Talks between protesting students and Columbia University remain in a stalemate, demonstrators said Friday, as a pro-Palestinian encampment seemed destined to stretch into its second weekend.
With time ticking away toward final exams and commencement ceremonies, both sides appear to be entrenched and unwilling to bend, student negotiators said.
The students want Columbia to withdraw any investments in companies they deem as profiting from Israeli foreign policy on Gaza and the West Bank. The students said the school has only offered loosely worded promises to look into where funding is staked.
“There’s no deadline … no timeline for this negotiation,” grad student and negotiator Mahmoud Khalil told reporters on campus. “We are at this stage, we are kind of at an impasse. The university is not acknowledging the movement and the extent of the movement.”
The students said they have no assurances Columbia won’t bring in outside law enforcement, such as the NYPD or National Guard, to clear the encampment.
“We’re not sure if they’re thinking of bringing law enforcement anytime soon,” Khalil said. “Once again, we don’t trust this institution. We don’t trust what they say and we are operating on that premise.”
A Columbia representative could not be immediately reached for comment on Friday afternoon.
Pro-Palestinian students have been camped out on the New York City campus’ West Lawn for more than a week, demanding the university withdraw from any investments tied to Israel.
The students had initially been told they had to leave late Tuesday night, but extensions have been granted as talks continued with no police action yet this week.
With final exams coming up May 3-10 and commencement ceremonies just a few days later, the university is coming under increasing pressure to bring the campus back to normal.
“Our negotiation team has been working around the clock to keep an open line of dialogue with Columbia,” doctoral student Jonathan Ben-Menachem said. “The university had previously threatened us with the National Guard and NYPD.”
The Columbia protest has sparked students at other major universities from New York to Los Angeles to take similar action in opposition to the Israel-Hamas war.
The University of Southern California has already cancelled a star-studded commencement ceremony that was going to include a keynote address by alumnus and “Crazy Rich Asians” director Jon M. Chu, and the presentation of honorary degrees to pioneering tennis icon Billie Jean King.
USC students started protesting after Muslim student Asna Tabassum’s valedictorian speech was canceled because of unspecified security threats.
Israeli forces been attacking Gaza since Hamas crossed into the Jewish state on Oct. 7 and killed about 1,200 people, officials have said.
The ongoing Israeli response in Gaza has resulted in more than 30,000 deaths, Palestinian officials have said.