On Friday, January 19th, 2024, at 1 p.m., the Columbia University Apartheid Divest coalition (CUAD) held an emergency protest outside of Low Library against U.S. attacks on Yemen and the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza, which has killed over 25,000 Palestinians.
A group of counter-protestors, some of whom were affiliates of the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF), gathered in opposition, verbally harassing and provoking the students. Both internal security from CUAD and Columbia Public Safety officers, including John Murillo, the Director of Public Safety, were present. However, Public Safety turned their backs to the counter-protestors and faced the CUAD protest, a clear indication of who they intended to keep “safe.”
Around 1:30 p.m., an IOF-associated counter-protester attacked a Palestinian student and issued a death threat. Instead of responding to this serious attack, which they witnessed, public safety officials surrounded and initiated a physical altercation with the Palestinian student, accused him falsely of pushing them, and allowed the assailant to disappear.
Around 2:00 p.m., two students sprayed an odorous chemical at CUAD protestors.
When the protest ended around 3:00 p.m., the smell remained strong and was clearly noticeable on protest signs, students’ hair, clothing, backpacks, and jackets. Following student and community attempts to find the deployers of the chemical agent, known as “Skunk,” we identified them as two former IOF Officers who are current Columbia School of General Studies (GS) students. While these two students seriously endangered the campus community, they are but two members of a larger imperial project. Their actions are a result of Columbia’s complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza and refusal to protect its Palestinian and Palestine-supporting students.
Since Friday, students impacted by the Skunk spray have reported abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, shortness of breath, and excessive coughing, with four students ending up in the emergency room. Over the past 24 hours, at least nine impacted students have been sent to the hospital for electrocardiograms (EKGs), chest X-rays, and respiratory and digestive system stabilization. Their medical reports upon discharge all state “exposure to chemical agent.” Despite these frightening physical symptoms, we are extremely grateful and privileged to have access to healthcare when those in Gaza do not. The Israeli blockade restricts medical care Gazans are entitled to receive under international law, and since October 7, the Israeli occupation has bombed all thirty-six hospitals in Gaza. This has forced doctors to perform C-sections and amputations without basic anesthesia. We must highlight that Israel attacks the people of Gaza daily with bombs, white phosphorus, and bullets. In the West Bank, the IOF deploys Skunk spray not only against individuals protesting but against entire Palestinian homes as a method of collective punishment. We cannot pull our eyes from the genocide in Gaza and Israel’s settler-colonial regime.
And yet, after almost 110 days of slaughter and systemic destruction in Gaza, the Columbia administration has not mentioned the ongoing genocide of Palestinians and actively silences its students who do. This entire situation is yet another example of the toxic and unsafe environment Columbia has fostered for the students organizing for Palestine, the vast majority of whom are students of color. Instead of supporting those impacted by the attack of a chemical agent, Interim Provost Dennis Mitchell continues to send emails regarding rules of conduct for protestors. Since Friday, concerns have been minimized and students begging for advice were met with silence. Only tonight, as we drafted this statement, did Mitchell mention “a deeply troubling incident” that “required students to seek medical treatment” with no further details. Columbia’s Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, Black, and brown students are heavily policed and surveilled for simply calling on the university to recognize the ongoing genocide in Gaza and to divest from Israel. Conversely, zionist students and professors are able to actively threaten, endanger, and attack students of color and anti-zionist Jewish students with absolutely no recourse from the university. This is appalling. The university’s negligence and willful disregard of the suffering of its students of color will only embolden more attacks of this nature by ignorant and hateful individuals whose rights are more protected than our own.
