Anti-Israel activists attempted to stop Columbia University's first day of classes on Tuesday with a picket line and vandalism against a monument. CUAD established picket lines at the Morningside Heights campus gates, calling on students, faculty, and staff not to cross the protest boundary. The activist coalition contended that there should be no sense of normalcy as the Israel-Hamas War progressed and Gazan students could not continue their education because Palestinian academic institutions had been destroyed in the fighting.