Columbia University cancels main commencement ceremony after protests

NEW YORK: Columbia University on Monday canceled its main, university-wide commencement ceremony scheduled for May 15 in favor of smaller, school-based events, a decision that follows weeks of pro-Palestinian protests that roiled the Ivy League School.

"We have decided to make the centerpiece of our commencement activities our Class Days and school-level ceremonies, where students are honored individually alongside their peers, rather than the university-wide ceremony that is scheduled for May 15," Columbia said in a statement, calling the past few weeks "incredibly difficult for our community."

The protests at Columbia, which drew national attention, have inspired similar demonstrations at dozens of universities around the U.S. Students have called for a ceasefire in Gaza and have demanded their schools divest from companies with ties to Israel.

Some universities, including Columbia, called in riot police wielding batons and flash-bang grenades to disperse and arrest hundreds of protesters, citing a paramount need for campus safety. Civil rights groups have decried such tactics as unnecessarily violent infringements on free speech.

More than 34,600 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's military operations in Gaza, according to health officials in the Hamas-ruled Palestinian enclave. The war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people and abducting 252 others, of whom 133 are believed to remain in captivity in Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.

The turmoil on campuses has prompted several colleges and universities across the United States to relocate, modify, or cancel commencement ceremonies altogether.

In April, the University of Southern California also called off its main-stage ceremony, one week after canceling the valedictorian speech by a Muslim student who said she was silenced by anti-Palestinian hatred.

Columbia said on Monday it had consulted with student leaders in deciding how to handle graduation. The majority of the ceremonies, which had been set to take place on its upper Manhattan campus, where most of the protests have taken place, will take place at the main athletic complex about five miles (8 km) away.

The demonstrations have emerged as a political flashpoint during a contentious U.S. election year as Democratic President Joe Biden and Republican former U.S President Donald Trump face off in rematch for the White House.

Republican U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson -- who condemned Columbia's administrators, accusing them of being too lenient on demonstrators during a campus visit in April -- blasted them again on Monday, saying the decision to cancel commencement denied thousands of graduates the recognition they deserved.

Johnson also called on the school's board of trustees to remove university President Nemat Minouche Shafik, adding that the cancellation showed she would rather "cede control to Hamas supporters than restore order."

New York City police cleared a Columbia building last week that had been barricaded by pro-Palestinian protesters, arresting more than 100 people in and around the campus and dismantling an encampment.

At the University of California, Los Angeles, where pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian protesters clashed last week and where police arrested more than 200 people while clearing a pro-Palestinian encampment on Thursday, Chancellor Gene Block on Sunday announced a new Office of Campus Safety.

A former Sacramento, California, police chief, Rick Braziel, will lead the office and report directly to Block.