This is the first time in 57 years that the university has expelled anyone for protest, and the only official expulsions associated with Israel’s war on Gaza. Columbia University Apartheid Divest notes that this string of harsh punishments is “completely unprecedented,” noting that the last expulsion for nonviolent political protest was in 1936 when Robert Burke was expelled for rallyingagainst Columbia’s ties to Nazism.
The last recorded expulsions for non-peaceful demonstrations were in 1968, when students fought against the Vietnam War and Columbia’s gentrification of Harlem by occupying buildings and taking a dean hostage. Even then, acting Columbia President Andrew W. Cordier advocated “maximum leniency” in the cases of the nearly 400 arrested and reinstated more than half of the suspended students.
In following years, 1972, 1985, 1987, 1996, and 2016, students have engaged in sit-ins, multi-building takeovers, and blockades over issues of public concern—including American foreign policy, South African apartheid, on-campus racism, and the university’s associations with the fossil fuel industry—without suffering the same disciplinary outcomes as those opposing Israel’s war on Gaza. Indeed, the punishment of these earlier activists, who engaged in similar forms of protest as pro-Palestine demonstrators, included disciplinary warnings or being forced to write apology letters, or led to dropped charges. No repercussions approached the severity of expulsion facing protesters today.
