What Happened to the Student Intifada at Columbia?

Something must have happened on the way to the revolution. 

Earlier this week NBC News revealed that the pro-Hamas activists at Columbia were gearing up for another tent encampment on campus. Last year’s encampment inspired copycat encampments on colleges across the country. It also led to Columbia not being able to hold its main graduation ceremony on campus. And when the school finally pushed the activists to clear out, they escalated and took over a building.

So we were supposed to see phase two of this starting yesterday. Secret off-campus meetings were held with up to 100 activists. The whole thing seemed to be planned for yesterday, Thursday. But it never happened.

Protesters did not set up new tent encampments or demonstrate against the war in Gaza at Columbia University on Thursday as planned…

They would have been the first tent cities at the university since students took over a building last year and since the Trump administration embraced an aggressive approach to target what it describes as a failure to deal with antisemitism on college campuses.

More than 100 protesters met Tuesday at a community center in Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood to coordinate tent encampments at Columbia for this week. Organizers, whose identities remain unknown, went to extreme lengths to conceal their plans.

So what happened? Well, I shared one theory yesterday. Pro-Hamas activists at nearby CCNY tried and failed to set up a liberated zone. But before they could claim victory, the gates were locked and they were pushed back.

WATCH: Police pepper sprayed anti-Israel agitators at City College of New York.

Columbia radicals scrapped their encampment plans after the university threatened arrests—and pushed protesters to show up elsewhere.

At City College, it ended with pepper spray. pic.twitter.com/1VkXU6GCGT

— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) April 25, 2025

It’s possible that the activists who crept away in defeat from this scene were some of the same ones who were supposed to set up tents at nearby Columbia. Maybe some of them just decided they’d had enough.

Another possibility is that, because their plans were leaked to NBC News, they had lost the element of surprise. They were relying on that to get tents up before the school could respond but it wasn’t going to work yesterday.

A handful of people who appeared to be security guards in plainclothes circled the planned site of Thursday’s protest before it was expected to begin.

A student said the vibe on campus was a lot different than it was last year. It was almost as if there were adults in charge now.

“There was obviously an antagonistic relationship between the student body and the institution last year. But at the core of that was a kind of faith … that they were both engaging in at least some degree of good faith,” he said. “The student body has sort of felt that’s no longer the case and, rather than producing a sort of stronger outcry of protest, has produced actual legitimate fear in the student body.”

That’s a pretty twisted way of putting it but the bottom line is that last year students believed they could get away with anything and this year it’s dawning on them that they cannot. Columbia put out a statement yesterday saying anyone who tried to set up a camp would be identified and could face suspension or arrest. Of course Columbia has made lots of empty threats in the past but the plainclothes security guards suggest they weren’t going to stand by and do nothing this time.

Or maybe I’m being overly optimistic. It’s only Friday, after all. It’s possible the pro-Hamas activists had just decided to settle down for a day or two until the heat is off and the plainclothes security guards aren’t walking around the quad. My guess is they’ll just reschedule this plan for late at night and then they’ll put on a show when the cops are called in to remove them. They’ve made it pretty clear that they feel they have no option not to protest so I’d say the chances this are over are near zero. They’ll be back, probably this weekend.