Gaza Solidarity Encampment (Columbia University)

The Gaza Solidarity Encampment (April 17–30, 2024) was a protest encampment at Columbia University in New York City held in solidarity with the Palestinians of Gaza amid the Gaza genocide, demanding that the university call for an end to the war and genocide and divest from Israel. Six months into the Gaza war and after months of student protest and repression from the university's administration and trustees, the occupation of the lawns in front of Butler Library was a tactical escalation at the university. The encampment was associated with Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), a coalition of over 100 student groups that formed after the administration irregularly suspended the Columbia chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace in the fall of 2023. The Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia was prominent among the Gaza war protests on university campuses and in the US, and it led to the proliferation of Palestine solidarity encampments at over 180 universities around the world.

The Gaza Solidarity Encampment was established with approximately 50 tents on the East Butler Lawn in the early morning of 17 April 2024, the day the university president Minouche Shafik and co-chairs of the university's board of trustees David Greenwald and Claire Shipman were due to testify before the US House Committee on Education and Workforce. When Shafik summoned the New York Police Department's Strategic Response Group to mass arrest the student protestors and dismantle the encampment on April 18, students from the large crowd that had gathered around the lawn autonomously occupied the adjacent West Butler Lawn, establishing another encampment there the next day. On April 19, the administration entered into negotiations with protestors, which it ceased on April 29, with Shafik announcing "the University will not divest from Israel." In the early hours of April 30, an offshoot of protesters occupied Hamilton Hall, renaming it Hind's Hall in honor of Hind Rajab. After less than 24 hours, the NYPD were summoned a second time. Hundreds of NYPD officers broke into and cleared the hall, arrested more than 100 protesters, and fully dismantled the camp.

The first round of mass arrests on April 18 marked the first time Columbia allowed police to suppress campus protests since the 1968 demonstrations against the Vietnam War. In 2025, during the second Trump administration, Palestinian student organizers Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi were taken and imprisoned by federal agents without having been charged of any crimes. In 2025, the second Trump administration, citing what it described as rampant antisemitism at Columbia, withdrew $400 million in federal funds to the university and issued the university a list of demands. In its settlement with the Trump administration, Columbia's trustees formally accepted these demands and agreed to pay the Trump administration $200 million and establish a claims fund worth $21 million for Jewish employees reporting that they experienced antisemitism at the university.