Columbia University punishes pro-Palestinian protesters who occupied building

Columbia University on Thursday said it had doled out a range of punishments to students who occupied a campus building last spring during pro-Palestinian protests.

The announcement came a week after President Donald Trump’s administration announced that it had cancelled $400 million in federal grants and contracts in response to what it said was the Ivy League school’s poor response to antisemitism on campus.

Columbia University’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, has called the administration’s concerns legitimate and said her institution was working with the government to address them. Campus protests and pro-Israel counter-protests have drawn allegations of antisemitism, Islamophobia and racism.

The university said in a statement on Thursday that its “judicial board determined findings and issued sanctions to students ranging from multi-year suspensions, temporary degree revocations, and expulsions related to the occupation of Hamilton Hall last spring.”

Using a tactical vehicle, New York City police enter an upper floor of Hamilton Hall on the Columbia University campus in New York. AP

The university’s judicial board is comprised of students, faculty and staff selected by the university Senate.

The university, citing legal privacy restrictions, did not release the names of students who were disciplined, nor did it say how many students faced punishments, which the students can appeal.

The union representing Columbia student workers, UAW Local 2710, said in a written statement that its president, Grant Miner, was among the students expelled, just one day before contract negotiations with the university were set to begin, a move the union called “the latest assault on First Amendment rights …”

Students with the Gaza Solidarity Encampment block the entrance of Hamilton Hall at Columbia University after taking over it on April 30, 2024. AP

A university spokesperson said they had no comment on the union statement.

Columbia was the epicenter of anti-Israel protests that hit several US college campuses.

The demonstrations began after the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023 and subsequent U.S.-supported Israeli assault on Gaza. Protesters demanded that university endowments divest from Israeli interests and that the US end military assistance to Israel, among other demands.

The Trump administration has vowed a severe crackdown on what it labels as pro-Hamas protesters.

Demonstrators protest inside Trump Tower in support of Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil in New York. AP

Over the weekend federal immigration agents detained Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of last year’s campus protests whom the administration seeks to deport. The administration has said that his detention was the first of many it hopes to carry out. Khalil’s deportation has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge.