Columbia University has banned a student movement leader from campus who said “Zionists have no right to live,” a university spokesperson confirmed to The Hill on Friday.
Kaimani James, an organizer of pro-Palestinian protests at the school, also said in a recently resurfaced video from earlier this year that people “wanted to see that I wasn’t just going out and killing Zionists. We should be grateful.” His comments came around the same time he met with school officials over social media posts he wrote about fighting Zionists.
“I don’t fight to injure, I don’t fight to determine winners and losers, I fight to kill,” he wrote at the time.
In a post on social media platform X on Friday, James said his comments were “wrong” and apologized for his harsh language.
In a statement shared with The Hill on Friday, the White House strongly criticized James’ January comments, calling them “dangerous” and “appalling.”
“These dangerous and horrifying statements are upsetting and should serve as a wake-up call. Defending the murder of Jews is terrible,” White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said in a statement.
“President Biden has made clear that violent rhetoric, hate speech, and anti-Semitic rhetoric have no place in America, and we will always stand up against them.”
Columbia University’s move to ban the student comes as campus unrest over the ongoing Israel-Hamas war and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has gripped many schools across the country. Pro-Palestinian protesters trying to make their voices heard, and many of those arrested for doing so, likely view their demonstrations as part of a tradition of anti-war activism and a relic of the past. Probably.
As student protests focused on the dire humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip and Palestinian human rights erupted on college campuses across the country, the White House issued a statement last week saying, denounced the call for “intimidation”.
“While all Americans have the right to peacefully protest, calls for violence and physical intimidation targeting Jewish students and the Jewish community are blatantly anti-Semitic, unconscionable and dangerous. “There is no place for such calls on a college campus or anywhere in America,” Bates said in a statement Sunday.
In response to the demonstrations, Columbia University ran a hybrid schedule for the remainder of the semester, moving many classes online. Students at the school have filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the university for discrimination, as many of the protesters are from Palestine.
Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
