Some students who participated in the occupation of Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall in 2024 during an anti-Israel protest have had their degrees revoked, have been expelled or suspended from the school.
In a campus-wide email, Columbia said that a judicial board issued sanctions against students who had occupied the hall, according to the Associated Press. The school did not include how many were expelled, suspended, or had their degrees revoked. Each student had to appear for hearings led by Columbia’s Judicial Board.
Gil Zussman, chair of the electrical engineering department and member of the school’s Task Force on Antisemitism, said, "Finally demonstrating that breaking university rules has consequences is an important first step towards going back to the core missions of research and teaching."
This comes as recent Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) over the weekend, his green card revoked. He was taken into custody at his university-owned apartment. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said that Khalil was arrested because he "led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization." Khalil belonged to the Columbia United Apartheid Divest group, a radical group determined to end western civilization.
In late April 2024, agitators took over Hamilton Hall, the university calling in the NYPD when they were unable to handle the chais. Mass arrests were made while some students, who posted videos to social media, complinaed they had finals coming up.
The University’s then-president Minouche Shafik wrote in a letter to the NYPD, "We believe that while the group who broke into the building includes students, it is led by individuals who are not affiliated with the University. The individuals who have occupied Hamilton Hall have vandalized University property and are trespassing."
Those who occupied the building accused administrators of wanting "students to die of dehydration and starvation or get severely ill even they disagree with you," and asked that they "not violently stop us from bringing in basic humanitarian aid."
