The demonstrators did not set up new tent camps or demonstrated against the war in Gaza at Columbia University on Thursday as planned.
NBC News reported on Wednesday that a group was planning to create tent camps on the main campus of New York school on Thursday afternoon.
The camps would have been likely to ignite tensions at the Ivy League school, which for weeks has been at the center of a rope fight between the federal government and its students.
They would have been the first cities of university tents since students resumed a building last year and since the Trump administration adopted an aggressive approach to target what it describes as an inability to deal with anti -Semitism on university campuses.
More than 100 demonstrators gathered on Tuesday in a community center in the Bushwick district in Brooklyn to coordinate the tents camps in Columbia for this week. The organizers, whose identities remain unknown, have endeavored to hide their plans.
NBC News obtained a recording of the meeting, which revealed that the students planned a camp on Thursday on the main campus of the University in the Morningsoide Heights district of Manhattan and a second camp on Friday at the neighboring campus of Manhattanville.
It is not clear if the camp scheduled for Friday will take place.
Instead of protests on Thursday, the campus scene included students enjoying one of the first hot days in New York this spring. Dozens of students have beach towels, broken selfies under the sun and thrown around Frisbees.
However, there were signs of what the day had to bring.
Apart from the doors of the University of the 116th Street and Broadway, several New York police officers met – but they disappeared at 2 p.m., an hour after the demonstrations.
A handful of people who seemed to be civilian in civilian security agents surrounded the planned site of the event on Thursday before starting.
Cole Donovan, 27, a doctorate. The student studying philosophy and education, said that the attitude of the student body towards protests seems to have changed since the camps a year ago. It is over the time when students felt free to set up tents, resume university buildings and walking for days, as they did last spring, he said.
“There was obviously an antagonistic relationship between the student body and the institution last year. But at the heart of that, there was a kind of faith … that they were both engaged in at least a certain degree of good faith,” he said. “The student body has sort of felt that this is no longer the case and, rather than producing a sort of uproar in stronger protest, caused real legitimate fear in the student body.”
Last month, the Trump administration began to end federal research subsidies in many of the country’s most prestigious universities, demanding significant changes in the operation of schools. The administration argued that universities had not protected Jewish students in the midst of war demonstrations.
Columbia was the first university targeted by the administration. He has conceded a number of government requests, in particular that it adjusts its admission process, implements “greatest institutional neutrality” and hires three dozen new security agents.
The administration also challenged Harvard University, which rejected its proposals and continued the federal government.
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed a series of executive actions that would apply more strict surveillance of foreign donations to universities and would change the way they are accredited.
Immigration authorities have apprehended at least three Columbia students in recent weeks. Among them, the student graduated Mahmoud Khalil, who helped direct the events of students last year.
About 45 minutes after the start of the Columbia demonstration, defense students from pro-Palestinian students affiliated to the City College in New York announced on social networks that they organized a demonstration at the neighboring public college.
It is not known if the demonstrators who intended to be part of the planned camp of Columbia were one of the 50 people who gathered in front of the doors of CCNY on Thursday afternoon, wearing masks and Palestinian Keffiyeh.
However, a student protest group affiliated in Columbia shared the position of the CCNY group on social networks.
CCNY closed its doors and seemed to begin to ban students from entering the campus while the demonstration follows.
On Tuesday, a crowd of demonstrators from the University of Yale set up a handful of tents on the campus before dissolving a few hours later.
