On a warm November daywazamba, a group of Columbia University professors set up “listening tables” near the center of campus and hailed students rushing to class, inviting them to stop and talk.
About a dozen students, alumni and faculty members sat down, grabbed some free pizza and chatted about how the protests over the Israel-Hamas war had alienated some of them and inspired others.
Then, a woman in a kaffiyeh, the traditional Palestinian scarf, spoke up and the tension rose. Over the past year, her view of the conflict had evolved, she told the group. She talked about “this genocide.”
“I wouldn’t call it a genocide,” said Scott Barry Kaufman, an adjunct psychology professor moderating the group. “Do you hate me because I disagree with you?”
No, she did not hate him — “for that reason,” she said.
“Ouch,” Dr. Kaufman replied.
As campuses have been caught up in protests and counterprotests over the Israel-Hamas war, universities have tried to regain control and dial down the temperature, driven in part by pressure from outside forces like alumni, politicians and federal civil rights investigations into antisemitism on campuses. In the spring, some resorted to force, with arrests and suspensions.
Now, more of them are trying the gentler but also messy art of conversation as an antidote to student unrest.
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On Friday, trouble came for the commissioner himself: Federal agents arrived at the residences of Mr. Donlon, 71, a former F.B.I. counterterrorism official hired after his predecessor departed amid an investigation. They seized documents that he said had come into his possession about 20 years ago.
Ms. Gentili, 52, was found dead in her Brooklyn apartment in February after taking a combination of drugs, court documents show. Her death prompted an outpouring of grief among members of New York’s L.G.B.T.Q. community, with more than 1,000 people packing the pews at a spirited celebration of her life at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
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