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Columbia University Students Organize ‘Tuition Strike’ to Force Divestment From Israel
Anti-Israel students protest at Columbia University in New York City. Photo: Reuters/Jeenah Moon
Anti-Israel students at Columbia University in New York have organized a “strike” to withhold their tuition payments unless the school accedes to their demands, which include purging the campus of investments, trustee members, and academic programs linked to the Jewish state.
“We demand that a referendum be established for students from all schools of Columbia University on the issue of divestment from companies profiting from or otherwise supporting Israeli apartheid and Columbia’s academic ties to Israel,” the students wrote in a document outlining their demands. “This referendum will be binding; if a majority (50% +1) of students vote in favor of divestment, Columbia will immediately divest from all companies profiting from or otherwise supporting Israeli apartheid and end their academic ties to Israel.”
The students also called for Columbia to “immediately remove Board of Trustees members whose personal investments, financial commitments, employment, or other forms of business involvement entail profit from or support for Israeli apartheid.”
The strike for the 2024 spring semester has been organized by the Barnard Columbia Abolitionist Collective, the Young Democratic Socialists of America, and Student-Worker Solidarity organizations.
In a “frequently asked questions” page, the students explained the purpose of their strike. “We want our university to refuse to invest in ethnic cleansing and genocide abroad,” they wrote. “We refuse to accept our university’s silencing of student voices demanding decolonization on our campus. We refuse to allow our tuition dollars to fund apartheid.”
The student strikers did not provide evidence of Israel, the lone democracy in the Middle East, committing genocide, ethnic cleaning, or apartheid. They noted they will call for students to withhold their tuition if they amass 1,000 pledges to strike, claiming 1,000 students would represent about 10 percent of the tuition-paying student body and entail a $20 million loss in revenue for the university
The move came after Columbia suspended Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which normally organizes such anti-Israel initiatives, as an official student group on campus through the end of the fall semester for repeatably violating university policies. It also came a month after after the Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) coalition issued a Nov. 14 statement in the campus newspaper demanding the school “immediately divest all economic and academic stakes in Israel” in order to fight “Israeli apartheid” against Palestinians. The coalition falsely accused Israel of “actively committing genocide and ethnic cleansing” and called on Columbia to cancel the opening of its Tel Aviv Global Center and end a dual degree-program the school offers in partnership with Tel Aviv University.
Last week, meanwhile, Columbia Social Workers 4 Palestine planned an event to celebrate Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israeli communities as a “counteroffensive.”
As for the latest anti-Israel initiative, the students noted going on a “tuition strike” could present financial problems to participants.
“If you are on a payment plan, you can cancel it … if you’re on full or substantial financial aid, it’s still possible for you to go on strike by withholding payments,” the organizers wrote. “If your parents are paying your tuition, we encourage you to have a conversation with your parents about the demands for the tuition strike and how we can organize to protect ourselves against retaliation.”
In an explanation of their motivations, the students acknowledged that refusing to pay the university carried risk.
“The only institutional consequences of late tuition payments is an inability to register for classes with outstanding fees exceeding $1,000,” they added. “We don’t anticipate the tuition strike lasting until Fall ’24 class registration, and we will cross that bridge if it comes to that.”
Columbia has become a hub of anti-Israel activism since the Oct. 7 massacre, coming under intense scrutiny for its response to the Hamas onslaught and resultant war between Israel and the Palestinian terror group. Several students and professors have released multiple letters seemingly blaming Israel for the current conflict and rationalizing the Hamas atrocities. One professor, Jospeh Massad, in a column published in Electronic Intifada called the Hamas attacks “innovative” and referred to the terrorists who para-glided into a music festival in Israel to rape and murder the young people there as “the air force of the Palestinian resistance.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Top Teachers Union Votes to End Alliance with ADL Over Israel Support
NEA Headquarters in Washington, DC. //WikiCommons
On Sunday, the National Education Association (NEA) voted to cease its relationship with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), citing the latter’s defense of the Jewish state.
The policymaking, 7,000-member assembly of the nation’s largest teachers’ union approved “new business item 39,” a measure that resolved: “NEA will not use, endorse, or publicize any materials from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), such as its curricular materials or its statistics. NEA will not participate in ADL programs or publicize ADL professional development offerings.”
In response to the decision, the ADL called it “profoundly disturbing, that a group of NEA activists would brazenly attempt to further isolate their Jewish colleagues and push a radical, antisemitic agenda on students.”
The ADL declared: “We will not be cowed for supporting Israel, and we will not be deterred from our work reaching millions of students with educational programs every year.”
Cautioning that “there’s an internal NEA process that deals with issues like this, and it is far from a completed process,” the ADL vowed: “We will continue to call out this antisemitism and prioritize our Jewish students and educators.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a consistent and influential critic of Israel’s right to exist, praised the teachers union’s rejection of the ADL.
“We welcome the NEA’s vote to stop exposing public school students to biased materials provided by the Anti-Defamation League due to its long history of spreading anti-Palestinian rhetoric,” CAIR said in a statement.
“The ADL has only become worse under its increasingly unhinged director Jonathan Greenblatt, who has repeatedly smeared and endangered students in recent years,” the group said. “This principled move is a significant step toward fostering respect for the rights and dignity of all students in public schools, who must receive an education without facing biased, politically-driven agendas.”
In a post Wednesday on X, ADL CEO and National Director Jonathan Greenblatt wrote: “The answer to the surge in antisemitism in our classrooms isn’t to exclude the Jewish community from the conversation. Anti-Israel activists within @NEAToday cannot poison U.S. classrooms with politics. @ADL‘s priority is, and has been, to support Jewish students and educators. Our nation’s school systems should have access to the best resources for education on the Holocaust and antisemitism.”
