Pro-Palestinian protesters returned to Columbia University's campus on Friday evening to retake the school's South Lawn just weeks after dramatic action by the NYPD to clear the grounds.
Protesters returned to the lawn for the first time in weeks with a number of tents and banners in the middle of the university's alumni weekend. The protesters were identified as "an autonomous group of Palestinian students," by the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at Columbia.
One of their banner's read, "@alumni No Donations 'til Divestment," the Columbia Spectator reported.
“We are aware of the encampment erected yesterday evening and are monitoring the situation. We remain committed to hosting a successful weekend for our alumni," a university spokesperson told NBC News.
According to the school's website, alumni weekend activities run from Thursday, May 30, to Saturday, June 1.
Video shared on X on Friday evening appeared to document a "quick response" by campus security to remove tents shortly after the encampment was put back together. The officers eventually left and a number of tents remained, and several protesters remained camped out overnight, the Spectator reported.
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Around the same time, hundreds of protesters marched to the Brooklyn Museum and briefly took over its lobby. According to the NYPD, nearly three dozen people were taken into custody.
PHOTOS: Columbia University student protesters take over Hamilton Hall
The action by protesters comes almost a month after the last campus occupation was broken up by a large-scale invasion by the NYPD. Heavily-geared police beached Hamilton Hall after a smaller group of protesters had stormed the building and taken it over following nearly two weeks of student occupation on the South Lawn.
Hundreds of students were arrested over the course of a couple weeks, not just at Columbia University's campus, but also at City College, NYU and others.
The April campus protests began at Columbia in response to Israel’s offensive in Gaza after Hamas launched a deadly attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7. Militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages. Vowing to stamp out Hamas, Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the Health Ministry there.
Police have swept through campuses across the U.S. in response to protests calling on universities to stop doing business with Israel or companies that support the war in Gaza. There have been confrontations and more than 1,000 arrests. In rarer instances, university officials and protest leaders struck agreements to restrict the disruption to campus life and upcoming commencement ceremonies.
Despite graduation ceremonies and the end of academic instruction, many students groups have continued protests to pressure colleges to divest from companies with links to Israel.
Calls for a ceasefire in Gaza have continued as a recent Israeli airstrike killed at least 45 people last weekend in a Rafah camp. The city has become a shelter for many people forced from their homes due to months of bombings and attacks by Israel's armed forces.
