Pro-Palestinian protesters returned to Columbia University on Tuesday for the start of classes — picketing, calling on students to boycott their classes, and even vandalizing the Alma Mater statue at the center of the New York campus.
The Associated Press reported:
Someone splattered red paint Tuesday on a statue in front of the Low Memorial Library. Outside the gates of the university, a small group of protesters marched on a picket line and urged arriving students and faculty to join them rather than go to class.
“As long as Columbia continues to invest and to benefit from Israeli apartheid, the students will continue to resist,” Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student who represented campus protesters in negotiations with the university, told The Associated Press last week ahead of the start of classes. “Not only protests and encampments, the limit is the sky.”
The vandalism was celebrated by the national parent organization of Students for Justice in Palestine.
From today’s actionists at Columbia:
“Divestment is not an incrementalist goal. True divestment necessitates nothing short of the total collapse of the university structure and American empire itself. It is not possible for imperial spoils to remain so heavily concentrated in… pic.twitter.com/bfGAYGVoGN
— National Students for Justice in Palestine (@NationalSJP) September 3, 2024
House Republicans, who have led inquiries into antisemitism on college campuses, commented on the renewal of Columbia’s protests.
.@virginiafoxx and @RepJasonSmith asked for universities’ plans to keep Jewish students safe…One day in and it’s already clear that Columbia isn’t prepared to prevent a repeat of the spring semester. Jewish students deserve better.https://t.co/eiFdq88W3D https://t.co/EbnvEKGo6W
— House Committee on Education & the Workforce (@EdWorkforceCmte) September 3, 2024
Last week, a Columbia task force on antisemitism found that the university had failed to stop antisemitism on campus.
Columbia president Minouche Shafik resigned last month after failing to contain last semester’s protests, which ended with the violent takeover of a university building by anti-Israel rioters.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of “”The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days,” available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.