Columbia University is rethinking its commencement plans after weeks of pro-Palestinian protests ended with authorities forcing their way into a barricaded school building and arresting dozens of people, according to a source at the university and two members of student government.

The source at the university said the main commencement ceremony was slated to be canceled, but smaller events were still being planned.

After a meeting with top university leaders Friday, two members of student government said administrators indicated they are not sure they can hold a commencement ceremony on the main Morningside Heights campus in Manhattan because of security concerns. 

It is unclear if final decisions have been made.

“We know that our students and their loved ones are wondering about plans for University Commencement and school Class Days. Offices across Columbia are committed to ensuring that all ceremonies run smoothly and that all our students and their families and friends get the celebration they deserve,” a spokesperson for Columbia said in a statement when asked for comment about commencement plans. “We will share more information about preparations that are underway soon.”

One of the student government representatives who was in the meeting said Columbia’s administration is primarily concerned about outside protesters and is struggling to find an alternative venue.

The students told the university leaders that many in the student body are concerned about President Minouche Shafik speaking at the ceremony. “Her presence would be the cause of a lot of upset,” one of the student leaders told NBC News.

Other students are worried about the expense of staying on campus until May 15, when commencement is scheduled to happen, only to find out that it has been canceled.

An estimated 15,000 students are planning to graduate in separate outdoor ceremonies May 15. Commencement at the Ivy League school is a venerable tradition dating to 1758, when the school was known as King’s College. Each school within Columbia has also typically held its own individual graduation ceremonies.

One member of the faculty said some faculty and staff at Columbia and Barnard are planning to attend an alternative graduation ceremony on May 16. Another member involved in planning said the counter-graduation will be inspired by the counter-commencement held in 1968.

Protests at Columbia’s upper Manhattan campus erupted April 17 when students pitched about 50 tents while demanding a cease-fire in Gaza and insisting the university divest from companies that they say could be profiting from the war.

Authorities cleared out the protesters, but they returned — and encampments quickly appeared at college campuses across the country.

At Columbia, school administrators asked New York City police officers for help after protesters — including people identified by city officials as “professional outside agitators” — occupied an on-campus building early Tuesday and barricaded themselves inside.

On Tuesday night, police in riot gear descended on the school around 9 p.m. and entered the occupied Hamilton Hall through a second-floor window. Nearly 100 people were arrested, authorities said, including 40 who were on the barricaded building’s first floor.

The arrests have shaken confidence in Shafik among some students and faculty at Columbia. In a letter to the New York Police Department asking for its assistance to clear Hamilton Hall, the university president said the occupation there “left us no choice.”

In its request for police assistance, Columbia asked the NYPD to stay on campus until at least May 17, two days after commencement.

A Columbia spokesman had warned students that they faced suspension if they did not dissolve an encampment that had grown on the campus’ West Lawn ahead of the end of the academic year, and that if they were seniors they would be ineligible to graduate.

“Disruptions on campus have created a threatening environment for many,” spokesman Ben Chang had said, adding that the steps the school was taking were “about responding to the actions of the protesters, not their cause.”

As campus unrest roils other schools, including with police intervention and arrests, Columbia’s dilemma — whether to hold a commencement ceremony but with major safety concerns or cancel it altogether — is one other colleges have faced.

Last month, the University of Southern California in Los Angeles said it was canceling its main commencement ceremony, scheduled for May 10, that was set to include a keynote address from alumnus Jon M. Chu, the director of “Crazy Rich Asians,” and a presentation of honorary degrees to tennis star Billie Jean King and others.

The school had already canceled a commencement speech by a Muslim valedictorian following controversy over her social media posts about Israel’s war in Gaza. But USC said it would still host individual school commencement ceremonies and other related events.

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Donald Trump’s former campaign press secretary described the “crisis” caused by the release of the infamous Access Hollywood video during the 2016 presidential race, as she took the stand to testify in the Manhattan “hush money” trial against the former US president. 

Hope Hicks, who worked for Trump’s 2016 campaign and followed him to the White House, described how the tape — in which the then-candidate was heard to brag about grabbing women’s genitals — was a “damaging development” for the Republican nominee’s election bid, which was “going to be hard to overcome”.

Trump’s team believed “this was a crisis”, said Hicks, who previously worked for Fox Corp and is now a communications consultant.

However Trump himself considered the recorded comments, published just days before the November 2016 vote, to be “pretty standard stuff”, she said.

“Mr Trump felt like this wasn’t good, but was also just two guys talking privately,” Hicks testified, while Trump looked on from the defence table. “He felt like this was pretty standard stuff for two guys chatting with each other.”

The longtime Trump aide’s testimony came at the end of the third week of the trial in which the former president stands accused of covering up payments made to buy the silence of Stormy Daniels, a porn actor who alleged she had an extramarital affair with him.

The prosecution called Hicks in an attempt to prove its theory that Trump was desperate to prevent further bad publicity from emerging in the aftermath of the Access Hollywood tape when he agreed to pay Daniels $130,000 to stay quiet. The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which brought the case, claims these transactions therefore amounted to an attempt to “corrupt” the election.

The judge overseeing the case, Juan Merchan, has banned prosecutors from playing the tape to the jury, but allowed a transcript of Trump’s comments to be read in court.

Earlier in the day, Merchan directly addressed Trump to contradict comments from the presumptive Republican nominee in November’s election claiming a court-imposed gag order would prevent him from taking the stand in his own defence.

“You have an absolute right to testify at trial, if that is what you decide to do,” Merchan said. “That is a constitutional right”.

Trump was fined $9,000 on Tuesday for repeatedly violating the gag order, which bars him from attacking witnesses or jurors in the case. Merchan warned that he could jail Trump if he continued to flout the order.

On his way into the courtroom on Friday morning, Trump told reporters he would be “filing a lawsuit on the constitutionality of [the gag order]” but provided no further details.

Katie Ledecky reacts after setting a world record and winning the Woman’s 1500m Final at the FINA Swimming World Cup in 2022.

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Katie Ledecky reacts after setting a world record and winning the Woman’s 1500m Final at the FINA Swimming World Cup in 2022.

Gregory Shamus/Getty Images

Katie Ledecky is used to getting medals.

She has 10 Olympic medals — seven of which are gold — and she has 26 world championship medals — 21 of those are gold.

All of that hardware has helped her earn the undisputed title as the greatest female swimmer of all time.

But on Friday, she will receive a different kind of medal: the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest award a civilian can get from the U.S. government.

Ledecky spoke to All Things Considered host Juana Summers about what the medal means to her, how she is thinking about the Paris Olympics in July-August, and why she has no plans to retire after this summer.

Juana Summers will be in Paris covering the Olympics for NPR. You can follow all her reporting on All Things Considered.

Ledecky with two gold and two silver medals at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.

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This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Interview highlights

Juana Summers: Alright Katie, so this medal — does this one go in the same trophy cases as your Olympic medals? What do you think you’re going to do with it?

Katie Ledecky: Oh, I have not even thought of that yet! This is definitely one that’s very meaningful and very unique. And never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined I would be receiving this recognition. So I’m very, very honored.

Summers: Let’s look ahead if we can, because this could be another incredibly big year for you. The Summer Olympics start in just a few months in Paris — how are you feeling in the pool these days? Do you feel like you’re ready?

Ledecky: I’m ready. We have our Olympic trials in about a month now. So that’s what I’m gearing up for, I have one more meet before then. So everything is tracking well, my training is going well. And I’m really excited for hopefully the opportunity to represent the U.S. at a fourth Olympics. I can’t believe that I get this opportunity and it’s gonna be a great summer and I’m excited.

Summers: If the trials go your way, and you do indeed get to represent the U.S. at your fourth Olympic Games, do you know which event you will be most excited for?

Ledecky: Oh, well, I hope I’ll be competing in multiple events. And each one is special in a different way. The 800 free has always been my favorite and the event that I swam at my first Olympics in 2012, which I won gold at at age 15. So that’s one that I hold a special place for in my heart. But I love all my events. And I’m looking forward to each of the challenges that I’ll have with each of the races.

Summers: If you head to Paris, do you think they will be your last? Do you think we’ll see you come back for the 2028 games in Los Angeles?

Ledecky: I take things year by year, but right now, I definitely could see myself competing in 2028, with it being a home Olympics. It’s something that’s very unique. It’s something that not every Olympic athlete gets. And so I definitely know I’m not retiring after this summer and 2028 is very appealing. So I think, at this point, I want to be there, I want to compete in at least one event, maybe more. But again, plans can change. It’s a long ways away, my focus is solely on this summer in Paris at this moment.

Ledecky in the Women’s 800m Freestyle Final in Tokyo in 2021.

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Summers: You know, I have to say you have been such an inspiration for so many young women athletes, whether they are swimmers or competitors in other sports, just due to your dominance, the number of medals you’ve amassed, your longevity in your sport, and now receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is one of the highest awards a civilian can get in the United States. How do you think about your career, what you represent, what you show to a new generation of athletes, particularly women athletes?

Ledecky: Oh, thank you for the kind words. I tried to give as much as I can. And I hope that young girls look up to me and can see the work that I’ve put in and the results that I’ve had and what I’ve tried to accomplish in and out of the pool. I hope they see that and are inspired by it, whether they’re a swimmer or not.

I think, you know, I’ve learned a lot through the sport. And through this over a decade-long journey I’ve had at the international level, I’ve learned a lot about goal setting and dedication and resilience.

Summers: Is there a lesson or a story about resilience you would share for the folks who look to you as a role model?

Ledecky: Sure, I think one story that I think a lot of Olympic athletes would tell you is about our experience in 2020 and 2021 and the Olympics being postponed a year. In swimming, the Olympics is the pinnacle of our sport and we build four-year plans to peak at the Olympics and to be our very best. And so to have that pushed a year and to be kind of living under uncertain circumstances, and not knowing whether the Olympics would actually happen, I think took a lot of resilience for all of us, and we all had to adapt and train in backyard pools and do weightlifting in our homes or apartments and all those things.

So I learned a lot about myself during that time, learned that you can adapt and you can adjust to change. And certainly, we weren’t going through the worst of it during that time — I felt very lucky and fortunate to have a goal and something to work towards with the Olympics. I know that so many people during that time were suffering a lot more than we were. I think having those experiences have made me tougher, and really taught me that I’m able to adapt when things don’t go the way that I anticipate they’ll go.

Summers: Katie, whether Paris is your last Olympics, or you go to L.A., or even beyond, eventually, you will stop swimming competitively. What do you think about when you think about that future? Is that something you don’t even consider right now?

Ledecky: I haven’t thought about it too much. But for me, when I think of swimming, and I think of this career that I’ve had, I think of all the joy that I’ve had in the sport, and everything that I’ve been able to learn through the sport, all the people that I’ve gotten to meet through the sport, all the places that I’ve gotten to go through competitive swimming. And I think because of all that joy that I’ve experienced in the sport, it’s something that I’m never going to stop doing.

Of course, some day my competitive career will come to an end and I’m not going to be looking at the clock or having a coach get my times every every set. But I think I’ll always find myself going back to the pool and swimming some laps or splashing around. And it’s a place that I find so much joy.

As we get into the summer months, I hope that a lot of other people can find that joy and learn how to swim. It’s such an important life skill. And, in my view, the greatest sport on earth, and something that you can do for the rest of your life. I hope that I’ll be swimming into my 90s — I have a 98-year-old grandma, so I’m lucky to have some good genes there, and I hope that I’ll be able to stay healthy and happy, and happy in the pool and happy in the water. It’s definitely my happy place.