Protests and vandalism are rocking Columbia University on the first day of classes, stoking fears that anti-Israel student agitators will make good on their promise to prevent the school from returning to “normalcy” in the coming school year. 

By 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday, protesters had already begun to gather outside of the campus gates on both Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue, forming a picket line “to shut down Columbia University’s first day of class.”

The protesters were following the orders of several anti-Israel student groups, including Students for Justice in Palestine and Columbia University Apartheid Divest, which organized the demonstrations via posts on social media. 

“DON’T CROSS THE PICKET LINE. CALL OUT SICK. DO NOT ENTER CAMPUS. DO NOT GO TO CLASSES. DO NOT HOLD CLASS,” the groups commanded in a shared post on Instagram, adding that the protest “to shut down Columbia University’s first day of class for Palestine” would be taking place outside the gates on 116th Street. 

The post, which included a slideshow of several call-to-action posters, claimed that Columbia students “do not deserve a first day of school,” and that returning to “normalcy” would be “nothing more than consent to the continued oppression.” 

By 10:30 a.m., New York Police Department officers had set up barricades to limit access to the area of the sidewalk occupied by protesters, Columbia’s independent student news site, BWOG, reported. The line of students waiting to swipe their ID cards to pass through the iron gates and enter campus — a new security measure imposed following the events of the spring — soon took up the entire block.

Some of the protestors migrated to Columbia’s sister school, Barnard College, where two individuals were arrested by police. 

“Imagine stepping onto campus for your first day at @Columbia, and being met by a masked mob who think their tantrums are more important than your education,” the Columbia Jewish Alumni Association wrote in a post on X on Tuesday. “What a joke. It’s beyond pathetic that this is what students have to deal with.”  

By noon, the university’s iconic “Alma Mater” statue, perched on the steps of the Low Memorial Library, had been doused in red paint. Officers soon gated off the structure and began to hose it down with water. 

The chaotic first day back at school dashes hopes that the new academic year might offer a reprieve from the chaotic and violent protests that took hold of Morningside Heights in the months following Hamas’s attack on October 7.

Columbia, the scene of some of the most violent anti-Israel protests in the nation — including one incident in which student and non-student agitators violently took over an administrative building, Hamilton Hall — has struggled to restore order to the university campus. 

The university has also grappled with its handling of antisemitism on campus, for which it faces a congressional investigation. Antisemitism, Columbia’s Jewish Alumni Association claims, became a “regular, defining feature of life on Columbia University’s campus.” Three university deans resigned over the summer after they were caught sending disparaging messages about Jewish students sharing their experiences with antisemitism. 

This latest protest also offers a new challenge for the interim president, Katrina Armstrong, who was appointed after her predecessor, Nemat “Minouche” Shafik, resigned over the summer. Ms. Shafik ended her short-lived tenure after facing mounting criticism from both sides over her handling of the encampments. 

Columbia has not yet released a statement addressing Tuesday’s protest.