Who were the ‘outsiders’ at Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall?
Those taken into custody included a former animal abuse investigator who was arrested in a violent protest in San Francisco nearly 20 years ago.
May 4, 2024, 6:00 AM EDT
By Rich Schapiro, Tom Winter, Isa Farfan and Natasha Bracken
When James Carlson was arrested inside Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall, he was already under investigation for snatching an Israeli flag out of a man’s hand near campus and setting it on fire.
That wasn’t the first time Carlson, who has no affiliation with Columbia, had run afoul of the law. He was arrested in San Francisco in 2005 during a violent protest organized by an anarchist group, according to a senior law enforcement official.
The 40-year-old animal rights lawyer is among the group of “professional outsiders” cast by the New York City police department and mayor as having a significant role in the takeover of Hamilton Hall.
Large, drawn-out protests like the one at Columbia have a tendency to attract people with a diffuse set of ideologies and motivations, experts say. Roughly 30% of those arrested at Hamilton Hall on Tuesday had no affiliation with the school, according to university officials.
But while there is no doubt that the occupation of the building amounted to a dramatic escalation in tactics, it remains unclear how large an influence outsiders like Carlson have had on the overall student protest movement at Columbia and nearby colleges, which began more than two weeks ago.
Some of the student protesters think the narrative pushed by city and university officials — of dangerous outsiders co-opting the demonstrations — is fueled by ulterior motives.
“I really struggle a lot with the whole narrative of outside agitators because I see it as a means through which to justify violence,” Soph Askanse, a junior at the neighboring Barnard College, said in an interview. “And to claim that because individuals are not students, they are thus deserving of police brutality.”
Rory Wilson, 22, a Columbia senior who did not participate in the protests, offered a different take.
After midnight on Tuesday, Wilson and a friend placed themselves outside a Hamilton Hall door for several minutes to prevent the protesters from barricading it shut.Video footage released by the city showed a 63-year-old activist named Lisa Fithian at the center of the action, directing the protesters on how to barricade the doors and referring to Wilson and his friend as “assholes.”
“She was right in the middle of it, instructing them how to better set up the barricades,” said Wilson, who has Jewish heritage but is not a practicing Jew. “Given that the barricades were a pretty central part of the plan of how to take over Hamilton, I’d expect that she would have been pretty central in the logistics planning.”
Fithian, who has not responded to requests for comment, was not among those arrested on Tuesday.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Columbia University President Minouche Shafik called out the prevalence of outsiders after the protesters seized Hamilton Hall. The police swarmed the building late Tuesday and made a wave of other arrests at Columbia and the nearby City College of New York…
(https://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/outsiders-columbia-universitys-hamilton-hall-rcna150530