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Universal Barber Shop on Broadway would normally be bustling this time of year with Columbia University students and their parents getting last-minute haircuts before graduation, Alex Khafizov said.
But the day after Columbia announced it was canceling its main commencement ceremony in light of ongoing protests on campus, Khafizov’s shop was empty.
“It’s very hard,” he said. “But nothing we can do.”
As protests against Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza have roiled New York City’s Ivy League university and sparked similar movements at colleges across the country, businesses near Columbia said they’ve taken a financial hit in recent weeks. Interviews at more than 10 stores, restaurants, and street carts on the blocks surrounding the Morningside Heights campus revealed that street closures, police activity, and tight restrictions on access to university buildings have caused a drop in income for many local vendors.
Several shops told Gothamist they have experienced an uptick in business in recent weeks, including Gary Calder, who said more people have been making copies at his shop, the Village Copier, because the campus libraries have been closed. A cashier at a neighborhood deli said reporters covering the protests have been coming in to buy food.
But many said fewer customers have visited since the campus closed. Some said they have cut hours and assigned workers to fewer shifts.
Universal Barber Shop on Broadway
Peter Asan, who runs Subs Conscious on Amsterdam Avenue, said his sandwich shop has been struggling to stay open with the drop in foot traffic from students and campus workers, who he said make up about 85% of his customers.
“Whatever happens to the university affects us tremendously,” he said.
Johnny Gjolaj at V&T Italian Restaurant said he’s spoken with student activists and supports their protests. But he said fewer students have been coming in to eat. He’s bracing for a major impact around graduation when the restaurant would typically be busy with celebratory meals.
“I understand what’s going on, so I understand why this is happening,” Gjolaj said. “But yeah, it definitely doesn’t help.”
Janoff's Stationery on Broadway has also been particularly quiet in recent weeks, said Jerry Ma, whose father bought the shop more than four decades ago. He said the store, which is packed with pens, easels, greeting cards, and art supplies, never fully recovered after COVID-19, and is once again struggling with fewer students around.
“I hope it's worth it for whoever's protesting,” Ma said. “I'm not saying that as a wise guy. I hope that they feel strongly about what they're doing.”
Maher Mohammed, who operates a halal cart on the corner of 114th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, said he closed for two days during the height of the protests but has mostly returned to normal business operations since then.
Philip Binioris, owner of the Hungarian Pastry Shop, said he hopes his cafe can be a space where people across the ideological spectrum can feel safe.
“Everything’s OK,” he said. “That’s not a big deal, sitting home for two days.”
Still busy at the Hungarian Pastry Shop
Around noon on Tuesday, the Hungarian Pastry Shop on the corner of 111th Street and Amsterdam Avenue was filled with students drinking coffees and munching on pastries. Like most days, a line snaked out the door and onto the sidewalk.
The cafe is an off-campus staple where students and writers convene over slices of carrot cake and massive hamantaschen cookies. While owner Philip Binioris said he hasn’t seen much of a fluctuation in business in the last few weeks, he added that graduation week will be a “test.”
He said pro-Palestinian activists and Israeli students share the space at the Hungarian Pastry Shop peacefully. On Tuesday afternoon, a young woman wearing a keffiyeh typed on her laptop by the window while a group sitting outside chatted in Hebrew and took selfies. Binioris wishes Columbia’s campus could foster a similar environment, where “nobody feels left out or isolated or marginalized.”
“That should be a vision and a hope for everywhere,” he said.
Police cleared a pro-Palestinian tent encampment at the University of Chicago on Tuesday after administrators who had initially adopted a permissive approach said the protest had crossed a line and caused growing safety concerns.
University President Paul Alivisatos acknowledged the school’s role as a protector of freedom of speech after officers in riot gear blocked access to the school’s Quad but also took an enough-is-enough stance.
“The university remains a place where dissenting voices have many avenues to express themselves, but we cannot enable an environment where the expression of some dominates and disrupts the healthy functioning of the community for the rest,” Alivisatos wrote in a message to the university community.
Tensions have continued to ratchet up in standoffs with protesters on campuses across the U.S. — and increasingly, in Europe — nearly three weeks into a movement launched by a protest at Columbia University. Some colleges cracked down immediately on protests against the Israel-Hamas war. Among those who have tolerated the tent encampments, some have begun to lose patience and call in the police over concerns about disruptions to campus life, safety, and the involvement of nonstudents.
Since April 18, just over 2,600 people have been arrested on 50 campuses, figures based on AP reporting and statements from universities and law enforcement agencies.
