Fordham Lincoln Center anti-Israel encampment egged on by Columbia arrests: student

Students at Fordham University set up an anti-Israel tent encampment Wednesday, saying they were motivated by the arrests of hundreds of protesters on the Columbia and City University of New York campuses.

Demonstrators hunkered down with seven tents inside the lobby of the Leon Lowenstein Center — a building at the private Jesuit university’s Lincoln Center campus — while others rallied outside the glass doors.

Protesters — some wearing masks over their faces or keffiyehs — taped a Palestinian flag to the wall and banged on drums while chanting, “Students, students, hold your ground. NYPD back down” and “Israel bombs, Fordham pays, how many kids did you kill today?”

A chaplain spoke briefly with the group, but the conversation ended when student protesters outside the building started to bang on the windows.

“The administration has given our comrades inside one hour to leave or else there will be suspensions,” a participant who previously left the lobby told the outsider demonstrators through a megaphone.

“Fordham is threatening suspensions and arrests for our comrades inside because for whatever reason it is a crime to fight against genocide,” they said.

Fordham’s Vice President for Student Affairs Michele C. Burris later handed the students inside the encampment notices informing them they had been suspended and banned from campus.

The student protesters are barred from “on-campus housing assignment, classes, final examinations, and all events including senior week and commencement,” the letter states.

Shortly before noon, the NYPD arrived outside the Lowenstein Center and set up barriers, according to video footage from Al Jazeera correspondent Gabriel Elizondo.

Tensions flared when NYPD buses – including one splattered with red paint – pulled up near the scene, though there were no reported arrests, police sources said.

Roughly 200 student protesters moved to stand right outside the window of the Lowenstein Center and refused to back down in the face of police officers.

“Move cops, get out the way, we know you’re Israeli trained,” the group chanted.

“The president of Fordham University is responsible for any violence that occurs today,” was another call and response refrain.

The protesters inside the lobby appeared to link arms and sing, though they could not be heard from outside.

“There are police coming in and out. They have barricaded some parts of the lobby,” one Fordham student told police at the scene.

“The administration refuses to meet with the students. They brought in Campus Ministry to mediate, but the mediation was ‘you can leave now or be arrested,” they claimed.

Fordham officials supposedly “acknowledged this is a peaceful protest and there’s no destruction to property, but they don’t want the protest here,” the student added.

“This is not a reaction to Columbia. This is about the genocide in Gaza. We want our tuition money taken out of war profiteering,” they insisted.

But Matthew Smith, an 18-year-old freshman from the university’s Bronx campus, said that the group was actually egged on by the arrests at Columbia Tuesday night.

“It emboldens us more when we see a fascist police state suppressing us,” he told The Post.

Smith wore a keffiyeh a New York City Democratic Socialists of America t-shirt as he led the the outside protesters in chants.

“The police are on the wrong side of this,” he told The Post. “If the police really wanted us to stop, what they would do is go back to their homes, and let us protest.”

The protesters in the building’s lobby wielded signs with phrases including “Divest from Israel,” “Students 4 Palestine Liberation” and “Genocide is not a Jesuit value,” among others.

Fordham maintenance staff put up blue tarp on the roof, and appeared to be getting ready to unfurl the covering to shut the protesters inside the lobby off from those outside.

“It’s a Jesuit school, they’re supposed to support our efforts to champion social justice issues,” Smith said of the Fordham administration.

Though the protesters called for the school to divest from Israel, Smith admitted that they technically did not know if Fordham had any financial interest in the country’s ongoing war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

“Fordham right now will not disclose what investments they have in Israel and if they’re investing in companies that profit off the ongoing slaughter of civilians in Palestine,” Smith said.

“We ask they disclose it and if they are invested in Israel, we’re asking they divest.”

On Wednesday morning, the administration announced that classes and campus operations were continuing as usual despite the protest.

“Fordham Public Safety is on hand to protect everyone’s safety. For the safety of our community, the Lowenstein Center entrance has been closed,” the statement read.

Even though classes were running as usual, the entrance closure caused a serious hitch in many students’ plans.

Johnny, a 21-year-old business student, said he was unsure how to get to class  in the Lowenstein Center with the doors blocked off.

“If they feel the need to do it, they feel the need to do it, but it’s pretty inconvenient to get to class,” he told The Post of the protest.

“They’re in the building I need to get to. Now they’ve blocked it off. I don’t know how I get there. There doesn’t seem to be any way to get to class,” he lamented.

“The kids inside the campus are essentially just screaming at each other inside a room, so I don’t know how that’s constructive,” Johnny added of his peers’ protest.

“I’ve seen everything that’s happened at Columbia and I expected this to happen.”