Above photo: Reuters.
A secretive committee is threatening students with possible expulsion.
For offenses including ‘distributing posters on campus, placing stickers on walls, or posting calls on Instagram for student walkouts’.
Students at Columbia University who expressed opposition to the US–Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza are being investigated by a secretive disciplinary body known as the Office of Institutional Equity (OIE), which is targeting anyone involved in activities ranging from sharing social media posts supporting Palestinians to participating in “unauthorized” protests.
Drop Site News reports that Columbia requires students under investigation for “discrimination based on their speech” to sign a non-disclosure agreement to access unredacted evidence against them, effectively blocking public discussion of the accusations and process.
“Based on how these cases have proceeded, the university now appears to be responding to governmental pressure to suppress and chill protected speech. It’s operating as a business by protecting its assets ahead of its students, faculty, and staff,” Amy Greer, an attorney advising students accused of discrimination, told AP.
The OIE warned students that possible sanctions for violating school policy ranged from simple warnings to expulsions.
“I interpret this as an institutional attempt to silence me with a policy that directly contradicts First Amendment rights and to instill fear about this subject to make sure people don’t speak about Gaza or Palestine,” an unnamed student told Drop Site News. “In my meeting I made the point that it seems that I am free to criticize the US government at Columbia, but not Israel, and they had no answer for this.”
Letters received by students from the OIE include “charges that they had distributed posters on campus, placed stickers on walls, or posted calls on Instagram for student walkouts from class, or criticisms of the Israeli government conduct as genocidal.”
“What we are seeing with the OIE is Columbia trying to say that we are taking seriously claims of antisemitism, but actually just going after students who are advocating for Palestinians,” Sabiya Ahamed, a staff attorney at the legal advocacy organization Palestine Legal, told Drop Site News.
The OIE was created last summer as anti-genocide protests swept across US campuses. In response, administrators regularly allowed shock troops to raid the protest camps and arrest hundreds of students and faculty.
Columbia’s persecution of anti-genocide activists follows recent threats by US President Donald Trump, who stated that he would cut all federal funding for US universities and colleges that permit “illegal protests” on their campuses. He also warned that foreign students participating in such protests “will be imprisoned or permanently sent back to the country from which they came.”
“American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested,” Trump further threatened in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social.