Columbia University says it expelled some students who seized building last year

A New York City police officer walks past seating that was to be used for a large graduation ceremony at Columbia University in New York, Monday, May 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig) (Seth Wenig/AP)

NEW YORK — 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.

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.

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 in to 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.

Article by Jake Offenhartz.