On the first day of the new semester, Jan. 21, a group of four students wearing masks disrupted a class on the modern history of Israel at Columbia University. Despite the masks, three of those students were identified including two from Barnard college who were referred back to that institution for discipline. This week both of those students were expelled. The news of the expulsions was first published by CUAD, the group which organized the disruption in the first place. They called for a week of action to demand the students be reinstated.
The caption reads in part: On February 21st, Barnard College expelled two students for their alleged involvement in the classroom disruption of “History of Modern Israel.” A course that manufactures consent for genocide and violently erases Palestinian history.
We reject Barnard’s attempts to intimidate us out of fighting against the zionist genocide of Palestine. We demand that Barnard reinstates our peers and we will not give up until they do so.
After 16 months and 76 years of genocide, Columbia University has refused to divest from israel, but it is also the weakest it has ever been. Their extreme repression is proof that the pressure is mounting, Palestine will be free. We cannot let these expulsions stand, we must keep fighting for Palestinian liberation. (HotAir)
Now, even though Columbia has allowed anti-semites and terror supporters to run around on campus, they're finally showing that even they have limits. I think part of this is from that but I also think all the Congressional pressure and now Executive Branch pressure is starting to show effects; nothing will do more to university leaders than having the money spigot that are federal dollars begin tightening up.
That, however, shouldn't be the end of it. Columbia needs to suspend and where appropriate expel the members of CUAD and, should anyone involved be a foreign student, deport them out of the country.
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