Columbia Lets Students Attend Class Online amid Growing Campus Protests over Israel’s War in Gaza

FILE - Police in Riot gear stand guard as demonstrators chant slogans outside the Columbia University campus, Thursday, April 18, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)
FILE - Police in Riot gear stand guard as demonstrators chant slogans outside the Columbia University campus, Thursday, April 18, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)
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Columbia Lets Students Attend Class Online amid Growing Campus Protests over Israel’s War in Gaza

FILE - Police in Riot gear stand guard as demonstrators chant slogans outside the Columbia University campus, Thursday, April 18, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)
FILE - Police in Riot gear stand guard as demonstrators chant slogans outside the Columbia University campus, Thursday, April 18, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)

Columbia University's main campus will switch to hybrid learning — giving students the option to attend classes online rather than in person — for the rest of the semester amid protests over Israel's war with Hamas that have roiled colleges across the US.

Some students have said they are afraid to set foot on Columbia’s campus with tensions running high.

“Safety is our highest priority as we strive to support our students’ learning and all the required academic operations,” the Ivy League university's provost, Angela V. Olinto, and chief operating officer, Cas Holloway, said in a statement late Monday.

The move comes as schools across the country, many of which have about two weeks of classes left before the semester ends, grapple with how to handle similar protests. Since the war began, colleges and universities have struggled to balance safety with free speech rights. Many long tolerated protests but are now doling out more heavy-handed discipline.

Tensions have risen since more than 100 pro-Palestinian demonstrators who had camped out on Columbia’s upper Manhattan campus were arrested last week.

The arrests sparked renewed anti-war protests and encampments, including at New York University a few miles south of Columbia, where an encampment swelled to hundreds of protesters and police made arrests Monday night.

A New York Police Department spokesperson said 133 protesters were taken into custody at NYU, and that all of them had been released with summonses to appear in court on disorderly conduct charges. University spokesperson John Beckman said NYU was carrying on with classes Tuesday.

Across the country, California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, announced that its campus will be closed through Wednesday after demonstrators occupied a building Monday night. Classes were to be conducted remotely, the school said on its website.

At the University of Michigan, protesters had set up more than 30 tents on the central part of the Ann Arbor campus called the Diag.

The protests have pitted students against one another, with pro-Palestinian students demanding that their schools condemn Israel’s assault on Gaza and divest from companies that sell weapons to Israel. Some Jewish students, meanwhile, say much of the criticism of Israel has veered into antisemitism.

As Donald Trump walked into a Manhattan courtroom Tuesday morning to attend his historic hush money trial, he spoke briefly to reporters and focused on the turmoil at college campuses, blaming President Joe Biden.

“What’s going on is a disgrace to our country and it’s all Biden’s fault,” Trump said.

A day earlier, when asked whether he condemned “the antisemitic protests," Biden said he did.

“I also condemn those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians,” Biden said after an Earth Day event outside Washington.

Columbia University President Minouche Shafik said in a message to the school community Monday that she was “deeply saddened” by what was happening on the campus.

“To deescalate the rancor and give us all a chance to consider next steps, I am announcing that all classes will be held virtually on Monday,” Shafik wrote, noting that students who didn't live on campus should stay away.

Robert Kraft, who owns the New England Patriots football team and funded the Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life across from Columbia’s campus, said he was suspending donations to the university.

“I am no longer confident that Columbia can protect its students and staff and I am not comfortable supporting the university until corrective action is taken,” he said in a statement.

Campus protests began after Hamas’ deadly attack on southern Israel, when fighters killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages. During the ensuing war, Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the local health ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and noncombatants but says at least two-thirds of the dead are children and women.



