Columbia University remains locked down like a war zone after anti-Israel protests — and students feel punished

Columbia University was crippled almost three years ago by anti-Israrel protesters, who shut down campus with an illegal encampment. And still, all this time later, the campus gates remain closed to the public.

“There was a complete time and place where [closing the gates] was justified and was necessary,” Nicholas Baum, a 21-year-old senior studying economics, told The Post. “But now it’s a constant and, frankly, outdated reminder [of the protests]. We’re in a completely different environment.”

Current seniors are the only undergraduates on campus who remember a time before their school was sent into chaos by the October 7th 2023 terror attack by Hamas on Israel.

Students were first required to scan their Columbia ID cards that month in order to gain access to campus, as part of the school’s attempt to calm ongoing protests and keep outside agitators from the community.

But that temporary measure became permanent when an encampment popped up on campus that spring. The measures remain despite protest activity on campus heavily dwindling. In May 2025 handfuls of students — some of whom were Jewish — chained themselves to gates to protests the arrest of protesters, while a library takeover resulted in the arrest of 78 people. By April this year, a pro-Palestine protest outside the University’s Hamilton Hall attracted around 20 people, video shows.

Newly installed university president Jennifer L. Mnookin sent a letter to the community on September 7 establishing a committee to decide when and how to reopen the campus in Morningside Heights.

A spokesperson for the university told The Post President Mnookin is hoping the committee will offer recommendations for next steps by the end of the semester. Students, including junior and political science major Aum Desai, are rolling their eyes at the bureaucracy.

“When you have an open campus, it’s easier to bring speakers onto campus,” he told The Post. “You see more people from the New York City area, like the people that you’re neighbors with as a Columbia student.”

However, the stakes are high for the university, after the Trump adminstration cut $400 million in federal funding from the school in 2025, partly citing unruliness of pro-Palestine protesters as its reason.

Baum, who is Jewish, told The Post in September 2024 that he felt unsafe on campus during the chaotic protests, which had seen acts of aggression against Jewish people. But he now believes the administration isn’t updating its assessment of the situation.

“At that time, I was scared to leave my dorm. I was scared to go onto the streets of Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue,” he recalled. “But it’s very awkward and weird to see Columbia still doubling down as hard as they can on maintaining the gate closures.”

Continuing the lockdown, he said, could end up being harmful to students like himself.

“I’d really be bothered if Columbia went out and said this was for the sake of protecting Jewish students, because the only thing that does is just put a greater target on Jewish students’ backs, where other students now look at me and think, I’m the reason why the campus gates are closed,” he warned.