Dive Temporary:
- Palestine Authorized filed a civil rights grievance Thursday in opposition to Columbia College over the establishment’s dealing with of pro-Palestine protests and reviews of harassment.
- The authorized group filed the Title VI grievance with the U.S. Division of Training’s Workplace for Civil Rights on behalf of 4 college students and the campus’s chapter of College students for Justice in Palestine.
- The grievance accuses the college of discriminating in opposition to Palestinian, Arab or Muslim college students, together with those that have supported pro-Palestinian protests. It additionally mentioned the college failed to guard these college students in opposition to harassment and dying threats.
Dive Perception:
Beneath the Civil Rights Act of 1964, federally funded faculties and faculties are prohibited from discriminating in opposition to individuals primarily based on race, shade or nationwide origin.
Thursday’s civil rights grievance alleges Columbia college students have been focused by anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab and Islamophobic harassment for months with out the college stepping in. In a single incident, a chemical assault on protesters resulted in virtually a dozen being hospitalized, the grievance alleged.
The college declined to touch upon the grievance Friday.
Columbia’s latest determination to permit police on campus to answer a pro-Palestinian protest represents discriminatory remedy, the grievance mentioned.
Final week, the personal college requested metropolis police to clear an encampment of protesters on campus, the primary time it has carried out so in over 5 a long time. The New York Police Division arrested over 100 individuals, together with college students from Columbia and its sister establishment, Barnard Faculty, on trespassing fees.
The transfer demonstrated “a major break from decades-long follow and remedy of pupil protests” and “an egregious instance of various remedy of Palestinian college students, these perceived to be Palestinian, and people related to or advocating for Palestinians,” the grievance mentioned.
That alternative has additionally been criticized by Columbia college, who organized a walkout Monday in solidarity with the arrested college students.
“We condemn within the strongest attainable phrases the Administration’s suspension of scholars engaged in peaceable protest and their arrest by the New York Metropolis Police Division,” the Columbia and Barnard chapters of the American Affiliation of College Professors mentioned final week. “These acts violate the letter and the spirit of the College Statutes, shared governance, college students’ rights, and the College’s absolute obligation to defend college students’ freedom of speech and to make sure their security.”
The grievance additionally mentioned that Columbia college students have obtained dying threats for the reason that newest Israel-Hamas struggle — together with threats despatched to an official campus group’s e-mail in November. Exterior organizations additionally printed college students’ pictures and figuring out info, an act generally known as doxxing, the grievance mentioned.
College President Minouche Shafik condemned the doxxing of Columbia college students in October and established a doxxing useful resource group the following month. However Thursday’s grievance mentioned the college acted “lengthy after the injury had been carried out,” taking weeks to answer pupil considerations.
Maryam Alwan, one of many Columbia college students who filed the grievance, alleged that the college Columbia failed to guard her from the racism and abuse she skilled throughout protests.
“The violent repression we’re going through as peaceable anti-war protesters is appalling,” Alwan mentioned in a Thursday assertion. “As a Palestinian pupil, I’ve been harassed, doxxed, shouted down, and discriminated in opposition to by fellow college students and professors — merely due to my identification and my dedication to advocating for my very own rights and freedoms.”
Along with making certain Columbia is in compliance with Title VI, OCR ought to power the college to publicly apologize for its dealing with of the protests and publicly condemn anti-Palestinian racism and discrimination, the grievance mentioned.
The complainants, mentioned the college ought to drop all “discriminatory investigations and legal fees” in opposition to protesters and canopy the tutoring of scholars who’ve had “to endure an anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and Islamophobic setting on campus, with out treatment or recourse from Columbia for almost two entire semesters.”
