Pro-Palestinian student activists face off with New York Police Department officers during a raid on Columbia University's campus on Tuesday. Police arrested about 100 people as they dismantled encampments and removed people occupying Hamilton Hall.Taking over buildings is a popular revolutionary tactic. Since the storming of the Bastille, activists and their admirers have romanticized these “occupations” and placed them at the heart of their causes’ mythologies.on Jan. 6, 2021.
It was not that different from the riots of the year before, during protests over the killing of George Floyd, where many of those who overturned cars andSo it must have come as a surprise to the occupiers of Columbia’s Hamilton Hall that the police showed up, after repeated warnings, and arrested the trespassers and vandals there.
The authorities — schools or governments — must intervene when the functioning of their institution is threatened. Because protests that turn into occupations neither advance their cause nor allow anyone else to advance a different one. All they lead to is more tribalism and more stagnation.