(New York) The American University Columbia said on Tuesday that it had imposed individual sanctions on around 80 students who had occupied a campus library in May to denounce the Israeli strikes in Gaza.
In recent months, American universities have experienced significant disputes of Israeli bombing in Gaza, and have been accused by the Trump administration “anti -Semitism”.
At the beginning of May, around 80 people had occupied the Butler library in Columbia, in New York, an action condemned by the Presidency of the University which immediately called on the police.
The head of American diplomacy Marco Rubio had described these demonstrators as “pro-Hamas” thugs.
About a year earlier, New York police had dislodged Propalenian demonstrators barricaded in a Columbia building, an epicenter of a protest movement also requiring universities that they cut bridges with companies related to Israel.
The Columbia Judicial Affairs Committee imposed sanctions on some of these students on Monday, considering their degree of involvement and having already been sanctioned, university said in a statement on Tuesday.
“Any disruption of university activities constitutes a violation of the policies and the regulations of the university which will necessarily result in consequences,” said Columbia.
The university has not detailed individual measures, but underlined that they went from periods of “probation”, to “suspensions ranging from one year to three years”, or even “expulsions”.
These disciplinary measures arise as the government of Donald Trump accentuates its pressures against universities, by freeze, in the case of Columbia, hundreds of millions of dollars in federal research subsidies.
At the end of May, the president of Columbia had been hooked during a graduation ceremony by students who accuse her of having yielded to the government’s pressure and not having prevented the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil.
Figure of the Propalestinian movement, he was arrested in March in a university residence and placed in a federal detention center in Louisiana. Mr. Khalil has since been released, but still risks expulsion.
The Columbia Committee for supporting the Boycottage campaign in Israel, a Propalestinian group, denounced “historic” sanctions and accused the president of the University of “collaboration” with the Trump administration.
According to this group, suspended students must apologize to be able to reintegrate the university, failing that they will be “de facto” expelled.
