NEW YORK — Everyone was messaging wildly on the Columbia University campus on Wednesday, and for the most part, everyone seemed to get what they wanted out of it.
The pro-Palestinian protesters camped out on one of the quad’s lawns presented themselves as orderly and repressed, reeling from reports of Jewish community members feeling bullied and scared. Close by, House Speaker Mike Johnson and a coterie of Republican lawmakers presented themselves as protectors of free speech and a check on elite universities that have spun out of control, a face of shared conservative values after weeks of bitter division in the House GOP caucus.
The two groups held dueling press conferences across the quad of a campus that has been largely closed to outsiders for more than a week, since the first protester tent encampment went up and turned the school into a national political obsession. Protesters sitting in the encampment Wednesday politely deflected questions and directed reporters to the steps outside Butler Library, where the camping students’ media coordinator, Khymani James, held remarks. There was none of the angry shouting and rhetoric you’d expect from the national coverage of the protest movement.