Columbia keeps ‘investigating’ student journalists covering pro-Palestine protests

On the afternoon of Wednesday, May 7, Celeste Gamble was in Columbia University’s Butler Library, studying for her final exams, when about a hundred student protesters launched an occupation of the reading room. It was the latest eruption of ongoing pro-Palestine protests on campus. Students wearing kaffiyehs chanted “Free, free Palestine.” Others draped Palestinian flags and banners around the room; one read “Liberated Zone,” echoing a banner placed on the university’s lawns last year during the Gaza Solidarity Encampments. 

Gamble, twenty, is a reporter for WKCR, Columbia’s student radio station. She pulled out her press ID, recognizing that the timing had given her unique access. Other student journalists arriving outside the library were denied entry by campus security officers.

Around three hours later, with city police gathering outside the campus gates, it became clear to Gamble and other student journalists that arrests were imminent. (New York Police Department officers later arrested almost eighty protesters.) She left the library along with two of her colleagues at WKCR, Natalie Lahr and Sawyer Huckabee. Public safety officers required them to scan their student IDs before exiting.

Less than twenty-four hours later, Gamble, Lahr, Huckabee, and a reporter from the Columbia Daily Spectator all received notice from the university that they’d been suspended for being “involved in a disruption at Butler Library.” Other student journalists who were reporting on the protest did not receive suspensions. 

Gamble and Lahr were informed by Barnard College that they were banned from campus and had forty-eight hours to vacate their student residences. None of the four journalists would be able to submit assignments or take exams, meaning that they would miss semester finals.

Later that day, Huckabee’s suspension was lifted. The following morning, after a report in the Spectator, the suspensions of the other three student journalists were also lifted, though Gamble and Lahr, both Barnard students, continued to be denied access to Columbia’s campus. 

“The incident at Butler Library on May 7th remains under investigation and Barnard reserves the right to reimpose interim sanctions and slash or initiate charges regarding this matter at any point in the future,” Gamble’s and Lahr’s notices read. They were later informed in an email from the university that they had been designated “persona non grata.”

After about a week, Lahr was able to access the campus. Gamble remains locked out. She had a final exam on Columbia’s campus on May 12, but because she wasn’t allowed to enter, her exam was deferred. As of Saturday, May 17, Gamble told CJR she was still not able to enter campus.

(Post publication, a Columbia spokesperson told CJR, “The interim suspension on the Columbia student journalist was lifted within hours after it was issued once it was determined that the individual was a member of the student press who was covering the protest as a reporter, not a participant in the disruptions to academic activities that were in violation of University policies and Rules. Columbia University continues to strongly believe in the value of a vibrant and independent student press.”)

For the student journalists, the suspensions, even if temporary, are the latest administrative attack on the freedom of the student press as it reports on an embattled university witnessing protests for Palestine and facing a $400 million cut in federal funding from the Trump administration.

For Gamble, this situation was unpleasantly familiar. After she reported for WKCR on a pro-Palestine protest in March, officials at Barnard requested that Gamble participate in a “fact finding” meeting. CJR published a story featuring Gamble, to which Barnard responded after publication: “While we made every effort to identify and exclude students who were working as journalists from the conduct process, a small number were inadvertently included. As those students have been identified and their roles as journalists confirmed, we have notified them that they will not need to engage in this process.” 

Hours after CJR published the story, Gamble received a notification that her case had been resolved.

The Columbia administration’s investigations of student journalists started during last year’s Gaza Solidarity Encampments. Lara-Nour Walton, a twenty-two-year-old Columbia undergraduate who covered a pro-Palestine encampment last May for The Nation, was subsequently placed under investigation regarding her “alleged involvement with an unauthorized protest.”

“If you have footage of the encampment, you will see that I am wearing a lanyard identifying me as an affiliate with The Nation magazine,” Walton replied. She provided five links to articles she’d published. After an email exchange with Omar Torres, an assistant rules administrator, that lasted for more than five weeks, Walton was finally informed that she was no longer under investigation. 

The experience was “very jarring,” Walton told CJR. “It sets a really bad precedent, and will dissuade student journalists from covering if they know that their ability to report won’t be without the risk of being suspended or placed under investigation.” 

Gamble, Lahr, Huckabee, and other student journalists continue to have serious concerns about their ability to report on campus. 

“It was of course a relief, but it was also a little nerve-racking,” Huckabee said of his lifted suspension. “[It] honestly didn’t really make me feel that much better.” He cites a list of precautions he now takes while covering events on campus: turning off Face ID on his phone, writing the arrested-journalist hotline number on his arm, taking photos of himself, recording every conversation.

Lahr struggled to complete the four essays she had due last week.

“It is a quote-unquote mistake, but it is very useful to the overall purpose of making it harder for us to do our jobs,” she said, noting that the suspension notices could have interfered with reporting on other protests or police actions.

“The fact that they can suspend us and unsuspend us, and then just be kind of absolved from the initial action, it does make me feel like it will happen again,” Lahr said.

In a letter published in the Spectator last week, editors Shea Vance and Heather Chen wrote: “Indiscriminate suspensions and the punishment of student journalists—even temporarily—for doing their jobs will inevitably stifle free press and expression on campus. A University thrives when its students feel safe asking questions and investigating the world around them.”

Seth Stern, director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, told CJR, “It’s concerning that this is happening in New York, a city that just last year settled a lawsuit over its arrests of journalists. That settlement included a commitment not to arrest journalists who are covering protests and not taking part in any illegality and recognized that even when police are entitled to disperse protesters, they need to let journalists stay to cover the aftermath.” 

He added, “Constitutional law may apply differently at private universities than public streets, but Columbia should nonetheless respect the freedoms this nation was founded on.”

Gamble, Lahr, Huckabee, and Walton said that they won’t let the intimidation deter them from their work.

“I think it is a sign that the work we’re doing is important. I have three more years here, and I plan to be reporting,” Lahr said. 

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated.