Columbia University's massive crackdown on campus protest begun in the wake of Israel's war on Gaza encountered a setback on Friday, when a state judge ruled that the university had violated New York law and its own rules in harshly disciplining students that administrators had alleged were involved in a demonstration in the spring of 2024.
On April 30, 2024, several dozen Columbia students occupied Hamilton Hall, invoking previous student occupations of the same building to protest the Vietnam War and the South African apartheid regime. The occupiers renamed the building after Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl killed by the Israeli military. The Columbia administration responded by inviting the New York Police Department to break up the protests, and police subsequently flooded the Morningside Heights campus, firing live ammunition inside Hamilton Hall and arresting busloads of students.
In the aftermath of the brief occupation, Columbia brought the hammer down, leveling disciplinary actions completely out of proportion to those issued during previous student protests. Students were expelled, or suspended for years, and students who had already graduated were stripped of their degrees. In July of last year, 22 of those students sued the university, alleging that it had broken its own rules in imposing the sweeping and severe disciplinary consequences.
Last week, the New York Supreme Court judge hearing the case issued his ruling, tossing out the disciplinary decisions against the students who sued and handing Columbia a stinging defeat in its war on campus protesters.