Columbia Caves; Disciplines Anti-Semitic Disruptors

Students at Columbia University are facing disciplinary action for illegally occupying a university building in April 2024.

The decision comes as a result of the Trump administration pulling $400 million in federal grants from the university whilst placing it under intense scrutiny by the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) anti-Semitism task force.

The punishments are “ranging from multi-year suspensions, temporary degree revocations, and expulsions” for the week-long occupation of Hamilton Hall. “With respect to other events taking place last spring,” such as the illegal tent encampments and the assault and harassment of Jewish students, the University Judicial Board “recognized previously imposed disciplinary action.”

Demonstrations sparked on campus after Hamas’s October 7 terror attack in Israel which produced several waves of anti-Israel incidents all across the country, some of which involved Jewish students being assaulted on university campuses like Columbia.

To their credit, Columbia did take action against two radical groups on the university campus, Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, which were suspended for violating campus policies.

Anti-Semitic demonstrations increased, however, and on April 1, demonstrators put up a tent encampment on campus which resulted in 108 arrests.

After several brief suspensions, the illegal encampment returned two days later, and university administrators continued to do nothing when the activists broke into a campus building and declared it “occupied.”

April 30 rolled around and the New York Police Department arrested 119 activists at Columbia, including 46 agitators charged with criminal trespassing for occupying the building.

Shockingly, criminal charges were dropped for all but 15 of the protestors, and the university took no disciplinary measures.

Until today.

It took scrutiny for any action to be taken, including a new president to be elected for any justice to be served.

Thankfully, President Trump’s DOJ launched an anti-Semitism Task Force which began investigating Columbia University and other schools that tolerated student’s acts of anti-Semitism.

Recently, the task force removed $400 million in federal grant funding from Columbia whilst threatening to pull additional sums of money if the school refused to take action.

Another threat issued by the Trump administration was for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to arrest and deport foreign students who took part in the anti-Semitic demonstration, a threat they made good on when they arrested graduate student, Mahmoud Khalil.

Khalil’s arrest will now remain as a strike against him from entering the United States in the first place (deportation proceedings are complicated by the fact that Khalil is married to an American citizen, who is eight months pregnant).

Jewish groups on Columbia’s campus have expressed some relief over the shift in actions taking place on campus stating, “This ruling is an important first step in righting the wrongs of the past year and a half,” wrote Brian Cohen, executive director of the Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life, Columbia/Barnard Hillel.

“I am grateful to the Rules Administrator and other members of the Administration for their roles in ensuring these cases were resolved.”

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