Columbia University, one of the top institutions in the United States of America, has announced disciplinary action against students who participated in a pro-Palestine demonstration inside the Ivy League school’s main library before final exams in May and an encampment during alumni weekend last year.
A student activist group said that nearly 80 students were told they had been suspended for one to three years, or expelled. The sanctions issued by a university judicial board also include probation and degree revocations, Columbia said in a statement on Tuesday.
The action comes as the Manhattan-located university is negotiating with President Donald Trump’s administration to restore USD 400 million in federal funding it has withheld from the Ivy League school over its handling of student protests against the war in Gaza.
The Trump Administration pulled the funding, cancelling grants and contracts, in March because of what it described as the university’s failure to squelch anti-semitism on campus during the Israel-Hamas war that began in October 2023.
Columbia has since agreed to a series of demands laid out by the Republican administration, including overhauling the university’s student disciplinary process and adopting a new definition of anti-semitism, said an Associated Press report via Press Trust of India.
Our institution must focus on delivering on its academic mission for our community. And to create a thriving academic community, there must be respect for each other and the institution’s fundamental work, policies, and rules. Disruptions to academic activities are in violation of University policies and rules, and such violations will necessarily generate consequences.
Columbia University statement
The university authorities did not disclose the names of the students who were disciplined.
Columbia had said in May that it would lay off nearly 180 staffers and scale back research in response to the loss of funding. Those receiving non-renewal or termination notices represented about 20 per cent of the employees funded in some manner by the terminated federal grants, the university said.
A student activist group said that the newly announced disciplinary action exceeded sentencing precedent for prior protests.
Suspended students would be required to submit apologies in order to be allowed back on campus or face expulsion, the group said, something some students would refuse to do.
“We will not be deterred. We are committed to the struggle for Palestinian liberation,” Columbia University Apartheid Divest said in a statement.
Columbia was at the forefront of US campus protests over the Israel-Hamas war in the spring of 2024. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators had set up an encampment and seized a campus building in April, leading to dozens of arrests and inspiring a wave of similar protests nationally.
Since returning to the White House in January 2025, Trump has cut funding to several top US universities he viewed as too tolerant of anti-semitism. The Trump Administration has also cracked down on individual student protesters.
Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, a legal US resident with no criminal record, was detained in March over his participation in pro-Palestine demonstrations. He is now suing the Trump Administration, alleging he was falsely imprisoned, maliciously prosecuted, and smeared as an anti-semite.
