The organizers of the anti-Israel encampment at Columbia University are refusing to consider taking down the tents until the administration makes progress on some of its demands.
The organizers of the anti-Israel encampment at Columbia University are refusing to consider taking down the tents until the administration makes progress on some of its demands.
“We are not actually negotiating on the state of the encampment as of now,” Columbia University Apartheid Divest negotiator Mahmoud Khalil told The Post Friday afternoon.
The encampment was on its tenth day Friday, as the university’s leaders seemed to backtrack on its demand for the students to clear off the campus lawn by that morning following an extension from Wednesday at midnight.
Speaking to The Post on Friday, Khalil said the students were not given a new time limit for getting off the lawn.
“We asked them not to talk about the encampment. We are there to negotiate the demands, not the encampment, and we made it very clear,” Khalil, who is a graduate student, told The Post of the ongoing talks between student organizers and officials.
“The university understood that we cannot operate on the timelines. We cannot operate under time pressure,” he explained.
“We want to have negotiations when both parties can meaningfully engage in the conversation rather than a deadline at 12am while we are at a meeting at 8 pm.”
Columbia University Apartheid Divest has five core demands listed on its website, including asking the school to financially divest from “companies and institutions that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide and occupation.”
The list also insists that the university cut ties with Israeli universities and stop expanding into Harlem, Lenape ancestral lands and Palestine.
