“Discipline for a building takeover last spring? It appears that the wheels of justice at Columbia turn slowly and only when the federal cash clogging the gears has been removed,” wrote Jay Greene, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy.
In April 2024, a mob of anti-Israel protesters barricaded themselves in Hamilton Hall and briefly held at least one university staff hostage. The New York City Police Department removed them from the building.
The majority of expulsions and degree revocations target students who engaged in the sit-in and had to be removed by police.
Gil Zussman, an Israeli professor of electrical engineering at Columbia and chair of the electrical engineering department, wrote on Thursday that he commended the university for making “tough decisions,” and “it is really sad that we are at a situation in which such decisions need to be made.”
Pro-Palestinian student groups have said they are planning a protest in response to the university’s actions.
