A Campus in Crisis

Dissent and defiance at Columbia's pro-Palestine protests.

- By Jelani Cobb. Photographs by Nina Berman

In the late morning of April 18th, as police amassed outside the gates of Columbia University and chants of Free Palestine! rang across the campus, I ran into Nina Berman, a colleague at the Journalism School, where she teaches photojournalism and I serve as dean. Nina was walking toward the east lawn, where a sign declared the area a Gaza Solidarity Encampment. She has, for four decades, specialized in documenting precisely these types of events-labor strikes, Black Lives Matter protests, reproductive-rights rallies though usually at a slightly greater remove from her place of employment.