But not all schools are taking that approach, with some letting protesters hold rallies and organize their encampments as they see fit.
The president of Wesleyan University, a liberal arts school in Connecticut, has commended the on-campus demonstration — which includes a pro-Palestinian tent encampment — as an act of political expression. The camp there has grown from about 20 tents a week ago to more than 100.
Demonstrators tear down barricades that had been erected outside a pro-Palestinian encampment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Monday, May 6, 2024, in Cambridge, Mass. Several hundred demonstrators crossed the barricades to join pro-Palestinian demonstrators who had been given a deadline to leave the encampment. (AP Photo/Josh Reynolds)
“The protesters’ cause is important — bringing attention to the killing of innocent people,” university President Michael Roth wrote to the campus community Thursday. “And we continue to make space for them to do so, as long as that space is not disruptive to campus operations.”
The Rhode Island School of Design, where students started occupying a building Monday, affirms students’ rights to freedom of speech and peaceful assembly and supports all members of the community, a spokesperson said. The school said President Crystal Williams spent more than five hours with the protesters that evening discussing their demands.
On Tuesday the school announced it was relocating classes that were scheduled to take place in the building. It was covered with posters reading “Free Palestine” and “Let Gaza Live,” and the dove was drawn in colored chalk on the sidewalk.
Campuses have tried tactics from appeasement to threats of disciplinary action to resolve the protests and clear the way for commencements.
At the University of Chicago, hundreds of protesters gathered for at least eight days until administrators warned them Friday to leave or face removal. On Tuesday, law enforcement dismantled the encampment.
Officers later picked up a barricade erected to keep protesters out of the Quad and moved it toward the demonstrators, some of whom chanted, “Up, up with liberation. Down, down with occupation!” Police and protesters pushed back and forth along the barricade as the officers moved to reestablish control.
Officials at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, told deans and department chairs Monday that some students have been informed by instructors opposing the suspension of student protesters that they will withhold grades.
The school provost’s office said it will support “sanctions for any instructor who is found to have improperly withheld grades.”
At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, protesters were given a deadline to voluntarily leave or face suspension. Many left, according to an MIT spokesperson, who said protesters breached fencing after the arrival of demonstrators from outside the university. On Monday night, dozens remained at the encampment in a calmer atmosphere.
MIT officials said the following day that dozens of interim suspensions and discipline committee referrals were in process, actions taken to ensure the “safety of our community.”
Sam Ihns, a graduate student studying mechanical engineering and a member of MIT Jews for a Ceasefire, said the group has been there for two weeks and is calling for an end to the killing in Gaza.
“Specifically, our encampment is protesting MIT’s direct research ties to the Israeli Ministry of Defense,” he said.
Many protesters want schools to divest from companies that do business with Israel or otherwise contribute to the war effort. Others simply want to call attention to the deaths in Gaza and for the war to end.
Wesleyan senior Uday Narayanan said students there are prepared to protest through the summer if that’s what it takes for their demands to be met.
“Our tuition dollars are still going toward the brutalization of Palestinians,” the 21-year-old physics major said. “So, ultimately, even though our president has said, ‘Oh, I’m not going to call the cops. Oh, I’m not going to beat up students,’ that’s still not enough, and that’s not the bare minimum for us.”
And as Wesleyan’s May 26 commencement approaches, some protesters fear they will be forcibly removed from the center of campus, adjacent to the field where the ceremony is to take place.
“The longer we are here, the more that their facade of laid back, hands off is falling away,” said Batya Kline, a 22-year-old graduate student. “We know that the university does not want us here, and we know that they can change their pace at the drop of a hat without letting us know.”
Frank Straub, senior director of violence prevention at nonprofit advocacy organization Safe and Sound Schools, said these and past protests have shown the need for early dialogue among the university, police, and protesters to establish ground rules.
Straub said Wesleyan, for example, needs to have conversations about commencement and where protesters can be and should make sure a plan is in place to respond, should protesters want to get arrested, so that can be done without violence.
“By their nature, protests are adversarial, but I think we can have controlled adversity,” he added. “And I think the more campus officials are engaged with the protesters and the more police are included in those conversations, that’s critically important.”
The protests stem from the conflict that started Oct. 7 when Hamas militants attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking roughly 250 hostages.
Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel launched an offensive in Gaza that has killed more than 34,500 Palestinians, about two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory. Israeli strikes have devastated the enclave and displaced most of its inhabitants.