Dive Brief:
- Palestine Legal filed a civil rights complaint Thursday against Columbia University over the institution’s handling of pro-Palestine protests and reports of harassment.
- The legal group filed the Title VI complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights on behalf of four students and the campus’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.
- The complaint accuses the university of discriminating against Palestinian, Arab or Muslim students, along with those who have supported pro-Palestinian protests. It also said the university failed to protect these students against harassment and death threats.
Dive Insight:
Under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, federally funded colleges and schools are prohibited from discriminating against people based on race, color or national origin.
Thursday’s civil rights complaint alleges Columbia students have been targeted by anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab and Islamophobic harassment for months without the university stepping in. In one incident, a chemical attack on protesters resulted in almost a dozen being hospitalized, the complaint alleged.
The university declined to comment on the complaint Friday.
Columbia’s recent decision to allow police on campus to respond to a pro-Palestinian protest represents discriminatory treatment, the complaint said.
Last week, the private university asked city police to clear an encampment of protesters on campus, the first time it has done so in over five decades. The New York Police Department arrested over 100 people, including students from Columbia and its sister institution, Barnard College, on trespassing charges.
The move demonstrated “a significant break from decades-long practice and treatment of student protests” and “an egregious example of different treatment of Palestinian students, those perceived to be Palestinian, and those associated with or advocating for Palestinians,” the complaint said.
That choice has also been criticized by Columbia faculty, who organized a walkout Monday in solidarity with the arrested students.
“We condemn in the strongest possible terms the Administration’s suspension of students engaged in peaceful protest and their arrest by the New York City Police Department,” the Columbia and Barnard chapters of the American Association of University Professors said last week. “These acts violate the letter and the spirit of the University Statutes, shared governance, students’ rights, and the University’s absolute obligation to defend students’ freedom of speech and to ensure their safety.”
The complaint also said that Columbia students have received death threats since the latest Israel-Hamas war — including threats sent to an official campus group’s email in November. Outside organizations also published students’ images and identifying information, an act known as doxxing, the complaint said.
University President Minouche Shafik condemned the doxxing of Columbia students in October and established a doxxing resource group the next month. But Thursday’s complaint said the university acted “long after the damage had been done,” taking weeks to respond to student concerns.
Maryam Alwan, one of the Columbia students who filed the complaint, alleged that the university Columbia failed to protect her from the racism and abuse she experienced during protests.
“The violent repression we’re facing as peaceful anti-war protesters is appalling,” Alwan said in a Thursday statement. “As a Palestinian student, I’ve been harassed, doxxed, shouted down, and discriminated against by fellow students and professors — simply because of my identity and my commitment to advocating for my own rights and freedoms.”
In addition to ensuring Columbia is in compliance with Title VI, OCR should force the university to publicly apologize for its handling of the protests and publicly condemn anti-Palestinian racism and discrimination, the complaint said.
The complainants, said the university should drop all “discriminatory investigations and criminal charges” against protesters and cover the tuition of students who have had “to endure an anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and Islamophobic environment on campus, without remedy or recourse from Columbia for nearly two whole semesters.”