After Tense Night, Columbia Says Student Protesters Agree to More Talks

Columbia University was emerging from a night of tense standoff early Wednesday, after school administrators and pro-Palestinian protesters had negotiated into the early morning over a large encampment that has engulfed a part of the campus.

A midnight deadline set by the university late on Tuesday for protesters to disband passed without signs of police moving onto the campus to quell the demonstrations that have upended the final weeks of the spring semester and challenged the school’s leadership.

Around 3 a.m., a statement from the university said student protesters had agreed to remove a significant number of the tents erected on the lawn, ensure non-students would leave, and bar discriminatory or harassing language among the protesters.

“In light of this constructive dialogue, the university will continue conversations for the next 48 hours,” the university said, delaying the prospect of police action to disperse the protests.

The university had previously said that if no agreement was reached by the deadline, the school would consider “alternative options” for clearing the lawn of the tent city. That raised the specter of the New York City police returning to Columbia’s campus. The arrests on Thursday of more than 100 activists touched off a firestorm of debate over the students’ free speech rights and the need to protect Jewish students who have felt threatened and harassed.

After months of demonstrations on campuses protesting the war in Gaza, the unrest has reached a fever pitch in the final weeks of classes at some of the country’s most storied academic institutions. On Monday, police were called in to make dozens of arrests at Yale and New York University. Encampments have also sprung up at Tufts, Emerson and the University of California, Berkeley.