Who Gets to Protest at Columbia?

What led the university to suspend pro-Palestinian student groups.

- By James D. Walsh

AFTER STANDING through a three-hour protest on Columbia University’s quad, Mohsen Mahdawi and a few other students grabbed salads and soggy pizza slices from the dining hall and collapsed onto couches in a quiet, glass-walled room inside the student center. “I originally tried to reserve this room as a place for Palestinian students to mourn, but the school delayed and delayed,” said Mahdawi, co-president of the Palestinian Students Union. “Finally, they gave it to us for a few hours tonight.”

The protest on November 9 was the latest in a string of actions organized by student groups since early October, and, as far as campus protests go, it had been boilerplate. A few hundred students gathered on the Low Library steps, staged a die-in, showed off an art installation, and read demands through a bullhorn. Mahdawi watched from the periphery. At 33, he is conspicuously older than almost all of his undergrad peers. He was born in the West Bank and spent most of his childhood in the Far’a refugee camp, where, at age 10, he says he saw an Israeli soldier shoot and kill his best friend. A few years later, a soldier shot Mahdawi through the leg, leaving a scar.