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Editor’s note: A culture of rampant lawlessness has been steadily growing in American academia. Our nation’s universities have shamelessly put their pursuit of woke leftist ideology ahead of their loyalty and obedience to the laws of the United States of America and the principles of freedom and equality of opportunity that inform them. The Freedom Center is exposing the worst perpetrators of this illegal conduct as the Top Ten Academic Felons, and we will be highlighting one school a day as we count down from #10 to #1. Columbia University is #1 on our list.
#1: Columbia University
During the spring semester of 2024, as pro-Hamas demonstrators took over the campus quad, creating an encampment that persisted for weeks, and then laying siege to Hamilton Hall, Columbia University became the poster child for how not to respond to campus Jew haters.
The basic facts of the case bear repeating as they prove that Columbia blatantly and willfully violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, by failing to ensure that Jewish and Israeli students and faculty were granted equal and unfettered access to campus, and by further failing to protect their physical safety.
As Israel’s defensive war against the Palestinians in Gaza raged (a justified defense for Hamas’s barbaric October 7 attack on civilians), pro-Hamas students, aided by radical faculty and outside organizers, created an illegal encampment on the South East Lawn of Columbia. They labeled this area the “Gaza solidarity encampment” or the “liberated zone” and denied entry by means of physical force and violence to anyone they judged to be a Zionist. Upwards of 85% of American Jews consider themselves to be Zionists and the philosophy of Zionism—that the Jews should reestablish a nation for themselves in their ancestral homeland of Israel—is a core tenet of the Jewish faith.
Yet Zionists—and therefore nearly all Jews—were forcibly excluded from the vast encampment on campus. As the anti-Semitism watchdog organization, the Amcha Initiative, reports:
The protestors had defended their encampment by encircling it and chanting, “we don’t want no Zionists here,” called for an intifada, and physically intimidated Jewish students that were observing or recording. Professors spoke at a “faculty solidarity teach in,” where Professor Mahmood Mamdani stated, “The response to Zionist power is to criminalize anti-Zionism as antisemitism”… The Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine group praised and promoted support for the encampment online, even going so far as to elicit donations for the protestors violating university policy.
Furthermore, as Amcha has documented, “multiple Jewish students were assaulted” in the so-called “liberated zone” and elsewhere on campus: “Protestors off campus threw fake blood at Jewish students. According to the House of Representatives Committee on Education and Workforce, a photographer wearing a ‘bring them home necklace’ had coffee thrown at him by a protester while simply standing nearby. A Jewish student was accosted when walking home wearing a Star of David necklace, and a hostage tag when a woman began screaming at the student, calling the Jewish student a Zionist and a murderer while banging what appeared to be a pot on the barricade, and after being told by a police officer to stop, accused Jewish students of ‘killing her people’ and said ‘We are Hamas’ which was caught on video. A Jewish Columbia student reported to the Committee that many Jewish students ‘who [live] right next to the campus couldn’t sleep due to screams of Intifada until 1AM.’”
Instead of responding to these blatantly illegal acts of discrimination and assault with a show of force, Columbia administrators coddled the pro-Hamas demonstrators. They spent weeks on futile negotiations and entreaties, only emboldening the radicals who had lawlessly disrupted campus life and threatened Jewish students who were just trying to get to class. As a result, the illegal demonstrations persisted, eventually shutting down campus entirely, forcing classes to be moved online, and necessitating the cancellation of graduation ceremonies.
An incomplete list of offenses committed by the pro-Hamas rioters compiled by the Amcha Initiative includes:
- A protestor holding a sign saying “Al-Qasam’s [sic] next target” who stood in front of a group of Jewish students holding Israeli flags and singing.
- A Jewish student wearing a yarmulke being shoved and screamed at by protestors, “you’ve got blood on your hands!” when he attempted to recover an Israeli flag stolen by a protestor, who then ran to a cheering crowd of anti-Israel protestors that attempted to burn the flag. (The student additionally claims a rock was thrown at his face and protestors screamed, “Kill the Zionist”).
- Protestors screaming “go back to Poland!” and “yehudim, yehudim [which translates to Jews, Jews]” at Jewish Columbia students trying to leave campus.
- Protestors circling around the main gates and entrance to campus, with one stating, “I am Hamas,” which was documented in video.
- Crowds screaming “tear down the gates” and various hateful chants in English and Arabic as individuals unaffiliated with the university climbed the University’s gates.
- A Jewish Columbia student being splashed with water by a protestor.
- Protestors chanting, “Al-Qassam you make us proud! Take another soldier out!,” “We say justice, you say how? Burn Tel Aviv to the ground!,” and “Hamas we love you. We support your rockets too!”
- A protestor delivering a speech on campus that exclaimed, “We are here today because on October 7 the Palestinian resistance in Gaza broke through the walls of their open air prison, shattering the illusion of the invincibility of their occupiers. [Cheers from the crowd.] By setting up this encampment in the heart of the Zionist stronghold of Columbia University, we intend to do the same.”
- A protestor standing immediately outside Columbia’s gates leading a crowd in Arabic chants glorifying terrorism and encouraging students to become terrorist “martyrs” after which he explained in English that the chant translated to “mother of the shahid, mother of the martyr, I wish my mother was in your place.”
Bearing witness to these acts, Columbia’s Orthodox rabbi, Elie Beuchler, emailed Jewish students on campus to say that though it “deeply pains” him, he recommended that Jewish students remain at home and not attend class on campus “until the reality in and around campus has dramatically improved.”
