NEW YORK – Pro-Palestinian activists occupied a building at Columbia University on April 30, escalating a battle with administrators who have begun suspending students for refusing to dismantle tents set up on the New York campus.

Protesters entered Hamilton Hall and suspended a banner reading “Hind’s Hall” from an upper floor. Others outside blocked the doors with outdoor tables and linked arms to form a barricade in front.

“This building is liberated in honour of Hind, a six-year-old Palestinian child murdered in Gaza by the Israeli occupation forces funded by Columbia University,” a protester shouted from inside, with those outside repeating each phrase.

The White House denounced the takeover as “absolutely the wrong approach” that is “not an example of peaceful protest”.

Mr John Kirby, a spokesman for President Joe Biden, told reporters: “A small percentage of students shouldn’t be able to disrupt the academic experience and the legitimate study for the rest of the student body. Students paying to go to school and wanting an education ought to be able to do that without disruption.”

The takeover of Hamilton Hall began shortly after midnight, as protesters marched around campus to chants of “free Palestine”.

Within 20 minutes, protesters had seized the hall, a 118-year-old building that has been at the centre of campus protests dating back to the 1960s.

Outside the neoclassical building, protesters, many wearing helmets, safety glasses, gloves and masks, barricaded the entrance. Those inside stacked chairs and tables at the entrance. A protester took a hammer to smash the glass part of a door. The protesters appeared to have free rein of the building.

The building was named after the first Treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton.

Some three hours after the students entered the building, the school sent out a notice saying that effective immediately, access to the Morningside campus was limited to students residing in residential buildings on campus and staff providing essential services.

“This access restriction will remain in place until circumstances allow otherwise,” it said. “The safety of every single member of this community is paramount. We thank you for your patience, cooperation and understanding.”

On April 29, the university began suspending pro-Palestinian student activists who refused to dismantle a protest camp on the campus after the Ivy League school declared a stalemate in talks seeking to end the demonstration.

University president Nemat Minouche Shafik said in a statement that days of negotiations between student organisers and academic leaders failed to persuade demonstrators to remove the dozens of tents set up to express opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza.

Students in the encampment, along with hundreds of supporters, had spent a tense afternoon rallying around the site in a show of force meant to deter the removal of the tents.

But with no sign of police action, most of the protesters had begun to disperse by the end of the afternoon, leaving what appeared to be several dozen students and about 80 tents inside the encampment.

Just outside, about a dozen faculty members in yellow and orange safety vests also stayed behind, with several saying they planned to remain overnight to make sure their students’ right to protest was respected.

The crackdown at Columbia, which has been at the centre of Gaza-related protests roiling university campuses across the US in recent weeks, came as police at the University of Texas at Austin arrested dozens of students whom they doused with pepper spray at a pro-Palestinian rally.

At Cal Poly Humboldt University, police early on April 30 swarmed the campus, where students were occupying a school building, and started detaining people, the local media reported.

The arrests came after police late on April 29 declared that the protest was unlawful assembly and warned people that if they did not disperse, they would face arrest.

The campus was earlier closed to all people except students and faculty because of the ongoing protest. Neither the school nor a police spokesman was immediately available for comment or to detail how many people may have been detained. REUTERS, NYTIMES