Columbia, the prestigious New York university at the heart of US campus protests against the war in Gaza, announced Monday that it has canceled the main ceremony for graduating students next week.
The Ivy League institution said it would "forego the university-wide ceremony that is scheduled for May 15" and hold a series of smaller events instead.
The university will hold smaller ceremonies for 15,000 graduates from its 19 colleges, mostly at its athletic complex some 100 blocks north, according to the New York Times.
The administration has said the area remains a crime scene after the NYPD police arrested more than 200 student protesters as they violently dispersed pro-Palestinian encampments on college lawns and ended the occupation of a major studies hall last week.
The university also suspended dozens of pro-Palestinian student demonstrators.
Columbia's decision to scale down the commencement event and move it away from the main campus grounds comes as pro-Palestine students in other universities disrupted their graduation ceremonies to demand the US and their schools stop supporting the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
Over the weekend at the graduation ceremony at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor campus, dozens of students carried Palestinian flags to protest the Israeli war on Gaza as they walked out of the event in a parade formation.
Thousands of students across US and European campuses have been camping on their college campuses in solidarity with the Palestinians in a movement gone global.