AFR reported previously about the demonstration at Barnard College – a private women’s liberal arts college which is part of Columbia University -- last week that saw anti-Israel protestors take over a building on the campus, locking others out.
The demonstrations continued last Thursday with NYPD arresting around 100 people in front of the college's entrance.
It's also reported the students marched on CUNY's City College campus and protested outside Governor Kathy Hochul's scheduled event there.
Fox says her event was canceled because of the expected protest.
Rabbi Yaakov Menken, executive vice president of the Coalition for Jewish Values, spoke with AFN.
"It's hard to call them protests. They are barely controlled riots designed to intimidate others into following their opinion. They're not simply protesting in favor of a cause, they are intimidating people who are opposed to whatever their agenda might be."
One witness at the Barnard demonstration on Wednesday appeared on Fox, where he said demonstrators simply marched out of the occupied building after the college told them after several hours that if the demonstrators just left, they would face no repercussions.
The students say they were protesting Columbia University's expulsion of two students who reportedly barged into a class in January, throwing out flyers with hateful content.
But Menken notes that many institutions have changed how they respond to these demonstrations.
"It's interesting that it seems like on a lot of campuses, these types of antisemitic demonstrations are actually being tamped down. There's a recognition that the new administration, in particular, the Trump administration, will not stand for this, that there must be reprisals and universities are now afraid of that. They've noticed that what they did, the behavior last year, what they permitted on campus, was abominable.”
Protests touch everyone
It was abominable not only for Jewish students, he said.
“They created a hostile environment, especially for Jewish students, but really for any student who wanted to go about their business and had the least support for Israel after a horrific massacre of Israelis."
