By Katya Yindra
On Friday, February 9th, students at Columbia University disrupted and walked out of an event titled “Preventing and Addressing Conflict-Related Sexual Violence.” The event description referenced the New York Times-perpetuated allegations of Hamas’s sexual violence against Israelis, despite these assertions being widely criticized for weak reporting and lack of credible sources.
Former Secretary of State and current Columbia professor, Hillary Clinton headlined the event. Other speakers in the shameful lineup included Keren Yarhi-Milo, a former IDF intelligence officer and current dean at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, and Linda Thomas-Greenfield who used the United States’ veto power last October to block the Security Council from passing a resolution ordering a ceasefire in Gaza.
A coalition called Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) organized the disruption and reported that nearly 100 students participated in the walkout from the event. The students of CUAD have reignited the struggle for Columbia University’s divestment from Israeli companies and this disruption was part of a broader campaign to boycott and disrupt Zionist events on campus. This campaign has come at a time of increasing repression, such as the suspension of the Columbia chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voices for Peace last fall.
At the event on Friday, students carried out a staggered disruption whereby individual students stood up and gave brief, incisive speeches before university delegates escorted them out.
The first disruptor, in her address to Dean Yarhi-Milo, highlighted the hypocrisy of the event, stating, “Some of us have been the victims of sexual assault and rape by Israeli Occupation Soldiers, not to mention the hundreds and thousands of Palestinian women who have been victims of sexual assault and violence in Palestine as this genocide unfolds. You and Hillary Clinton manufacture consent through this event for the continued genocide in Gaza…I am your student and I am ashamed of you.”
Another disruptor confronted Hillary Clinton in an impassioned pronouncement referencing the global destruction and destabilization that occurred under her authority as Secretary of State. “Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton, you are a war criminal. The people of Libya, the people of Iraq, the people of Syria, the people of Yemen, and the people now of Palestine, as well as the people of America will never forgive you… If there is a hell, you will burn,” the student decried.
Between each of the 6 disruptors, event speakers became increasingly flustered as they tried to regain control of the crowd and speak over the condemnations of the students. When the final disruptor finished speaking, she gave the word for the remaining student disruptors to walk out of the event. On their way out, students chanted “Free, Free Palestine,” and left the room half empty.
The event organizers enforced a mandatory coat and bag check which was later used as a method of punishment and attempted repression. When student disruptors exited the event, school security attempted to withhold their belongings, demanding students provide their university IDs.
School security prevented one student from retrieving her inhaler and left her coughing at the side of the room in a shameless attempt to leverage identifying information from students.
This callousness from university staff and administration is nothing new to the pro-Palestine students of Columbia University, who received no institutional support after facing chemical attacks from former IDF soldiers on their own campus at the end of January.
photo: Columbia University Low Memorial Library, Wikipedia