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‘Transparently Antisemitic’: Google Founder Sergey Brin Blasts UN in Internal Company Forum
Sergey Brin of Google
(Source: ReutersConnect)
Google cofounder Sergey Brin criticized the United Nations in a company forum, calling it “transparently antisemitic” after the release of a report that accused Google and other tech firms of enabling Israeli military operations in Gaza.
Brin was responding to a UN report that claimed companies including Alphabet, Google’s parent company, profited from what it called “the genocide carried out by Israel” by providing cloud computing and artificial intelligence services to the Israeli government and military.
“Throwing around the term genocide in relation to Gaza is deeply offensive to many Jewish people who have suffered actual genocides,” Brin wrote in a discussion thread on a Google DeepMind employee forum. “I would also be careful citing transparently antisemitic organizations like the U.N.”
The report was the brainchild of Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories. The Trump administration has accused her of antisemitism and has called for her removal, saying she has demonstrated consistent antisemitic biases in her work and has unfairly singled out Israel.
On Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the US was imposing sanctions on Albanese under a February executive order targeting those who “prompt International Criminal Court (ICC) action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives.”
In a post on X, Rubio accused Albanese of waging “political and economic warfare” against both nations and asserted that “such efforts will no longer be tolerated.”
Albanese, an Italian lawyer and academic, has held the position of UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories since 2022. The position authorizes her to monitor and report on “human rights violations” that Israel allegedly commits against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Albanese has an extensive history of using her role at the UN to denigrate Israel and rationalize Hamas attacks on the Jewish state. In the months following the Palestinian terrorist group’s Oct. 7 atrocities across southern Israel, Albanese accused the Jewish state of perpetrating a “genocide” against the Palestinian people in revenge for the attacks and circulated a widely derided and heavily disputed report alleging that 186,000 people had been killed in the Gaza war as a result of Israeli actions.
Google has faced internal uproar over the company’s $1.2 billion Project Nimbus deal with Israel. The deal has faced sustained criticism from human rights activists and some Google employees, who argue the technology could be used to enhance Israeli military operations and surveillance of Palestinians. According to a recent UN report, the agreement provided Israel with key cloud and AI infrastructure after Hamas launched its deadly October 7, 2023 attack against the Jewsih state, killing approximately 1,200 people and prompting a large-scale Israeli military response in Gaza.
Google has previously punished employees who protested the company’s relationship with Israel. After a wave of internal demonstrations in 2024, CEO Sundar Pichai issued a companywide memo urging staff not to use the workplace to debate political issues.
In the months following Oct. 7, Israeli defensive military operations in Gaza have led to the deaths of more than 57,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The ministry does not differentiate between civilians and combatants. Hamas, the terrorist group that runs the Gaza Health Ministry, has repeatedly fabricated casualty statistics in the past.
The UN report accused US tech firms of exploiting a lucrative opportunity created by the conflict and Israel’s need for digital tools. It singled out Google and Amazon as being complicit in Israel’s so called “genocide” in Gaza.
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US Clamps Sanctions on Israel-bashing UN Rights Monitor Albanese
Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, attends a side event during the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
The Trump administration has imposed sweeping sanctions against Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, citing the UN official’s lengthy record of singling out Israel for condemnation.
In a post on X, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the sanctions under a February executive order targeting those who “prompt International Criminal Court (ICC) action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives.” He accused Albanese of waging “political and economic warfare” against both nations and asserted that “such efforts will no longer be tolerated.”
“Today I am imposing sanctions on UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese for her illegitimate and shameful efforts to prompt [International Criminal Court] action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives,” Rubio announced on X/Twitter.
“Albanese’s campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel will no longer be tolerated,” declared the Trump administration’s top foreign affairs official. “We will always stand by our partners in their right to self-defense.”
Rubio concluded: “The United States will continue to take whatever actions we deem necessary to respond to lawfare and protect our sovereignty and that of our allies.”
The decision to impose sanctions on Albanese marks an escalation in the ongoing feud between the White House and the United Nations over Israel. The Trump administration has repeatedly accused the UN and Albanese of unfairly targeting Israel and mischaracterizing the Jewish state’s conduct in Gaza.
Albanese, an Italian lawyer and academic, has held the position of UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories since 2022. The position authorizes her to monitor and report on alleged “human rights violations” by Israel against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Last week, Albanese issued a scathing report accusing companies of helping Israel maintain a so-called “genocide economy.” She called on the companies to cut off economic ties with Israel and warned that they might be guilty of “complicity” in the so-called “genocide” in Gaza.
Critics of Albanese have long accused her of exhibiting an excessive anti-Israel bias, calling into question her fairness and neutrality.
Albanese has an extensive history of using her role at the UN to denigrate Israel and seemingly rationalize Hamas’ attacks on the Jewish state.
In the months following the Palestinian terrorist group’s atrocities across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Albanese accused the Jewish state of perpetrating a “genocide” against the Palestinian people in revenge for the attacks and circulated a widely derided and heavily disputed report alleging that 186,000 people had been killed in the Gaza war as a result of Israeli actions.
The action comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits Washington, where he has received a warm reception from the Trump administration. Netanyahu has been meeting with US officials to discuss next steps in the ongoing Gaza military operation.
Gideon Sa’ar, Minister of Foreign Affairs for Israel, commended the Rubio announcement with his own post on X/Twitter, exclaiming: “A clear message. Time for the UN to pay attention!”
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