Campuses are calmer, but they are not normal, students and faculty say

A year of war in Gaza has left college students and faculty feeling shaken and angry, with the world and with each other. On the surface, the scene on Columbia University’s campus appears normal after a spring semester rocked by encampments and police crackdowns. Students are eating lunch on green lawns and tapping a volleyball back and forth under sunny skies. But, “like a horror film,” says Reinhold Martin, an architectural historian at Columbia, “there’s something wrong with this picture."