AJ+ | The Night Columbia Turned On Pro-Palestinian Students @ajplus | Uploaded May 2024 | Updated October 2024, 1 day ago.
“It sounded like we're being shot at.”

AJ+ spoke to anti-war students who were inside Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall when police raided it.

Just two weeks before, Columbia students sparked a global student uprising against Israel’s genocide in Gaza when they set up a protest encampment on a campus lawn.

But when the university unequivocally refused to meet their central demand – for the school to cut financial ties with Israel – students took a page from history and occupied a campus building. In 1968, Columbia students who were protesting the U.S. war in Vietnam did the same thing.

In both instances, police were sent in to crush the occupations. But the anti-war movements lived on and the attempts to suppress student voices failed.

AJ+ reporters Angie Nassar and Asiya Ahmed take you inside Columbia as the school turned on its students.

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