Columbia University's graduate student union is demanding the Ivy League institution establish a "sanctuary campus" where public safety officers are barred from patrolling "organizing spaces, including classrooms." The union, which is embroiled in active contract negotiations with Columbia, also wants the school to provide free "legal support" for student visa holders, destroy "all records" related to campus protest participants, and sue the Trump administration "and other anti-immigrant actors."
Student Workers of Columbia, which boasts roughly 3,000 members and is affiliated with the United Auto Workers, shared an internal document outlining the demands during a Saturday Zoom meeting, which the Washington Free Beacon attended. The document, written by a "working group" of the union's international members, cites the "unprecedented detainment of former student-worker Mahmoud Khalil by the Department of Homeland Security while in a Columbia University apartment building and the ongoing presence of ICE around campus" before making "immediate demands of Columbia University."
First, the union calls on Columbia to establish a "sanctuary campus in which every student is protected from threat of deportation or detention" and "refuse to provide information to immigration authorities or any federal agency on Columbia affiliates without a subpoena." It then demands Columbia "cease collecting personally identifying information of Columbia affiliates in relationship to First Amendment protected activity and protests on campus" and "destroy all records" including such information.
From there, the union calls on Columbia's public safety officials to "stop patrolling departamental [sic] and organizing spaces on campus, including classrooms." It demands the school's international students office cover legal fees for "students whose Visas and Green Cards have been revoked." It also calls on Columbia to "defend the non-US citizen students on our campus" by suing the Trump administration over its executive order aimed at protecting Jewish students.
The demands come as the union negotiates with Columbia over its collective bargaining agreement, which is set to expire in June. It's unclear whether the union has presented the demands as part of the negotiating process or whether it would refuse to sign a contract that does not include them. It would not, however, be the first UAW campus union to strike in solidarity with anti-Israel protests—UAW chapter 4811, which serves the University of California, launched a strike last year to obtain amnesty for graduate students who were arrested for their roles in illegal campus demonstrations.
The union held its first bargaining session with Columbia on Friday. One day before, on March 13, Columbia expelled the union's president, Grant Miner, for storming and occupying Hamilton Hall last April. In addition to his role in the Hamilton Hall storming, Miner, the son of a veteran California lobbyist, was photographed two days after Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack holding a sign that read, "Resistance against occupation is a human right."
Miner has driven the union's anti-Israel activism in the wake of the attack. During a November 2023 meeting, the union voted to formally affiliate itself with Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the anti-Semitic student group that organized the illegal encampment that plagued campus last spring. Miner personally lobbied union members to join the group during the vote, one Columbia student who attended the meeting told the Free Beacon.
Miner has stuck around campus—and continued working with the union—in the wake of his expulsion.
On Friday, he led a New York City protest that coincided with the union's negotiations, calling on keffiyeh-clad attendees to "fight back" against Khalil's arrest. Khalil, he said, was a "former member" who "has been abducted" due to his support for "Palestinian liberation."
He also attended the union's Saturday Zoom call. On it, union members discussed how to coordinate a "pressure campaign" aimed at compelling Columbia and other universities to sue the Trump administration.
"I think it's crucial just to create an actual democratic campaign right now that pushes Columbia, as a unified stance, in a certain direction that we want," said Noam Chen-Zion, a union member and graduate student in the School of Arts and Sciences who has endorsed Columbia University Apartheid Divest, accused Israel of "genocide" and "war crimes," and accused the school's anti-Semitism task force of "alleging antisemitism against anyone opposing Zionism."
Another attendee, sociology Ph.D. student Emily Mazo, suggested contacting other Ivy League graduate student unions "to do a pressure campaign for the UAW where all of our universities sue." Mazo in November shared a "start guide for organizing against genocide in your tech workplace" that calls for "workplace solidarity with the broader cause of Palestinian liberation."
Other union leaders have played a central role in pro-Hamas protests on and off Columbia's campus.
Johannah King-Slutzky, a doctoral student studying "theories of the imagination and poetry as interpreted through a Marxian lens," is the union's "Sergeant-at-Arms," according to a since-deleted webpage touting the union's executive board. She was widely mocked in the wake of the Hamilton Hall takeover for demanding "humanitarian aid" for those inside. Union "steward" Lexy Pryor, meanwhile, spoke on a June 2023 panel alongside Omar Barghouti, the cofounder of the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, and Hasan Piker, the anti-Semitic "content creator" best known for saying "America deserved 9/11."
Neither Student Workers of Columbia nor a spokeswoman for Columbia responded to requests for comment.
Though the UAW rose to power representing a once-thriving auto industry, it is now undergoing a seismic shift. Roughly 100,000 of its registered members—about 25 percent of the union's total membership—are academic workers. The graduate students have helped the UAW withstand significant membership reductions, with the union going from 1.5 million members in 1970 to 370,000 in 2023.
The UAW's national leadership has rallied behind Miner and its Columbia chapter. In a Thursday press release, it called Miner's expulsion an "assault on First Amendment rights."
"The shocking move is part of a wave of crackdowns on free speech against students and workers who have spoken out and protested for peace and against the war on Gaza," the statement read. It did not mention Miner's arrest in relation to the Hamilton Hall storming.