Columbia’s School of General Studies (GS) militarizes our campus by hosting over two hundred IOF-affiliated students. Dean Lisa Rosen-Mitsch founded and leads the GS program that actively recruits soldiers from the IOF and considers their “military service” as a merit. This program is but one aspect of the university’s clear financial, political, and institutional incentives to avoid international accountability for the Skunk attack and their own complicity in the globalized oppression of Palestinians. This attack is a question of foreign policy, international law, and student safety. It is blatantly evident that the settler-colonial Israeli war machine holds greater control over Columbia than its own administration. The university is required to protect all its students, not only those who are white, wealthy, and supporters of Israel. There is long-standing documentation of a pattern of threats and violence by IOF members on campus towards students of color. The students who used a chemical weapon against their classmates felt emboldened by the tolerant atmosphere at Columbia towards zionist university community members who threaten and harm pro-Palestine students. Columbia harms all students by allowing trained members of the Israeli military to continue their immoral, oppressive, and racist agenda with no consequences. When will this institution act? Three Palestinian students were shot in Burlington in November. Columbia is well aware of the risks Palestinian and Palestine-supporting students face yet continues to endanger our lives. The university bears full responsibility for all violence against the pro-Palestine movement on campus. Despite the clear dangers we face at Columbia, CUAD remains committed to Palestinian liberation.
“They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds.”
Columbia University Apartheid Divest coalition (CUAD) protest against U.S. attacks on Yemen and the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza, outside Columbia University’s Low Library on January 19th, 2024 (Photo: Atish Saha)
What Comes Next?
We have ongoing efforts to support all students who are reporting the Skunk attack to Public Safety and other offices on campus. At this point, students should be aware that a public safety report will be sent to NYPD and likely federal authorities, at which point the NYPD will contact students for follow up information. We highlight this because of the long-standing surveillance, criminalization, and brutalization of communities of color and their allies, particularly Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, Black, and brown communities, by the NYPD and other law enforcement entities.
When speaking to law enforcement:
We strongly discourage speaking to cops without a lawyer present.
We also strongly discourage giving police the names of other affected students without their explicit permission, so that they can choose whether to engage with police.
Now that a criminal investigation has begun, students who report to Public Safety and/or other law enforcement could be served a subpoena and compelled to testify in court. If you are served a subpoena, we strongly encourage obtaining an attorney before taking any action. If you can’t afford one, please notify [email protected] and we will seek to connect you with one.
While we will support individual students in decision-making within the confines of the legal system as it exists today, we know that individual prosecutions and convictions will never keep us safe or get us free. We remember that the root causes of the chemical attack and death threats are the university’s abject failure to recognize and divest from the ongoing genocide in Palestine. We encourage all Columbia student groups to uplift this statement and share our demands widely. For the student groups whose members perpetrated this attack, at a bare minimum, publicly renounce the membership of these students, so we can have a safer campus.
Demands
In light of the 1/19 attack, we reiterate our demand for an end to the IOF-General Studies program and the dual degree program between Columbia and Tel Aviv University. This is in alignment with our original demand that Columbia fully divest from the settler-colonial state of Israel.
Acknowledge the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and call for a permanent ceasefire.
Implement the following interim measures to ensure the safety of those who were affected by the Skunk spray. These include:
a. Financial compensation for the medical costs and loss of property caused by the attack.
b. Free, long-term psychological resources for all impacted students. The short-term psychological care Columbia currently offers is an inadequate offering in the face of an ongoing genocide affecting our community members, and the zionist attacks Columbia enables on our own campus.
Completely restructure the Columbia Department of Public Safety and all other Columbia offices which cooperate with and serve law enforcement agencies in the city, including the NYPD and FBI. We affirm that we view the NYPD and IOF as collaborative entities which train one another in methods of mass surveillance and racialized violence.
a. We demand a reporting model which can provide us with viable and safe methods to report incidents of anti-Palestinian, Islamophobic, and racist targeting and discrimination. While zionists have strategically used mass reporting as a model for compelling the university to target and discipline us, we have been unable to report our very serious experiences of violence to the university because these reports automatically trigger NYPD involvement, which poses a serious risk to many of our members. We reject the policing of our campus by the NYPD or its campus affiliate, public safety.
b. Public Safety processes must be replaced by more effective means for us to report violence, misconduct, and discrimination, as it is the very mechanism we are now relying on to investigate the use of a chemical weapon on our campus.
– We demand clarified information on which reports Columbia is obligated to send to the NYPD, which laws govern this process, and how Columbia chooses to interpret Senate Bill S2060A.
We demand the total disarmament of public safety officers and the NYPD officers who enter our campus. We are deeply concerned about the physical safety of all students in the wake of this incident of violence and given what we have seen on other campuses, specifically when it comes to Pro-Palestine students, this campus must be completely gun-free.