Students at Columbia University in New York City have revived a previously defunct organization called the Columbia University Apartheid Divest Coalition, which includes 80 student groups in support of “collective liberation.”
The new campus activist alliance will continue where the university’s chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace left off following their suspension for the remainder of the semester. It has issued such demands as a ceasefire; divestment from Israel; ending the university’s partnership with the Tel Aviv Global Center and Tel Aviv University; and reinstating the two banned anti-Israel groups.
Douglas Sandoval, managing director for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) campus division, told JNS he was not surprised by the move: “It is the product of decades of legitimizing and platforming Jew-hatred by Columbia University through the presence of a Students for Justice in Palestine chapter.”
“If the administration of President Nemat Minouche Shafik is genuinely committed to rooting out the targeting of Jewish students and to stop the use of their university imprimatur to propagate antisemitism, they must begin to hold all students accountable for their actions, and not simply stop with the suspension of SJP and JVP,” Sandoval told JNS.
Groups that have signed on include the Black Students Organization, Young Democratic Socialists of America, Columbia Queer Alliance, Asian American Alliance, Caribbean Students Association, Student Worker Solidarity, Poetry Slam, Mixed Heritage Society, Law School Coalition for a Free Palestine and the Reproductive Justice Collective.
