[News] Columbia Suspends, Expels nearly 80 Students for Gaza Protest

[Anti-Imperialist News]

palestinechronicle.com
<https://www.palestinechronicle.com/columbia-suspends-expels-nearly-80-students-for-gaza-protest/>
Columbia Suspends, Expels nearly 80 Students for Gaza Protest
July 23, 2025
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The statue of Alma Mater, on the steps of Columbia’s library, was soaked in
red as the protests resumed. (Photo: via NationalSJP TW Page)

*By Palestine Chronicle Staff
<https://www.palestinechronicle.com/writers/palestine-chronicle-staff>*

In May, New York State Police stormed the university’s main library reading
room to disperse the sit-in, resulting in the arrest of dozens of student
protestors.

Columbia University has suspended or expelled close to 80 students for
participating in protests against Israel’s ongoing genocidal war on Gaza.

Students have been suspended “for one to three years or expelled for
joining a May 2025 teach-in about Palestine in honor of the writer and
freedom fighter Basel al-Araj, who Israel murdered in an extrajudicial
assassination in 2017,” the student activist group Columbia University
Apartheid Divest (CUAD), said in a statement on Tuesday.

The group said the “sanctions are believed to be part of a federal deal
Columbia is about to announce that includes a formal partnership with the
zionist Anti-Defamation League and an agreement to use the IHRA’s
definition of antisemitism, which equates criticism of Israel with
discrimination against Jews.”
‘Violations’

Columbia University said in a statement
<https://communications.news.columbia.edu/news/university-statement-ujb-determinations-butler-library-disruption-and-alumni-weekend>
that the sanctions related to “the disruption of Butler Library in May 2025
and the encampment during Alumni Weekend in spring 2024.”

The university stated the sanctions issued on July 21 by the University
Judicial Board “were determined by a UJB panel of professors and
administrators.”


Columbia noted that “Disruptions to academic activities are in violation of
University policies and Rules, and such violations will necessarily
generate consequences.”

The sanctions from Butler Library, it said, “include probation, suspensions
(ranging from one year to three years), degree revocations, and expulsions.”

In May, New York State Police stormed
<https://www.palestinechronicle.com/police-storm-columbia-university-library-arrest-pro-palestinian-student-protesters/>
the university’s main library reading room to disperse the sit-in,
resulting in the arrest of dozens of student protestors.
‘Exceptionally Harsh Sanctions’

The CUAD claimed Columbia’s Acting President and Board of Trustees
Co-Chair, Claire Shipman, in “collaboration” with the Trump administration,
“illegally restructured the University Judicial Board (UJB) and removed
student members and faculty oversight to pursue exceptionally harsh
sanctions against its own students.”


The group said Shipman “has cracked down on pro-Palestine organizing in
partnership with White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller, who
devised Trump’s policy of family separation and the Muslim travel ban.”

It added that the university’s latest action “is presumed part of the
near-final agreement Shipman negotiated with Miller – similar to the deal
Columbia struck with the White House to expel students who allegedly
occupied Hind’s Hall” last year. During a protest, students entered the
university’s Hamilton Hall and renamed it Hind’s Hall, after a six-year-old
Palestinian girl killed by Israeli forces in Gaza.
Students ‘Remain Committed’

The CUAD said students “remain committed to ending US- and Columbia-backed
Israeli genocide regardless of the school’s sanction.

Testimony from students’ July disciplinary hearings” underscored they had
nothing to apologize for,” the group stated.

It said disciplinary letters demand that suspended students submit
apologies in order to return to campus in one to three years, “which some
students have stated they will refuse.”

“If those protestors hold their ground by refusing to apologize, the
suspensions will convert into de facto expulsions and the number of
permanent sanctions will skyrocket,” CUAD stated.

The group said that once Barnard University, “joins Columbia in announcing
charges, these will be the most suspensions for a single political protest
in Columbia campus history and hugely exceed sentencing precedent for
teach-ins or non-Palestine-related building occupations.”
Mahmoud Khalil

Student encampments against Israel’s military campaing in Gaza, launched at
the university in 2024, sparked a widespread campaign on campuses across
the US with thousands detained as university authorities and police cracked
down on the protests.

Most notable was the arrest of one of the student leaders, Mahmoud Khalil,
from his home in March. Khalil, who was released only last month, said
<https://www.columbiaspectator.com/opinion/2025/04/04/a-letter-to-columbia/>
in a letter in April that Columbia had “laid the groundwork” for his
“abduction.”

“Columbia has suppressed student dissent under the auspices of combating
antisemitism. Last year, Columbia turned over student disciplinary records
to Congress and created the Task Force on Antisemitism that broadly
categorized anti-Israel sentiment as hate speech to condemn protests,” he
stated.

*(The Palestine Chronicle)*
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