Columbia University expels some students who seized building last year, suspends others
Columbia University says it has expelled or suspended some students who took over a campus building during pro-Palestinian protests last spring, and had temporarily revoked the diplomas of some students who have since graduated.
In a campus-wide email sent Thursday, the university said its judicial board had issued its sanctions against dozens of students who occupied Hamilton Hall based on its "evaluation of the severity of behaviors."
The university did not provide a breakdown of how many students were expelled, suspended or had their degree revoked.
Columbia University's statement on expulsions
"Today, the Columbia University Judicial Board determined findings and issued sanctions to students ranging from multi-year suspensions, temporary degree revocations, and expulsions related to the occupation of Hamilton Hall last spring. 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. Columbia is committed to enforcing the University's Rules and Policies and improving our disciplinary processes.
"The outcomes issued by the UJB are based on its evaluation of the severity of behaviors at these events and prior disciplinary actions. These outcomes are the result of following the thorough and rigorous processes laid out in the Rules of University Conduct in our statutes, which include investigations, hearings and deliberations. This process is separate and distinct from the Office of Institutional Equity and the Center for Student Success and Intervention (Student Conduct). We will continue to work to support our community, including protecting the privacy of our students, during this challenging time and we remain steadfastly committed to our values and our mission."
Background of Columbia's move
The takeover of Hamilton Hall came on April 30, 2024, an escalation led by a smaller group of students of the tent encampment that had sprung up on Columbia's campus against the war in Gaza.
Students and their allies barricaded themselves inside the hall with furniture and padlocks in a major escalation of campus protests.
At the request of university leaders, hundreds of officers with the New York Police Department stormed onto campus the following night. Officers carrying zip ties and riot shields poured into the occupied building through a window and arrested dozens of people.
At a court hearing in June, the Manhattan district attorney's office said it would not pursue criminal charges for 31 of the 46 people initially arrested on trespassing charges inside the administration building — but all of the students still faced disciplinary hearings and possible expulsion from the university.
The district attorney's office said at the time that they were dismissing charges against most of those arrested inside the building due in part to a lack of evidence tying them to specific acts of property damage and the fact that none of the students had criminal histories.
More than a dozen of those arrested were offered deals that would have eventually led to the dismissal of their charges, but they refused them, protest organizers said, "in a show of solidarity with those facing the most extreme repression." Most in that group were alumni, but two were current students, prosecutors said.
CAIR suing Columbia University, Congressional committee
The culmination of the monthslong investigative process comes as the university's activist community is reeling from the arrest of a well-known campus activist, Mahmoud Khalil, by federal immigration authorities this past Saturday – the "first of many" such arrests, according to President Donald Trump.
At the same time, the Trump administration has stripped the university of more than $400 million in federal funds over what it describes as the college's inaction against widespread campus antisemitism.
Meanwhile, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) is suing the university and the congressional education committee over its request that Columbia hand over disciplinary records for its students to Congress.
"Allowing Congress and institutions like Columbia to target you or someone else because of a viewpoint you hold is an epic danger to American values," CAIR-New York Executive Director Afaf Nasher said.
The plaintiffs are Khalil and seven other students who say that was a violation of the Family Education Rights Privacy Act.
"Because people felt free, if Congress is labeling these people as dissidents, as antisemites, as radicals, as all these things, it gives people permission to then go out and violate their privacy," said Khalil's attorney, Amy Greer.
"The blanket 'give me all the people that protested,' I don't think any judge in his right mind would allow for that to happen," law professor J.C. Polanco said.
Polanco says the school may only be compelled to give up student information if Congress has specific evidence of them breaking the law.
"A judge is going to want to know who and why," he said.
Columbia declined to comment on the CAIR lawsuit, and a spokesman for the congressional education committee said, in part, it "will continue its work to protect Jewish students and hold schools accountable for their failures to address rampant antisemitism."