The University also failed entirely to prevent outside agitators and known terrorism supporters, as well as individuals previously banned from campus, from participating in the pro-Hamas riots. As Amcha reports:
“numerous unauthorized individuals, including ones explicitly banned from campus, have been documented at the encampment, including: Within our Lifetime organizer Nerdeen Kiswani, who was banned from campus for speaking in support of terrorism at “Resistance 101,” was recorded as being on campus and leading chants of “there is only one solution, Intifada revolution”; Shellyne Rodriguez, who was fired from faculty positions at CUNY Hunter College and the School of Visual arts after threatening a New York Post reporter with a machete, was photographed on campus at the protests; a student that had been suspended for involvement with the terrorist-associated “Resistance 101” event and who also has defied an eviction order from Columbia; and visiting professor Mohamed Abdou, who President Shafik promised was being terminated, was also photographed at the encampment.
Foreign nationals also played a leading role in the pro-Hamas riots. Graduate student, Mahmoud Khalil, is an Algerian citizen with a green card, which gives him “lawful permanent residency” in the United States, but not all the protections of citizenship. He was one of the key instigators of the Columbia encampment and one of the negotiators who met repeatedly with the Columbia administration and refused to comply with their orders to dismantle the encampment.
In March of 2025, Khalil was arrested by agents of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and President Trump sought to have him deported on the grounds that he “willfully misrepresented” facts on his green card application, and that his involvement in leading pro-Hamas protests at Columbia poses a threat to U.S. foreign policy interests. The case to deport him remains ongoing in the courts.
Throughout weeks of chaos in the spring of 2024, during which Jewish students feared for their lives and safety merely walking across campus, the Columbia administration attempted to appease the pro-Palestinian mob and refused to allow city police to enter the private campus. It was only after the pro-Hamas demonstrators seized control of Hamilton Hall—taking hostage members of the janitorial staff and causing widespread damage to university property—that the university finally called in the New York City police. Millions watched on live national television as police officers in riot gear entered the building through an upper story window, finally retaking control of the campus. Protests and demonstrations continued to disrupt campus life over the course of the next months, resulting in the cancellation of graduation ceremonies in 2024.
Throughout this entire, highly public, ordeal, Columbia’s top administrators, led by then-president Minouche Shafik, attempted to negotiate with the pro-Hamas radicals who had overrun the campus and made Jewish students abandon it in fear of their lives and safety. Despite the imminent danger to Jewish students and the direct calls for terrorism and genocide emanating from the campus quad, the administration repeatedly adopted a policy of appeasement toward the pro-Hamas rioters, claiming that allowing them to threaten Jews and enact a hostile takeover of the campus quad was an exercise of “free speech.”
While the Biden administration was all too happy to ignore these violations of federal law, the Trump administration took clear and decisive action against Columbia. In May of 2025, Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued a press release announcing its determination that “Columbia University violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VI) by acting with deliberate indifference towards student-on-student harassment of Jewish students from October 7, 2023, through the present.”
“OCR enforces Title VI, which prohibits a recipient of Federal financial assistance from discriminating in its programs and activities on the basis of race, color, or national origin, which includes discrimination against individuals that is based on their actual or perceived Israeli or Jewish identity or ancestry,” the release stated. “OCR’s Notice of Violation articulates extensive factual findings that span a period of over 19 months in which the University continually failed to protect Jewish students. The findings are based on information and documents obtained during the investigation, including witness interviews; examination of written policies and procedures; reliable media reports that contemporaneously capture antisemitic incidents and events at Columbia University; and reports from Columbia University’s own Task Force on Antisemitism.”
OCR’s specific allegations against Columbia included the university’s failure in each of the following areas:
- To establish effective reporting and remediation mechanisms for antisemitism until the summer of 2024,
- To properly abide by its own policies and procedures when responding to Jewish students’ complaints,
- To abide by its only policies and procedures governing student misconduct against Jewish students,
- To investigate or punish vandalism in its classrooms, which include the repeated drawing of swastikas and other universally recognized hate images, and
- To enforce its time, place, and manner restrictions for protests held on campus, such as inside and around its academic buildings, residence halls, and libraries since October 7, 2023.
This HHS determination that Columbia violated federal law by permitting rampant anti-Semitism on campus was accompanied by additional action from the Trump administration which froze $400 million in federal funds earmarked for the university.
“Freezing the funds is one of the tools we are using to respond to this spike in antisemitism. This is only the beginning,” commented Leo Terrell, head of the Justice Department task force to combat antisemitism. “Canceling these taxpayer funds is our strongest signal yet that the Federal Government is not going to be party to an educational institution like Columbia that does not protect Jewish students and staff.”
Finding itself between a rock and a hard place, Columbia finally caved in to the pressure to do the right thing. In an historic settlement with the federal government, the university agreed to enact immediate changes to protect Jewish students and employees. Among the provisions of the agreement were that “Columbia will not engage in unlawful racial discrimination in hiring, admissions, or university programming,” that “Columbia will pay the United States $200 million to settle claims related to discriminatory practices,” and that “Columbia will also pay the largest employment-discrimination public settlement in almost 20 years” by providing over $20 million “to resolve alleged civil rights violations against Jewish Columbia employees that occurred on its campus following the October 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks.”
Columbia’s rapid capitulation to the Trump administration is proof that the university was well aware of its repeated violation of Civil Rights Law through its failure to protect its Jewish students and employees. The university deserves its place atop the list of Academic Felons.
Previous articles in series:
#10: Academic Felon: Golden West College.
#9: Academic Felon: University of Arizona
#8: Academic Felon: San Jose State University
#7: Cornell University
#6: University of Louisville
#5: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
#4: University of Pennsylvania
#3: University of California-Los Angeles
#2: Harvard University
