Ivy League school dropped scores of suspensions targeting anti-Israel student radicals
Columbia University announced Thursday that it had identified and suspended one of the pro-Hamas students who stormed an Israeli history class and targeted Jewish students with anti-Semitic flyers two days prior. Whether that suspension sticks could provide early insight into how seriously the Ivy League school is taking threats from President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans.
“In connection with Tuesday’s disruption of a History of Modern Israel class, Columbia University has identified and suspended a Columbia participant, pending a full investigation and disciplinary process,” a university statement read. “Disruptions to our classrooms and our academic mission and efforts to intimidate or harass our students are not acceptable, are an affront to every member of our University community, and will not be tolerated.”
The school leveled similar suspensions on students who participated in illegal anti-Israel protests last spring. But it went on to drop the overwhelming majority of those suspensions. Of the 40 students arrested or disciplined when the university called police to campus to clear an anti-Israel encampment on April 18, only 2 remained suspended by Aug. 6, according to disciplinary data released by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
Police arrested another 35 students for failing to leave a second encampment on April 29, but none of them faced suspensions. 31 of those students were in good standing with Columbia by early August. And of the 22 that were arrested in Hamilton Hall after storming the campus building, only 3 faced suspensions. A fourth was on disciplinary probation from a prior hearing, while the remaining 18 were in “good standing,” according to the congressional report.
At that time, federal oversight into Columbia and other elite higher education institutions was limited to the GOP-led House. While the Biden administration launched investigations into complaints of anti-Semitism at some universities in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, it settled many of those complaints on terms favorable to the schools. In the Senate, meanwhile, then-majority leader Chuck Schumer privately assured Columbia’s leaders that their “political problems are really only among Republicans,” according to a House report released late last year.
Those Republicans now control the House, Senate, and White House, and they’ve pledged to crack down on schools that go easy on pro-Hamas radicals. Trump, for example, has said that U.S. colleges “will and must end the anti-Semitic propaganda or they will lose their accreditation and federal support.” He’s also threatened to deport campus radicals in the country on student visas, saying, “As soon as they hear that, they’re going to behave.” Congressional Republicans in both chambers have echoed those sentiments.
Columbia’s handling of the Tuesday class storming, then, could provide a window into how the school’s administrators assess those threats. Should it suspend more students connected to the storming—and keep those suspensions in place—the moves would suggest that interim Columbia president Katrina Armstrong is keen to take a stronger stance against student radicals under the Trump administration. Armstrong has already enlisted the lobbying firm of Trump transition alumnus, Dan Murphy, to “provide strategic counsel and advocate on issues related to higher education and appropriations,” according to disclosures filed with Congress.
A Columbia spokeswoman did not answer questions on the details of the suspension and how long it would last.
The student suspended Thursday kicked off the semester by storming an Israeli history class alongside three other pro-Hamas activists. They targeted Jewish students with anti-Semitic flyers that glorified Hamas, showed a trampled Star of David, and advocated violence.
One flyer stated, “THE ENEMY WILL NOT SEE TOMORROW,” using an upside-down triangle—a symbol that Hamas uses to denote Israeli targets—to spell “TOMORROW.” The flyer depicted a truck full of Hamas terrorists brandishing RPGs and machine guns.
Another flyer, with the caption “CRUSH ZIONISM,” depicted the Star of David underneath a boot. A third encouraged students to “BURN ZIONISM TO THE GROUND.”
In response, Columbia posted a security guard outside at least one Jewish studies course on Wednesday. The university announced that it “mobilized the Public Safety team to prevent future incidents, including identifying and directing additional resources to classes at increased risk for disruption.”
This article was originally published at freebeacon.com
