Here’s how Columbia University’s leadership can atone for its sins last spring: Throw the book at pro-Hamas thugs who stormed and illegally occupied the campus library during finals week.
This was not peaceful protest: They violated the school’s ban on wearing masks to conceal your identity, injured two campus safety officers, defaced property and refused to present student IDs when asked.
Other students had to to evacuate the library — again, during finals.
School officials asked the occupiers to show ID and leave, then called in the NYPD to arrest the 80 (61 women, 19 men) who refused.
At least 50 reportedly are students, yet Columbia’s leaders so far aren’t even clear if any will be suspended, let alone expelled.
The school’s (latest) acting president, Claire Shipman, has a clear duty to throw the book at them.
- Name and shame the masked cowards.
- Suspend them for at least a year, denying diplomas to any otherwise set to graduate and with any return to school contingent on a clear show of remorse.
- Work with Homeland Security to revoke the visas of foreign students who broke campus rules and engaged in violence.
- Demand that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg prosecute all lawbreakers, especially including any non-students.
Forget about the changes demanded by the Trump administration: For its own sake, Columbia needs to reject antisemitism and crack down hard on violence, vandalism and intimidation.
“We are resolute that calls for violence or harm have no place at our University,” ran Shipman’s statement late Wednesday; let’s hope the school takes all the action needed to make that so.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
