Columbia Suspends, Expels nearly 80 Students for Gaza Protest

July 23, 2025 News
The statue of Alma Mater, on the steps of Columbia’s library, was soaked in red as the protests resumed. (Photo: via NationalSJP TW Page)

By Palestine Chronicle Staff  

In May, New York State Police stormed the university’s main library reading room to disperse the sit-in, resulting in the arrest of dozens of student protestors.

Columbia University has suspended or expelled close to 80 students for participating in protests against Israel’s ongoing genocidal war on Gaza.

Students have been suspended “for one to three years or expelled for joining a May 2025 teach-in about Palestine in honor of the writer and freedom fighter Basel al-Araj, who Israel murdered in an extrajudicial assassination in 2017,” the student activist group Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), said in a statement on Tuesday.

The group said the “sanctions are believed to be part of a federal deal Columbia is about to announce that includes a formal partnership with the zionist Anti-Defamation League and an agreement to use the IHRA’s definition of antisemitism, which equates criticism of Israel with discrimination against Jews.”

‘Violations’

Columbia University said in a statement that the sanctions related to “the disruption of Butler Library in May 2025 and the encampment during Alumni Weekend in spring 2024.”

The university stated the sanctions issued on July 21 by the University Judicial Board “were determined by a UJB panel of professors and administrators.”


Columbia noted that “Disruptions to academic activities are in violation of University policies and Rules, and such violations will necessarily generate consequences.”

The sanctions from Butler Library, it said, “include probation, suspensions (ranging from one year to three years), degree revocations, and expulsions.”

In May, New York State Police stormed the university’s main library reading room to disperse the sit-in, resulting in the arrest of dozens of student protestors.

‘Exceptionally Harsh Sanctions’

The CUAD claimed Columbia’s Acting President and Board of Trustees Co-Chair, Claire Shipman, in “collaboration” with the Trump administration, “illegally restructured the University Judicial Board (UJB) and removed student members and faculty oversight to pursue exceptionally harsh sanctions against its own students.”


The group said Shipman “has cracked down on pro-Palestine organizing in partnership with White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller, who devised Trump’s policy of family separation and the Muslim travel ban.”

It added that the university’s latest action “is presumed part of the near-final agreement Shipman negotiated with Miller – similar to the deal Columbia struck with the White House to expel students who allegedly occupied Hind’s Hall” last year. During a protest, students entered the university’s Hamilton Hall and renamed it Hind’s Hall, after a six-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israeli forces in Gaza.

Students ‘Remain Committed’

The CUAD said students “remain committed to ending US- and Columbia-backed Israeli genocide regardless of the school’s sanction.

Testimony from students’ July disciplinary hearings” underscored they had nothing to apologize for,” the group stated.

It said disciplinary letters demand that suspended students submit apologies in order to return to campus in one to three years, “which some students have stated they will refuse.”

Columbia Suspends Dozens in Latest Crackdown on Anti-Genocide Protests

“If those protestors hold their ground by refusing to apologize, the suspensions will convert into de facto expulsions and the number of permanent sanctions will skyrocket,” CUAD stated.

The group said that once Barnard University, “joins Columbia in announcing charges, these will be the most suspensions for a single political protest in Columbia campus history and hugely exceed sentencing precedent for teach-ins or non-Palestine-related building occupations.”

Mahmoud Khalil

Student encampments against Israel’s military campaing in Gaza, launched at the university in 2024, sparked a widespread campaign on campuses across the US with thousands detained as university authorities and police cracked down on the protests.

Mahmoud Khalil Freed after Months in ICE Detention over Pro-Palestine Activism

Most notable was the arrest of one of the student leaders, Mahmoud Khalil, from his home in March. Khalil, who was released only last month, said in a letter in April that Columbia had “laid the groundwork” for his “abduction.”

“Columbia has suppressed student dissent under the auspices of combating antisemitism. Last year, Columbia turned over student disciplinary records to Congress and created the Task Force on Antisemitism that broadly categorized anti-Israel sentiment as hate speech to condemn protests,” he stated.

(The Palestine Chronicle)

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2 Comments

  1. Was Khalil’s degree revoked? What happened to him? Also, were any of the 80 students Jewish?

  2. Instead of staging a sit-in, where the Nazi cops can break it up and arrest everyone. The students should unenroll, withdraw from college. Leave the school, pursue your career elsewhere. There are other options. And the reason they’re staging protests and sit-ins is so they can use social media, or even main stream media as a tool to get their message across. Forget all that, and just leave the college. They need you, you don’t need them. Hit them where it hurts. If you received financial aid, it will hurt a bit but what’s the difference if they’re going to revoke your degree or expel you anyway?

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