By the time The Late Show began airing on Tuesday night, police in riot gear had already breached and cleared Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall–which had been occupied by pro-Palestinian student protesters in the early hours of Tuesday morning–while reportedly making dozens of arrests. But just a few miles downtown at the Ed Sullivan Theater, Stephen Colbert was making his support for the young demonstrators known.
“Of course, one of the biggest stories right now is the nationwide, pro-Palestinian student protests around college campuses in the United States,” Colbert explained on Tuesday. “In what’s being called ‘perhaps the most significant student movement since the anti-Vietnam campus protests of the late 1960s.’”
The host went on to explain that tension between students and school administrators, at least at Columbia, began to ramp up a few weeks ago when students began setting up an encampment in order to protest the political happenings in Gaza. In response, university president Minouche Shafik called upon authorities to help remove the students involved, and Colbert is not OK with that.
