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Anti-Israel agitators occupied Columbia College’s south garden for hours on Wednesday as college president Minouche Shafik testified earlier than Congress.
Dozens of protesters camped out in tents on college grounds, calling on the college to divest itself from firms which have ties to Israel. Shafik is on Capitol Hill to testify relating to antisemitism on Columbia’s campus alongside co-chairs of the college’s board of trustees.
“The presence of tents on South Garden is a security concern and a violation of college insurance policies,” a College spokesperson instructed the coed newspaper, the Spectator. “We’re informing the scholars they’re in violation of college insurance policies and for their very own security and for the operation of the college they should go away.”
The protesters pitched their tents earlier Wednesday morning because the college locked down its campus to ID holders solely in anticipation of unrest regarding Shafik’s testimony.
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Anti-Israel protesters took over the primary garden on Columbia College’s campus in New York Metropolis on Wednesday, April 17, 2024. (WNYW)
“The anti-apartheid motion and scholar organizing wrestle at Columbia has been alive and nicely for over 60 years, and we supply all of these organizers with us as we come right here at this time,” Catherine Elias, one of many scholar protesters, instructed the Spectator.
Shafik and her colleagues had been summoned to testify earlier than the Home Committee on Schooling and the Workforce relating to their efforts to fight campus antisemitism, which has skyrocketed within the U.S. following Oct. 7.
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Columbia banned two anti-Israel scholar teams as protests reached a fever pitch late final 12 months. Each College students for Justice in Palestine and the Jewish Voice for Peace violated college insurance policies in opposition to harassment of different college students.
Minouche Shafik, president of Columbia College, testifies in the course of the Home Schooling and the Workforce Committee listening to titled “Columbia in Disaster: Columbia College’s Response to Antisemitism.”
Shafik gave a preview of her testimony in a Wall Avenue Journal op-ed on Tuesday, saying she and different directors did their greatest to weigh the protection of scholars in opposition to free speech rights.
“A extra sophisticated concern was the battle between the free-speech rights of pro-Palestinian protesters and the impression that these protests had been having on our Jewish college students and their supporters. Some issues that had been mentioned at these protests and on social media had been profoundly unsettling and horrifying,” Shafik wrote. “Attempting to reconcile the speech rights of 1 a part of our neighborhood with the rights of one other a part of our neighborhood to dwell in a supportive atmosphere or at the least an atmosphere freed from concern, harassment and discrimination, has been the central problem at our college and on campuses throughout the nation.”
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Columbia is just the newest distinguished college to face congressional scrutiny since Oct. 7. The leaders of MIT, Harvard and the College of Pennsylvania additionally testified in December. The presidents of Harvard and UPenn have since resigned.
Dr. Claudine Homosexual, left, the previous president of Harvard College, and Liz Magill, heart, the previous president of College of Pennsylvania, each resigned their positions after testifying earlier than Congress. (Photograph by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Pictures)
In March, college students from campuses throughout the nation testified about their expertise of rising antisemitism at their universities.
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The scholars described vicious antisemitic incidents taking place at Harvard, Columbia, UC Berkeley and a number of other different universities.
Anders Hagstrom is a reporter with Fox Information Digital protecting nationwide politics and main breaking information occasions. Ship tricks to Anders.Hagstrom@Fox.com, or on Twitter: @Hagstrom_Anders.
