Students will protest against Petraeus’s presence again on Monday, Moreno said. He said a coalition of groups would form “your traditional picket”, which would be peaceful, and would take place outside the building where Petraeus is due to teach.

“There are other students that are willing to go the extra step and wait for him after class and just make his time here in New York a living hell basically,” Moreno added…

“The purpose of the protest is to let the administration know that war criminals cannot be hired, especially on a campus that historically has been a working class institution,” Moreno said. “He is obviously not in our interest. So we want him out of campus.”

Hunter College professor Sandor John, who helped organise the protest, told CNN that “a lot of our students are from countries that have been targeted by the United States”. He added: “We don’t want someone like him on campus.”