmates open to dialogue. If the “liberated zone” was truly a free place, then all students would be welcome there.

This toxicity and lack of constructive dialogue are separating Jewish students and those in SJP, especially with SJP’s anti-normalization policy. It does not help when there are outside protestors who are screaming “We are Hamas!” and “Oct. 7 will be every day!” outside Columbia’s gates. Even if the student protestors are mostly peaceful, this type of violent rhetoric from purported fellow supporters of their cause can send the message to Jewish students like me that we are not safe on this campus.

It tells us that we need to go to class with these students who endorse the actions of Hamas as a valid form of resistance. It tells us that we must work in group projects and clubs with people who support “any means necessary” of Palestinian liberation, including destroying the Jewish state and murdering Israelis.

I do not know if I will ever get that sense of normalcy back that I was only able to experience for six weeks. Instead of expressing admiration for the Columbia students who are protesting, I wish that people would think about what these protests do to the Jewish population on campus. There are now deep tears in the fabric of the student body’s heart at 116th and Broadway. I do not know if they can be repaired.

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