It is billed as one of the world’s most important centres of research, representing a “peaceful oasis of the life of the mind” and a home to the “best things of all human history and thought”.
So when students at New York’s Columbia University set up a tented camp on the West Lawn and began a non-violent protest in solidarity with the people of Gaza on April 17, they did not set out to lose.
Drawing on the university’s history as a centre of ideological struggle, and 56 years after their forebears staged an uprising to oppose US involvement in the Vietnam War, they called on university authorities to sever financial ties with Israel, prompting more than 30 other campuses to follow suit.
• UCLA
