Columbia University disciplined radical student activists nearly a year after they stormed a campus building, imposing multi-year suspensions, expulsions, and temporary degree revocations.
The Ivy League institution, mired in anti-Semitism scandals in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack, announced Thursday evening that its University Judicial Board (UJB) issued the sanctions on the students involved in the April storming of Hamilton Hall.
"With respect to other events taking place last spring, the UJB’s determinations recognized previously imposed disciplinary action. The return of suspended students will be overseen by Columbia’s University Life Office," read the statement. "Columbia is committed to enforcing the University’s Rules and Policies and improving our disciplinary processes."
Dozens of students with Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD)—the university's most anti-Semitic student group—and outside radicals stormed a campus building last April, hammering in glass windows, covering security cameras, dragging chairs and metal tables to barricade themselves inside, and holding one janitor captive. The extremists renamed the academic building "Hind’s Hall" and refused to leave until then-president Minouche Shafik authorized the NYPD to forcibly remove them.
Even though 22 students were arrested, the school only disciplined 4, while the other 18 remained in "good standing with the university" and were able to begin the fall semester normally. Columbia didn’t disclose how many students were disciplined Thursday.
It’s unclear if radicals who participated in the illegal campus encampments last spring were included in the sanctions. Columbia initially suspended 31 students, but those were later reversed, with three facing campus bans and a fourth placed on probation. Two weeks before the fall semester began, no expulsions had been delivered.
The decision comes a week after the Trump administration’s multi-agency task force to combat anti-Semitism slashed approximately $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia over its failure to curb anti-Semitism in the aftermath of Oct. 7. Over the weekend, President Donald Trump also began to deliver on his campaign pledge to crack down on Hamas supporters Saturday, arresting Mahmoud Khalil—a Columbia University graduate student and vocal pro-Hamas activist—after revoking his visa and green card.
Last April, Khalil, who remains in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention as his deportation case plays out in court, led negotiations with Columbia administrators during the illegal student encampments. He promised to stir further unrest in the weeks ahead of the fall semester, telling The Hill he would continue to push Columbia to divest from the Jewish state by "any available means necessary."
"And we’ve been working all this summer on our plans, on what’s next to pressure Columbia to listen to the students and to decide to be on the right side of history," Khalil said in August. "We’re considering a wide range of actions throughout the semester, encampments and protests and all of that. But for us, encampment is now our new base."
Last week, Khalil again served as a negotiator for CUAD after a mob of radical Columbia activists stormed a Barnard library. Once inside the building, the agitators distributed Hamas propaganda meant to justify Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack. A week earlier, CUAD stormed a separate campus building at Barnard, resulting in the hospitalization of a security guard and $30,000 in damages.
One of Khalil’s attorneys, Ramzi Kassem, defended al Qaeda terrorists including Ahmed al-Darbi, an al Qaeda member convicted in 2017 for the bombing of a French oil tanker, the Washington Free Beacon reported. Kassem has also defended multiple Guantanamo Bay detainees, including a "close associate" of Osama bin Laden.
The arrest of Khalil sparked a nationwide walkout at colleges on Tuesday, culminating in Thursday’s attempted occupation of Trump Tower in New York City, where dozens of agitators left in zip tied cuffs.