While Columbia University in upper Manhattan has been wracked by protests over the war in Gaza, New York University in lower Manhattan was an oasis of calm on Thursday. In part, this is due to NYU’s brilliant strategy of owning individual buildings in Greenwich Village but not a traditional campus with a quad that demonstrators could commandeer to erect a shanty town upon.

Washington Square Park, a site for countless demonstrations over the generations, serves as NYU’s de facto quad, but that’s public rather than university property. So students wanting to protest NYU’s program in Tel Aviv and investment of its endowment in part in Israeli assets feel that would be inappropriate.

So that leaves only two NYU-owned properties appropriate for demonstrating: first, outdoors, the courtyard outside the Stern School of Business and the Tisch School of Communications. But that has been walled off with plywood, with multiple security guards checking entrances to prevent outside agitators from getting in.

Second, indoors, the Kimmel Stairs in the Bobst library. But most of the steps have been blocked off since October 7 (despite a promise to the local community upon construction to keep them open to the public), and guards now keep out looky-loos.

Reasons given for blocking off most of the Kimmel Stairs have been vague. The Washington Square Local has been covering the Kimmel Steps controversy: