NEW YORK — Sam Nahins arrived at Columbia University in the fall of 2020 and spent the year taking classes online — hardly the vibrant Ivy League experience he’d expected. Now he, like college seniors across the country, faces the prospect that the celebration of four years of hard work will be upended should commencements be disrupted because of student protests over the Israel-Gaza war.

“I really wanted my parents to see me with that diploma and that cap and gown,” said Nahins, 31, a New York native who is about to earn a creative writing degree. “I really wanted to do it for them, and I imagine that a lot of students are feeling the same way.”

It is indeed a bittersweet moment for the Class of 2024, some of whose high school graduations were forced onto Zoom by the pandemic. From Boston to California, many are mourning the upset of these fleeting moments of their academic lives and how they are again bearing the brunt of international events outside their control.

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Protests over the Israel-Gaza bloodshed began at Columbia nearly two weeks ago and have sparked a nationwide movement of dissent on campuses. More than 900 students have been arrested.

College administrators are reexamining commencement programs in the wake of heightened security concerns, grappling with ways to honor students’ right to free speech while ensuring safety. Even those ceremonies that go forward are likely to be more muted than in past years. At the University of Michigan, for example, graduates have been told that banners will not be allowed, and protests can be held only in designated areas.

One institution has already announced a cancellation, and the news late Thursday from the University of Southern California triggered anger and dismay there. USC’s decision to call off its main commencement on May 10 — an event that usually draws more than 65,000 people — followed a decision to pull the commencement speech of its 2024 valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, who has publicly supported Palestinians.

“I have never felt more discouraged, disappointed and, frankly, furious,” said Georgia Nolan, 21, a real estate development major at USC. “As a class, we did not get a high school graduation and so receiving this news feels like a slap in the face. A shadow has been cast over what should be two of the biggest milestones in our early adult lives.”

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Alex Ornes, 22, a graduating senior studying theater, said the university’s latest move felt like “the path of least resistance.”

“It’s like the school saying, ‘Oh, you protest against us? We’ll just cancel everything,’” she said.

Ceremonies for USC’s individual colleges are still scheduled, though graduates are limited to four tickets for family members. Ornes has six family members coming to town for graduation, meaning two will have to watch remotely as she walks across the stage.

“I’m disappointed, of course, but there’s a part of me that thinks, none of this matters in the grand scheme, compared to what going on in Palestine,” she said.

Others share her ambivalence — or see opportunity.

Jackie Campos, 21, a senior in sustainability studies at the University of Texas at Austin, considers both the pandemic and the Israel-Gaza protests as less of an imposition and more of a moment for her cohort of students to take charge. While in high school, she served on a group that managed a pandemic response. This month, she joined demonstrations on her campus in support of Palestinians, which on Wednesday ended with a mass arrest of 57 people.

“We’re not afraid to show our power,” she said at one of those protests last week. “Having youth-led movements is what’s going to ultimately lead to change.”

Campos turned out in part because of the “excessive” and “unconstitutional” police crackdown. (Within days, the county attorney dropped all the charges, citing deficiencies in the documents submitted by police.) The show of force spurred her to focus more on continuing the protests — as well as on getting UT President Jay Hartzell to resign for his role in the crackdown — than on whether the university would hold in-person commencement on May 11.

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“We need to continue showing up,” she said.

On Friday at Columbia, mere yards from the protest encampment on its main lawn, students posed for pictures in their blue graduation gowns on the library steps. Some worried about what would happen to their graduation ceremony, for now scheduled to be held on the same expanse on May 15. Rumors and theories flew. Would an agreement be reached in time to avert cancellation? Would the ceremony be moved to Yankee Stadium or a place off campus?

On Monday, Columbia University president Nemat “Minouche” Shafik said in a statement that the administration and the protesters had not been able to reach an agreement during negotiations. She urged the students to voluntarily disperse, saying the protest had become a distraction for those studying for exams.

But she said she wanted to reassure the community that “we will indeed hold a commencement” — stopping short of saying whether it would be held in its traditional locale at the heart of campus.

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The Class of ’24 has lived with disruptions since before they were born, said Teji Vijayakumar, 21, who’s about to receive a bachelor’s degree in computer science and visual arts. The student body president and her fellow classmates — members of what’s known as Generation Z — came into the world in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, which she feels has contributed to a collective anxiety.

“It’s striking how little normalcy has been in our lives,” she said. In high school, “we started with Donald Trump being elected, then mass shootings, Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, and when we’re about to enter the real world, covid hits. We start college and Roe v. Wade gets overturned, and now we’re here.”

“Here” means a continued tent vigil on the Butler Library lawn, where students are calling for the school to divest its financial ties to Israel. Protesters with scarves obscuring their faces prepared snacks next to a fence dotted with red, green and black Palestinian flags and signs that read “Demilitarize Education” and “Justice for Genocide.”

“I think my age group is kind of used to this,” Vijayakumar said. “It would be different if you had a really idyllic childhood. That doesn’t feel like what this is. Our grade is used to rolling with the punches, and that’s a good thing.”

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Nahins, a veteran who flew overseas drones for the U.S. Air Force, is ready to wrap up what he calls one of the toughest years of his life. He had long considered Columbia a refuge from post-traumatic stress diagnosed from his time in the military. Then came the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel — when militants killed about 1,200 and took hostages, prompting an Israeli counterattack that the Gaza Health Ministry says has killed more than 34,000 in Gaza. Like other Jewish students on campus, Nahins says he has since endured antisemitic slurs.

He said he suffered his first panic attack in two years last Tuesday and got through it by deep breathing and hugging his emotional support retriever, Ghost.

“Ever since Oct. 7, things haven’t been the same,” Nahins said Friday. He has heard the protesters’ chants of “death to America” and “death to Zionists” and seen others, their faces obscured by kaffiyeh scarves, filming him as he stood with counterprotesters and waved an American flag on the library steps opposite the tent encampment.

There were other, more painful losses. Nahins and a buddy had been planning to travel to a conflict zone like Israel or Ukraine after graduation and file dispatches from the war, Ernest Hemingway-style. But the friend withdrew emotionally after the Israeli attack on a humanitarian group’s food convoy in March that killed seven aid workers. Then Nahins saw that his buddy had posted a photo of the bombed-out aid car on Facebook and written, “Invade Israel. Wipe it off the map.”

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Stunned, Nahins texted his friend: “Do you think Israel should be wiped off the map?”

“Yes” was the reply.

He has grown closer to other friends, some of them veterans like himself.

“The silver lining is that you really figure out who your friends are during a battle like this, with a near war zone on campus,” he said. “In some twisted way, I’m a little bit grateful.”

Hennessy-Fiske reported from Austin. Kyle Melnick and Joyce Koh in New York, Kim Bellware in Chicago and Hannah Natanson in Washington contributed to this report.

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