A group of anti-Israel students filed a lawsuit on Thursday against Columbia University, claiming that they have been the victims of “extreme anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and Islamophobic harassment on campus since October 9, 2023,” New York Post reported.
Palestine Legal filed the complaint on behalf of four students and the extremist group Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine. It claims that the students have been the victims of “multiple death threats, being called terrorists and ‘Jew killers,’ being harassed for wearing keffiyehs (traditional Palestinian scarf) or hijab, being doxed.” The students also complained that they are “being stereotyped as supporting Hamas or as terrorists, being treated differently by high-ranking administrators.”
The lawsuit accused the Columbia University administration of failing to put an end to, and even reinforcing, the alleged harassment despite “dozens of complaints” from students. It attacked the university’s decision to “invit[e] the New York Police Department (NYPD) onto campus for the first time in decades to arrest over 100 students who had been peacefully protesting Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, summarily suspending many of them, locking them out of classes, and even prohibiting them from taking exams or submitting papers online.”