Columbia University, supposedly New York City’s most prestigious university, has been reduced to chaos by the Palestinian Liberation Movement.

I watched on Thursday as NYPD officers wearing riot gear cleared an encampment in the “liberated zone”, where students had set up tents in protest of Columbia’s “complicity in genocide”.

According to the NYPD, eventually, about 100 anti-Israel demonstrators were arrested, including one who had repeatedly beaten a police officer.

The campus was closed but I had a front row seat because I am a part-time Columbia student.

As I walked into the quad that was locked down, I saw dozens of NYPD police officers watching as protesters not affiliated with the university yelled “Intifada Revolution!”

A young demonstrator argued with a police officer about why her CUNY identification card wouldn’t let her pass the security checkpoint.

Within the gates, drums and megaphones echoed, as hundreds of Ivy League students marched in procession waving Palestinian flags, chanting, “Free Palestine”, and “Divulge!” Divest!”

Most people wore keffiyehs and N-95s in order to hide their faces.

The media was not interested in speaking to them. It’s funny how timid they are when they leave their echo chamber.

The occupiers in the impromptu encampment were not saving the world. They casually mixed, drinking Dunkin’ Donuts next to signs that read “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” and “Join Us.”

They are certainly self-righteous, but they were not righteous freedom warriors. Radicals who receive a $90,000-a year education are throwing temper tantrums.

One protester gave me a flyer. She tried to give one to a student wearing a yarmulke behind me but he refused.

It read: “We created Gaza Solidarity Encampment because Columbia refused to stop its complicity with the escalating genocidal violence against the Palestinian People.” Our encampment is to remain until Columbia University divests its finances, including endowments, from companies that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide and occupation in Palestine.

The encampment that appeared on Wednesday morning did not last long.

NYPD officers warned students with loudspeakers that those who did not leave the camp by 2 pm risked being arrested.

The Columbia Outdoor Space Policy expressly prohibits tents, and all tents must be ordered by Columbia Facilities Events Administration.

As NYPD officers escorted and, in some cases, dragged the students from their “liberated zones,” they yelled: “NYPD. KKK. IDF. You’re all the Same.”

One lesbian couple screamed “Shame! Shame! “Shame!” the policemen shouted as they passed. I guess no one was changed.

After she had testified to Congress on anti-Semitism in colleges, Columbia President Minouche Shafik authorized the move to clear out the encampment.

She was able, unlike her counterparts at Penn and Harvard to confirm, that calling for a genocide against Jews is a violation Columbia’s code.

Shafik, in an email sent to the community of the university, wrote: “This morning I had to take a decision I hoped I would never have to make.” “I made this extraordinary decision because of these extraordinary circumstances.”

These were indeed extraordinary circumstances that represented the fall of an extraordinary institution.

As I watched as students waved “Lesbians for Liberation”, “Queers for Palestine”, and other signs in front Butler Library, which boasts the names of such great thinkers as Voltaire, Sophocles and Alexander Hamilton engraved on its façade, I couldn’t help but notice how the university had failed to uphold its ideals.

Ivy League was once a haven of excellence and knowledge.

Today, it is more accurately described by the phrase “a cesspool for radicalism and hatred”.