Columbia University said Thursday it had imposed a series of punishments on students who occupied the campus building during the pro-Palestinian protests last spring.
The news comes a week after the administration of President Donald Trump announced the cancellation of $400 million in federal grants and contracts because it says the Ivy League school has had a poor response to campus anti-Semitism.
Colombia’s interim president Katrina Armstrong said the government’s concerns were legal and said the university was working with the government to address them. Protests and pro-Israel anti-aggression on campus in New York City have raised allegations of anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and racism.
The university said in a statement Thursday that its Judiciary Committee “puts sanctions on students who have been suspended for years, temporarily revoked and expelled from the school’s Hamilton Hall last spring.
The Judiciary Committee is composed of students elected by the University Senate and faculty.
The university did not release the names of students subject to disciplinary action on the grounds of limitations on legal privacy, nor did it state how many students could appeal.
The union representing Columbia student worker UAW Local 2710 said in a statement that its chairman, Grant Miner, was one of the expelled students, just the day before negotiations with the university contract began, the action was called “the latest attack on First Amendment rights.”
A university spokesperson had no comments on the union statement.
Colombia is the center of anti-Israel protests, attacking several U.S. university campuses.
The demonstrations began with Hamas’s attack on Israel in October 2023, followed by the United States’ support for Israeli attacks on Gaza. Protesters demanded that universities donate to evacuate their interests from Israel, and the United States terminated military aid to Israel, and other requirements.
The Trump administration vowed to severely suppress protesters marked as loved ones.
Over the weekend, federal immigration agents detained Mahmoud Khalil, the leader of last year’s campus protests, who the Trump administration tried to deport. The government said his detention was a number of detentions that were expected to be carried out. Harrier’s deportation has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge.
