Nearly 80 students who participated in protests against Israel’s occupation of Gaza were expelled, given one-to-three-year suspensions, and were denied degrees at Columbia University.
The university’s annual alumni weekend, which includes the May 7, 2025, Butler Library demonstration on its campus, and the May 31, 2024, “Revolt for Rafah” encampment, have been adjourned from the Judicial Board’s findings on Tuesday.
Pro-Palestinian student camps at Columbia University became the scene of a global wave of campus demonstrations against Israel’s occupation of Gaza in 2024. Before university administrators called NYPD officers to dismantle the camps, which drew dozens of arrests.
In a post on X, Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), an umbrella coalition of student groups, wrote, “Suspension from Columbia for protesting genocide is the highest honour.”
The student body remarked, “We reject Columbia has any reputation that it is deserving of protecting, and we categorically state that we do not want to uphold it.”
Why, then, did Columbia fire these students? And why has the Trump administration repressed higher education?
What has occurred?
Nearly 80 students have been disciplined by Columbia University for participating in pro-Palestinian demonstrations, “separating them from the University.”
Following a number of demonstrations on campus, including the Butler Library’s occupation by students during the school’s final exams on May 7 earlier this year, the disciplinary action follows.
That day, 78 people were detained by the NYPD. In response to the protests, the university is asking to cut all financial ties with Israel, cut all financial relationships with Israel, and show solidarity with Palestinians as the Israeli military fights on.
The suspended students took part in a “peaceful teach-in” that included readings and discussions of the Palestinian author and activist Basil al-Araj, who was killed by Israeli forces in 2017 according to student organizers.
Civil liberties organizations and fellow students have voiced opposition to the massive disciplinary action, which has been hailed as the largest of its kind in Columbia’s history.
According to organizers, the crackdown is a part of a larger effort to stop pro-Palestinian activism on US campuses, and it is related to a pending agreement between Columbia and Trump administration officials.
The majority of students were suspended for two years, according to Columbia Spectator, the university’s student newspaper. According to reports, the students have been asked to apologize to the university before returning to campus.
The Trump administration announced earlier this year that it would withhold about $400 million from funding Columbia University, citing the school’s alleged failure to adequately address anti-Semitism in the wake of campus pro-Palestinian protests.
In exchange for negotiations to reinstate its funding, Columbia agreed to a list of demands made by the government. The university also consented to enforcing a ban on face-protected clothing and gave 36 campus police officers unique authority to arrest students, among other things.
What has Columbia said?
The University claimed in a statement released on Tuesday that hundreds of students had been impacted by the disruption at Butler Library during the reading period, which ultimately resulted in the interim suspension of Columbia participants.
According to the university, sanctions would include probation, one-year to three-year suspensions, degree revocations, and expulsions.
In order to protect student privacy, it did not disclose the names of the students who faced each of these sanctions or how many were facing them.
Our institution must concentrate on fulfilling its academic mission for the community. Respect for one another and the institution’s fundamental work, policies, and rules must also be maintained, according to the statement. “Discretion of University policies and regulations results in consequences for academic activities that result in disruptions.”
What has the response been?
Just over a month after the 30-year-old, a legal permanent resident of the United States, was released from immigration custody , in Louisiana, President Donald Trump met with lawmakers in Washington, DC, to discuss the suspensions and expulsions.
Under the Trump administration, Khalil is still facing deportation because it has relied on a secret provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 to deport foreign students who engage in pro-Palestinian advocacy.
The student activist group Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), an umbrella coalition of student organizations, criticized Columbia for its Tuesday suspensions and expulsions, noting that “While the US and Israel starve 2.1 million Gazans to death, Columbia has diligently worked with Trump’s administration to suspend dozens of students for pro-Palestine activism.”
The group claimed that the suspensions “hugely exceed sentencing precedent for teach-ins or non-Palestine-related building occupations” and that they were the highest suspensions ever for a single political protest in Columbia’s history.
Despite the school’s sanctions, the student body stated in its statement that “students continue to support the US- and Columbia-backed genocide against Israel.”
The group continued, “Every university in Gaza has been destroyed,” quoting testimony from students’ July disciplinary hearings. Academicians have been murdered in the hundreds. Incinerated books and archives The civil registry has been made indefinite for entire families. Not a war, this. It is an “erasure campaign”
“We won’t be deterred,” he declared. According to the statement, “We are committed to the struggle for Palestinian liberation.”
Why has Trump repressed the university sector?
Comparisons have been made between the anti-Vietnam War era, when student activism directly challenged US foreign policy, and the anti-war protests against Israel’s occupation of Gaza that took place last year across US university campuses from Columbia to UCLA to Harvard.
Trump capitalizes on this by portraying students as part of a left-wing, anti-Semitic uprising and imposing sanctions on universities, particularly “elite” ones.
According to the administration, universities have failed to protect Jewish students from harassment and violence during demonstrations, citing incidents of anti-Semitic chants and campfires.
The administration has been conducting investigations by the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Education against more than 50 universities, including Columbia, since the beginning of 2025.
As evidenced by demands placed on Harvard and Columbia, executive orders and actions have been implemented, including freezing billions in federal research grants and threatening to revoke tax-exempt status or accreditation.
The Harvard program’s refusal to have its programs audited for “ideological capture” resulted in the freezing of billions of dollars in federal funding. The administration threatened to outlaw international students from Harvard, citing “national security” and “high campus crime rates, which underscore the White House’s grip on universities.
Harvard has sued the administration to get a temporary ban on international students from entering the country.
Source: Aljazeera
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