Columbia suspends students over anti-Israel event featuring speaker linked to terrorist organization

Columbia has suspended several students over an anti-Israel event last month that featured a speaker “known to support terrorism,” the university president announced Friday. 

Columbia University President Minouche Shafik said in a statement that “a number of students have been suspended as the investigation continues” into a March 24 event that “took place at a campus residential facility” and “that the University had already barred, twice, from occurring.” 

“It featured speakers who are known to support terrorism and promote violence. I want to state for the record that this event is an abhorrent breach of our values,” Shafik said. 

The student newspaper, the Columbia Spectator, reported that at least four students face disciplinary action in connection to the March 24 panel titled, “Resistance 101,” which featured Khaled Barakat among its speakers. 

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An Israeli government document links Barakat to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a U.S. State Department designated foreign terrorist organization. 

The House Committee on Education and the Workforce on March 25 also called out Barakat’s link to the PFLP terrorist group, noting how he told Columbia students during a webinar that “friends at Hamas and Islamic Jihad” emphasized the importance of support on U.S. college campuses, adding that by contrast, “they don’t care what Biden says, what Kamala Harris says.” 

In the aftermath, Columbia also “notified law enforcement, and we hired an outside investigation firm to uncover all the facts,” Shafik said Friday. “With their help, we identified organizers and participants and required them to cooperate with the investigation or face immediate discipline. We are still in the process of interviewing students, faculty, and other members of the community and gathering facts.” 

“I realize that our campus has been deeply shaken by the war between Israel and Hamas, starting Oct. 7 with the horrific Hamas terrorist attack in Israel, and now unfolding as a humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” Shafik said. “I did not become a university president to punish students. At the same time, actions like this on our campus must have consequences. That I would ever have to declare the following is in itself surprising,…