Students ridicule NYU 'wall of shame' as nationwide Palestine protests reach Harvard

Administrators at New York University (NYU) in Manhattan constructed a wall on Tuesday to block anti-war demonstrators from capturing key campus real estate, drawing ridicule from passersby and students as a wave of student protests against Israel's war on Gaza continues to grip campuses across the US.

Late on Wednesday morning local time, students at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, became the latest to launch an encampment in solidarity with Palestinians, calling for financial transparency and divestment from companies profiteering from the Israeli occupation of their land.

Student encampments for Palestine have now reached 30 universities over the past few days, with students from several others signalling their intention to join what is being seen as one of the largest mobilisations against war and the US military-industrial complex since the Vietnam War.

On Wednesday, students also began a protest at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

In a statement sent to Middle East Eye, a coalition of groups behind the action said that 80 students had joined the action, pitching tents and tarps on the main green at the university. 

"Brown joins a growing student movement across American university and college campuses calling for an end to institutional complicity in Israel’s ongoing genocidal campaign in Gaza and violent apartheid regime, in solidarity with the people of Gaza," the statement added.

Hundreds of students also took part in a walk-out at the University of Texas at Austin and embarked on a day-long occupation of the school's south lawn, where they planned to hold workshops and teach-ins for the rest of Wednesday.

According to reports, state troopers were called in and several students were arrested. 

"Our universities have chosen profit and reputation over the lives of the people of Palestine and our will as students. We must recognize the power and strength of the united students, staff, and faculty committed to realizing justice and upholding Palestinian liberation on campus," the university chapter of the Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) said in a statement.

"[W]e will take back our university and demand our administration to divest, for the people of Gaza!" the statement added.

Columbia University was a hive of activity on Wednesday after news broke of a breakdown in negotiations between students and administrators the night before.

Panic spread across the student community on Tuesday evening when rumours swirled of an imminent police raid on the established encampment on campus, after student organisers said they had been threatened by administrators to capitulate or face the National Guard. 

On Wednesday morning local time, it was announced that students had agreed to remove "a significant number of tents" and ensure that only Columbia students would remain at the encampment. 

At NYU, just over 12km south of Columbia University, students and faculty are still reeling from the actions of university administrators over the last 48 hours.

On Tuesday afternoon, a little more than 12 hours after NYU called in the NYPD to dismantle the encampment in Gould Plaza at NYU when more than 120 students and faculty were arrested, administrators constructed a wooden wall blocking entry to NYU’s Stern School of Business.

The wall, made out of plywood and guarded by about half a dozen police officers, immediately became the subject of ridicule by students and passersby, many of whom expressed shock at the new construction. 

Several passersby stopped, took photos, and mocked what they called a pathetic response from the university to quell free speech. Some also plastered small Palestine stickers onto the wall while "NYU Wall of Shame" could be seen faintly written across the wooden facade.

Several writers and commentators also unleashed a stream of ridicule across social media. "Techniques used in colonies always come home to the metropole, don’t they?" an academic asked rhetorically on X.

The construction of the wall, students said, exemplified the way the university had dealt with students and faculty who dared to raise the topic of Palestine or what they call the unfolding genocide in Gaza over the past six months. They narrated a culture of intimidation, fear and gaslighting that has also resulted in students being suspended and faculty staff contracts terminated. 

"At a walkout in October, I lead a chant 'from Palestine to Mexico, all the walls have got to go', little did I know those same walls would be brought to our campus," Ryna Workman, a third-year law student at NYU, told MEE.

"NYU has provided us an example about how the violence of empire always comes home. But walls and empires alike will fall," Workman said.

Another student, studying medicine at NYU, told MEE that the wall would draw attention to "NYU's shameful behavior". 

"There is no wall — physical or rhetorical — that can conceal the abject moral failure of repressing and retaliating against students who are crying out for their healthcare colleagues in Gaza, who as we speak are being exhumed in the hundreds from mass graves," the student, who asked to remain anonymous, said.

Several other NYU students declined to be photographed or have their full names published, owing to a fear of reprisals from the university. 

NYU did not immediately reply to MEE's request for comment.