Pope Francis’s Funeral to Be Held on Saturday, Many World Leaders Expected 

The body of Pope Francis is placed in an open casket during the rite of the declaration of death in Santa Marta residence at the Vatican, April 22, 2025. Vatican Media/­Handout via REUTERS
The body of Pope Francis is placed in an open casket during the rite of the declaration of death in Santa Marta residence at the Vatican, April 22, 2025. Vatican Media/­Handout via REUTERS
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Pope Francis’s Funeral to Be Held on Saturday, Many World Leaders Expected 

The body of Pope Francis is placed in an open casket during the rite of the declaration of death in Santa Marta residence at the Vatican, April 22, 2025. Vatican Media/­Handout via REUTERS
The body of Pope Francis is placed in an open casket during the rite of the declaration of death in Santa Marta residence at the Vatican, April 22, 2025. Vatican Media/­Handout via REUTERS

Pope Francis' funeral will be held on Saturday in St. Peter's Square, Roman Catholic cardinals decided on Tuesday, setting the stage for a solemn ceremony that will draw leaders from around the world. 

Francis, 88, died unexpectedly on Monday after suffering a stroke and cardiac arrest, the Vatican said, ending an often turbulent reign in which he repeatedly clashed with traditionalists and championed the poor and marginalized. 

The pontiff spent five weeks in hospital earlier this year suffering from double pneumonia. But he returned to the Vatican almost a month ago and had seemed to be recovering, appearing in St. Peter's Square on Easter Sunday. 

The Vatican on Tuesday released photographs of Francis dressed in his vestments and laid in a wooden coffin in the chapel of the Santa Marta residence, where he lived during his 12-year papacy. Swiss Guards stand on either side of the casket. 

His body will be taken into the adjacent St. Peter's Basilica on Wednesday morning at 9:00 a.m. (0700 GMT), in a procession led by cardinals, allowing the faithful to pay their last respects to the first Latin American pope. 

His funeral service will be held in St. Peter's Square, in the shadow of the Basilica, on Saturday at 10:00 a.m. (0800 GMT). 

US President Donald Trump, who clashed repeatedly with the pope about immigration, said he and his wife would fly to Rome for the service. 

Among other heads of state set to attend were Javier Milei, president of Francis' native Argentina, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, according to a source in his office. 

ANCIENT RITUALS 

In a break from tradition, Francis confirmed in his final testament released on Monday that he wished to be buried in Rome's Basilica of Saint Mary Major and not St. Peter's, where many of his predecessors were laid to rest. 

Francis's sudden death has set in motion ancient rituals, as the 1.4-billion-member Church started the transition from one pope to another, including the breaking of the pope's "Fisherman's Ring" and lead seal, used in his lifetime to seal documents, so they cannot be used by anyone else. 

All cardinals in Rome were summoned to a meeting on Tuesday to decide on the sequencing of events in the coming days and review the day-to-day running of the Church in the period before a new pope is elected. 

A conclave to choose a new pope normally takes place 15 to 20 days after the death of a pontiff, meaning it should not start before May 6. 

Some 135 cardinals are eligible to participate in the secretive ballot, which can stretch over days before white smoke pouring from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel tells the world that a new pope has been picked. 

At present there is no clear frontrunner to succeed Francis. 

PROGRESSIVE 

Pope Francis inherited a Church in disarray and worked hard to overhaul the Vatican's central administration, root out corruption and, after a slow start, confront the scourge of child abuse within the ranks of the priesthood. 

He often clashed with conservatives, nostalgic for a traditional past, who saw Francis as overly liberal and too accommodating to minority groups. 

Francis appointed nearly 80% of the cardinal electors scattered across the world who will choose the next pope, increasing, but not guaranteeing, the possibility that his successor will continue his progressive policies. 

Many of the cardinals are little known outside their own countries and they will have a chance to get to know one another at meetings known as General Congregations that take place in the days before a conclave starts and where a profile of the qualities needed for the next pope will take shape. 

The Vatican said late on Monday that staff and officials within the Holy See could immediately start to pay their respects before the pope's body at the Santa Marta residence, where Francis set up home in 2013, shunning the grand, apostolic palace his predecessors had lived in.