COLUMBIA HAS FALLEN: University backtracks its own deadline, agrees to 'continue conversations' with pro-terrorist camp for 48 more hours
According to the university spokesperson, organizers for the encampment have agreed to remove a large number of tents from the area.
Columbia University and organizers for the anti-Israel encampment have agreed to continue talks over the next two days before administrators consider other steps to remove the area of tents and signs.
Columbia University President Minouche Shafik wrote in a Tuesday night statement that administrators have been “in dialogue” with the encampment organizers in attempting to reach an agreement to take down the tents and ultimately leave the occupied area.
Shafik initially wrote that the encampment organizers faced a midnight deadline to reach an agreement with administrators and university representatives, but a protester inside the encampment told the Columbia Spectator that the deadline for negotiations were extended until 8 a.m.
After more discussions and a series of agreements from encampment organizers, negotiations will continue for the next 48 hours, according to a 3 a.m. statement from the university.
In one picture taken by Campus Reform on early Wednesday morning, Columbia students could be seen overlooking protests going on just outside campus.
According to the university spokesperson, organizers for the encampment have agreed to remove a large number of tents from the area.
Protesters also agreed to allow only Columbia students to be inside the encampment and force nonaffiliates to leave.
The university spokesperson also said that encampment protesters have “taken steps to make the encampment welcome to all and have prohibited discriminatory or harassing language.”
Student protesters also allowed the New York Fire Department to conduct a walk-through of the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” earlier in the week.
Before the university announced talks would continue for the next two days, Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine and Columbia University Apartheid Divest, which organized the encampment, wrote on X that it left discussions with administrators “until there is a written commitment that the administration will not be unleashing the NYPD or the National Guard on its students.”
