Columbia University has not only caved and failed to expel any of the students busted in the occupation of a building during a pro-terror riot, most of them are still “in good standing’’ there, a House report says.
“The failure of Columbia’s invertebrate administration to hold accountable students who violate university rules and break the law is disgraceful and unacceptable,” fumed Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), chairwoman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, in a scathing statement accompanying a panel analysis Monday.
“More than three months after the criminal takeover of Hamilton Hall, the vast majority of the student perpetrators remain in good standing,” said the head of the House committee, which is investigating campus antisemitism.
“By allowing its own disciplinary process to be thwarted by radical students and faculty, Columbia has waved the white flag in surrender while offering up a get-out-of-jail-free card to those who participated in these unlawful actions,” Foxx said.
She blasted the Manhattan Ivy League school for failing to adequately punish students nabbed during the rule-breaking and lawless behavior that ran amok during recent anti-Israel campus demonstrations.
Foxx issued the startling finding about the university’s “failure” based on disciplinary records obtained from Columbia that found most students have escaped serious punishment such as expulsion and remain in good standing.
Her committee’s analysis found:
- Of the 22 students arrested for occupying and vandalizing Columbia’s historic Hamilton Hall on April 30, 18 are in good standing, while three others are on interim suspensions and one on probation. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office ended up dismissing nearly all of the cases against the total 46 people arrested in the riot, citing lack of evidence while noting many of the suspects wore masks to hide their identities.
- Twenty-seven Columbia students arrested by the NYPD on May 1 at various off campus locations outside of Hamilton Hall had their cases dismissed by DA Alvin Bragg because of “insufficient evidence” despite their arrests.
- On April 29, 35 Columbia students were placed on interim suspensions for failing to leave a protest encampment on the south lawn of the Morningside Heights campus. But Columbia concluded it couldn’t substantiate their participation and lifted the suspensions and dismissed the charges for 29 of the students. Thirty-one of the 35 students are currently in good standing. Two others are on interim suspensions from previous incidents, one who was previously on probation is now suspended, and one is on probation.
- Of the 32 students involved in the alumni reunion weekend encampment on the weekend of May 31, all remain in good standing. Three of the students are on probation from a prior incident but remained in good standing.
The records reviewed by Foxx’s panel show that many of the suspected rabble-rousing students hired lawyers and engaged in “alternative resolution” to lessen or avoid severe punishment by their school.
“Breaking into campus buildings or creating antisemitic hostile environments like the encampment should never be given a single degree of latitude—the university’s willingness to do just that is reprehensible,” Foxx added in her statement.
A Columbia spokeswoman said in a statement to The Post that the embattled school “is committed to combating antisemitism and all forms of discrimination and taking sustained, concrete action toward a campus where everyone in our community feels valued and is able to thrive.
“Following the disruptions of the last academic year, Columbia immediately began disciplinary processes, including with immediate suspensions. The disciplinary process is ongoing for many students involved in these disruptions, including some of those who were arrested, and we have been working to expedite the process for this large volume of violations,” the rep said.
But Matthew Schweber, a member of Columbia’s Jewish Alumni Association, slammed his alma mater, saying it is going soft on the disrupters.
“It’s a travesty of a mockery of a sham,” said Schweber, lifting a line from the Woody Allen film “Bananas.”
Criticism of the school’s slap-on-the-wrist discipline at least to date is just the latest hit on Columbia.
There is now anecdotal evidence that Jewish students are not applying or enrolling to attend the Ivy League after its anti-Israel protests and Jew-bashing.
For example, for the first time in decades, none of the graduates from the elite Jewish Ramaz high school on Manhattan’s Upper East Side has enrolled at Columbia College, the university’s premier liberal undergraduate program.
Embattled Columbia President Minouche Shafik also resigned last week and is heading back to England after leading the elite institution for the past year during its constant and sometimes destructive anti-Israel protests. Dr. Katrina Armstrong, the CEO of the Columbia University Irving Medical Center, has been named interim president.
Shafik’s resignation comes just one week after three university deans also resigned from Columbia following the exposure of their “very troubling” text chain that disparaged Israeli and Jewish students’ fears of rising antisemitism on campus.
The protests and anti-Israel vitriol was fueled by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of Israel, in which the terrorists slaughtered 1,200 people in the Jewish state and triggered the ongoing war in Gaza.
