At Columbia University’s campus on Wednesday, the main quad looked like a stage set for confrontation.
On one end stood Butler Library, a neoclassical colonnaded structure. At its base, a brightly tented encampment of more than 100 pro-Palestinian demonstrators persisted for the sixth straight day after the police had swept away an earlier village and arrested its student inhabitants.
On the other end stood Low Library, similarly grand and colonnaded. A crush of reporters had gathered on its stairs because the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, was due to speak after meeting with Jewish students. In the morning, Mr. Johnson had called for the resignation of Columbia’s embattled president, Nemat Shafik, who he said had failed to protect the Jewish students from antisemitic attacks.
But after Columbia on Tuesday night backed off a threat to call in the police to dismantle the tents, the mood in the encampment had relaxed. Students picnicked on Dunkin’ Donuts and Popeyes.
Columbia had said it would continue negotiating with the protesters, who are demanding that it divest from companies with financial ties to Israel. At a news conference near the encampment, a student protest leader, Khymani James, declared, “This is a win for us.”
There was a counterprotest area of sorts near the encampment. On one side of a low stone wall, an Israeli flag was hanging, and the wall was covered with posters of the hostages taken by Hamas. But there were only a few people there. One of them, Jonathan Swill, sat on the sidewalk scrolling through Psalms on his phone and praying.
Mr. Swill, 27, a graduate student in biomedical engineering, seemed unimpressed that Mr. Johnson was on his way.
“I couldn’t care less about him, I mean, it’s a political stunt,” he said, adding, “I’ve had to deal with this for six months, and he’s decided now’s the time?” Mr. Swill, who said he had friends who were killed at the Nova festival in Israel on Oct. 7, returned to his Psalms.
On the encampment side of the fence, Ben Garber, an alumnus from the class of 2018, said he did not have much use for Mr. Johnson either.
“Politicians want to come and have their photo taken,” he said. “It’s an election year.”
As the sun began to dip toward the west, a few stray raindrops fell, and the sky threatened to rainbow. Mr. Johnson appeared on the steps of Low. Most of the encampment dwellers stayed in the encampment and continued to go about their quiet afternoon. But hundreds of people crowded the steps, craning for a view. Many of them booed, but then the crowd quieted to try to hear what he had to say.
They still could not hear him. “We can’t hear you!” they began chanting.
Mr. Johnson, flanked by fellow Republican lawmakers, delivered his message. “The madness has to stop,” he said. He said Jewish students had told him of “heinous acts of bigotry” they had experienced because of their faith. His advice for the people in the encampment: “Go back to class and stop the nonsense.”
Cells of protesters in the audience got off a few rounds of “Free Palestine / Free, free Palestine” and “Disclose / Divest / We will not stop / We will not rest.”
But then the politicians withdrew, and so did the protesters. The drizzle stopped, sun poured down on the quad and the crowd dispersed slowly and peacefully.
