Columbia University students staged a walkout during a two-hour lecture from Hillary Clinton and the dean of the School of International and Public Affairs on Thursday to protest the university’s alleged role in “doxxing” students who signed onto anti-Israel statements.
Roughly 30 students walked out of the lecture on women’s involvement in peace processes given by Clinton and Keren Yarhi-Milo. The students who walked out joined several dozen other protests who gathered near the lobby of the International Affairs Building, according to the New York Times.
A truck drove near campus with video-screen panels displaying faces of students who were members of groups that signed on to a statement blaming the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel. The panels labeled the students “Columbia’s Leading Antisemites.”
The student protesters claimed the photos were lifted from a “private and secure” online platform for students at the School of International and Public Affairs and are demanding “immediate legal support for affected students” and “a commitment to student safety, well being and privacy.”
Some media outlets and watchdog groups have published the names of students who authored or signed onto anti-Israel letters in the wake of the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks.
One student group celebrated Hamas’s “historic” massacre of Israeli civilians, calling it a long-overdue “counteroffensive” against Israel’s purported apartheid regime. The statement called on the university to cut off its partnerships with higher-learning institutions in Israel and slammed university administrators’ messages condemning the terrorist attacks.
“Yesterday was an unprecedented historic moment for the Palestinians of Gaza, who tore through the wall that has been suffocating them in one of the most densely-populated areas on Earth for the past 16 years — an open-air prison blockaded by Israeli soldiers via land, air and sea,” read a statement by Columbia’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).
“Palestinians launched a counter-offensive against their settler-colonial oppressor — which receives billions of US dollars annually in military aid and possesses one of the world’s most robust surveillance and security apparatuses. Any omission of this context — any rhetoric of ‘an unprovoked Palestinian attack” — is shamefully misleading,” it added.
The students involved have faced backlash from some employers who said they would never hire individuals involved in those efforts. Several students have had their job offers rescinded for their involvement in pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel rhetoric.
The university launched a task force on doxxing and student safety on Tuesday.
“I am deeply disturbed to see that SIPA students and faculty have been subjected to doxing campaigns. I unequivocally condemn such actions and I’m doing everything in my power to bring these activities to an end on our campus and online,” Yarhi-Milo said in a statement announcing the launch of the task force, which she said will “develop recommendations to prevent doxing, protect the identities and personal information of our students, and develop proposals to reduce tensions among various students and student organizations regarding controversial national or international events that affect our community in New York City.”