(The Center Square) — Columbia University has disciplined dozens of students involved in pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campus last year, as the Ivy League school negotiates with the Trump administration over a freeze on federal funding.
Columbia’s Judicial Board announced Tuesday that an investigation has resulted in the discipline of student protesters who occupied a library on the New York City campus during a demonstration in early May that led to multiple arrests.
“Our institution must focus on delivering on its academic mission for our community,” the university said in a statement. “Disruptions to academic activities are in violation of university policies and rules, and such violations will necessarily generate consequences.”
Columbia said a panel of professors and administrators “worked diligently” to investigate the protests and that the disciplinary action against students was based on the findings of their cases and prior disciplinary outcomes.
“While the University does not release individual disciplinary results of any student, the sanctions from Butler Library include probation, suspensions (ranging from one year to three years), degree revocations, and expulsions,” the panel said in a statement.
The student activist group Columbia University Apartheid Divest, which has called for the school to cut financial ties with the Israeli government, said in a statement that about 80 students have now been either expelled or suspended for up to three years over their involvement in protests.
“We will not be deterred,” the group said in a defiant statement. “We are committed to the struggle for Palestinian liberation.”
The Trump administration launched an investigation of Columbia and other schools in February and froze $400 million in federal grants over the university’s “failure to protect Jewish students from antisemitic harassment.”
Columbia agreed to make reforms to prevent the federal government from pulling back the funds. The school says it overhauled its policies around demonstrations and campus security and reorganized its Middle Eastern Studies department. The school also adopted a new campus-wide definition of antisemitism.
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights is also seeking to strip Columbia University of its accreditation, saying the Ivy League school violates federal civil rights laws for failing to control antisemitism on campus.
If approved by accreditors, the move would strip Columbia of its eligibility to participate in Title IV federal financial aid programs, such as Pell Grants and federal work-study or student loan programs.
“Columbia is deeply committed to combating antisemitism on our campus,” the university said in a previous statement. “We take this issue seriously and are continuing to work with the federal government to address it.”
