Dive Temporary:
- Palestine Authorized filed a civil rights grievance Thursday towards Columbia College over the establishment’s dealing with of pro-Palestine protests and studies of harassment.
- The authorized group filed the Title VI grievance with the U.S. Division of Training’s Workplace for Civil Rights on behalf of 4 college students and the campus’s chapter of College students for Justice in Palestine.
- The grievance accuses the college of discriminating towards Palestinian, Arab or Muslim college students, together with those that have supported pro-Palestinian protests. It additionally stated the college failed to guard these college students towards harassment and demise threats.
Dive Perception:
Underneath the Civil Rights Act of 1964, federally funded schools and colleges are prohibited from discriminating towards folks primarily based on race, coloration or nationwide origin.
Thursday’s civil rights grievance alleges Columbia college students have been focused by anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab and Islamophobic harassment for months with out the college stepping in. In a single incident, a chemical assault on protesters resulted in virtually a dozen being hospitalized, the grievance alleged.
The college declined to touch upon the grievance Friday.
Columbia’s latest choice to permit police on campus to answer a pro-Palestinian protest represents discriminatory remedy, the grievance stated.
Final week, the personal college requested metropolis police to clear an encampment of protesters on campus, the primary time it has completed so in over 5 a long time. The New York Police Division arrested over 100 folks, together with college students from Columbia and its sister establishment, Barnard Faculty, on trespassing expenses.
The transfer demonstrated “a major break from decades-long apply and remedy of scholar protests” and “an egregious instance of various remedy of Palestinian college students, these perceived to be Palestinian, and people related to or advocating for Palestinians,” the grievance stated.
That selection has additionally been criticized by Columbia school, who organized a walkout Monday in solidarity with the arrested college students.
“We condemn within the strongest potential phrases the Administration’s suspension of scholars engaged in peaceable protest and their arrest by the New York Metropolis Police Division,” the Columbia and Barnard chapters of the American Affiliation of College Professors stated final week. “These acts violate the letter and the spirit of the College Statutes, shared governance, college students’ rights, and the College’s absolute obligation to defend college students’ freedom of speech and to make sure their security.”
The grievance additionally stated that Columbia college students have obtained demise threats for the reason that newest Israel-Hamas warfare — together with threats despatched to an official campus group’s electronic mail in November. Outdoors organizations additionally revealed college students’ pictures and figuring out info, an act often known as doxxing, the grievance stated.
College President Minouche Shafik condemned the doxxing of Columbia college students in October and established a doxxing useful resource group the following month. However Thursday’s grievance stated the college acted “lengthy after the harm had been completed,” taking weeks to answer scholar issues.
Maryam Alwan, one of many Columbia college students who filed the grievance, alleged that the college Columbia failed to guard her from the racism and abuse she skilled throughout protests.
“The violent repression we’re going through as peaceable anti-war protesters is appalling,” Alwan stated in a Thursday assertion. “As a Palestinian scholar, I’ve been harassed, doxxed, shouted down, and discriminated towards by fellow college students and professors — merely due to my id and my dedication to advocating for my very own rights and freedoms.”
Along with making certain Columbia is in compliance with Title VI, OCR ought to pressure the college to publicly apologize for its dealing with of the protests and publicly condemn anti-Palestinian racism and discrimination, the grievance stated.
The complainants, stated the college ought to drop all “discriminatory investigations and prison expenses” towards protesters and canopy the tutoring of scholars who’ve had “to endure an anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and Islamophobic atmosphere on campus, with out treatment or recourse from Columbia for almost two entire semesters.”
