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Columbia Threatens to Suspend Anti-Israel Protesters After Talks Fail
Solidarity encampment at Columbia University, located in the Manhattan borough of New York City. Photo:
Columbia University’s president said on Monday that talks with anti-Israel protesters over the dismantling of an encampment on the Ivy League campus had failed and urged them to voluntarily disperse or face suspension from school.
President Nemat Minouche Shafik said days of talks between student organizers and academic leaders had failed to break a stalemate over the tent encampment set up to protest Israel’s war in Gaza.
Shafik in a statement said Columbia would not divest assets that support Israel’s military, a key demand of the protesters, but offered to invest in health and education in Gaza, and make Columbia’s direct investment holdings more transparent.
Protesters have vowed to keep their encampment on the Manhattan campus until Columbia meets three demands: divestment, transparency in Columbia’s finances and amnesty for students and faculty disciplined for their part in the protests.
The university sent protesters a letter on Monday morning, warning that students who did not vacate the encampment by 2 p.m. ET (1800 GMT) and sign a form acknowledging their participation would face suspension and become ineligible to complete the semester in good standing.
Even students who signed the form and left the area on Monday would still go on “disciplinary probation” until June 2025 or their graduation, whichever came first, according to the letter, which a Columbia spokesperson confirmed was authentic.
“These repulsive scare tactics mean nothing compared to the deaths of over 34,000 Palestinians. We will not move until Columbia meets our demands or we are moved by force,” the Columbia Student Apartheid Divest coalition said in a joint statement on Monday.
A university spokesperson said administrators would have no further comment.
Shafik faced an outcry from many students, faculty and outside observers for summoning New York City police two weeks ago to dismantle the encampment, resulting in more than 100 arrests.
Efforts to remove the encampment, which students set up again within days of the April 18 police action, have triggered dozens of similar protests at schools from California to Boston.
Last week, Columbia took no action when two deadlines it had imposed on protesters to reach an agreement slipped by without a deal. It had cited progress in the talks.
DEMONSTRATIONS AT FRANCE’S SORBONNE, CANADA’S MCGILL
Protests at Columbia and other U.S. universities continued at full force over the weekend, with more arrests around the country and skirmishes between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian demonstrators at UCLA on Sunday.
Civil rights groups have criticized police violence at campuses such as Atlanta’s Emory University and the University of Texas at Austin, where police in riot gear and on horseback moved against the protesters last week, taking dozens into custody before charges against them were dropped for lacking probable cause.
Dozens of people at Virginia Tech were arrested overnight on Sunday at a student-led encampment, according to local media reports. A video posted on social media showed protesters chanting, “Shame on you,” as some were detained.
A spokesman for university did not immediately respond to a request for comment or give details on those detained.
The school in a post on its website said officials had told the protesters to leave, but they refused to comply. “The university recognized that the situation had the increasing potential to become unsafe,” the statement said, adding that those who refused to leave were charged with trespassing.
Similar demonstrations have sprung up at universities in other countries. Students at McGill University in Montreal set up about 20 anti-Israel protest camps on Saturday demanding the university divest from companies with links to Israel.
By Monday, the number of encampments on the downtown campus had tripled, but many were not set up by members of the McGill community, according to a statement by the university.
McGill also said it was investigating what it said was video evidence of some people using “unequivocally antisemitic language and intimidating behavior.” Students denied the allegation.
In Paris, days after protests at the elite Sciences Po school, police evacuated dozens of protesters who had set up tents in the yard of the Sorbonne University on Monday to mark their anger with the war in Gaza, one of the students told Reuters.
The post Columbia Threatens to Suspend Anti-Israel Protesters After Talks Fail first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Kurdish-led SDF Say Five Members Killed During Attack by Islamic State in Syria
Islamic State slogans painted along the walls of the tunnel was used by Islamic State militants as an underground training camp in the hillside overlooking Mosul, Iraq, March 4, 2017. Photo: via Reuters Connect.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said on Sunday that five of its members had been killed during an attack by Islamic State militants on a checkpoint in eastern Syria’s Deir el-Zor on July 31.
The SDF was the main fighting force allied to the United States in Syria during fighting that defeated Islamic State in 2019 after the group declared a caliphate across swathes of Syria and Iraq.
The Islamic State has been trying to stage a comeback in the Middle East, the West and Asia. Deir el-Zor city was captured by Islamic State in 2014, but the Syrian army retook it in 2017.
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Armed Groups Attack Security Force Personnel in Syria’s Sweida, Killing One, State TV Reports
People ride a motorcycle past a burned-out military vehicle, following deadly clashes between Druze fighters, Sunni Bedouin tribes, and government forces, in Syria’s predominantly Druze city of Sweida, Syria, July 25, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
Armed groups attacked personnel from Syria’s internal security forces in Sweida, killing one member and wounding others, and fired shells at several villages in the violence-hit southern province, state-run Ekhbariya TV reported on Sunday.
The report cited a security source as saying the armed groups had violated the ceasefire agreed in the predominantly Druze region, where factional bloodshed killed hundreds of people last month.
Violence in Sweida erupted on July 13 between tribal fighters and Druze factions. Government forces were sent to quell the fighting, but the bloodshed worsened, and Israel carried out strikes on Syrian troops in the name of the Druze.
The Druze are a minority offshoot of Islam with followers in Syria, Lebanon and Israel. Sweida province is predominantly Druze but is also home to Sunni tribes, and the communities have had long-standing tensions over land and other resources.
A US-brokered truce ended the fighting, which had raged in Sweida city and surrounding towns for nearly a week. Syria said it would investigate the clashes, setting up a committee to investigate the attacks.
The Sweida bloodshed last month was a major test for interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa, after a wave of sectarian violence in March that killed hundreds of Alawite citizens in the coastal region.
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Netanyahu Urges Red Cross to Aid Gaza Hostages
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a press conference, in Jerusalem, May 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun/Pool
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday he spoke with the International Red Cross’s regional head, Julien Lerisson, and requested his involvement in providing food and medical care to hostages held in Gaza.