Pro-Palestine Students Sue Columbia University

Shares

Three students who were suspended in connection with their pro-Palestine activism are bringing the lawsuit, Drop Site News reports.   

Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University in New York in April 2024. (Abbad Diraniya, Wikimedia Commons, CC0)

By Eloise Goldsmith
Common Dreams

Three Columbia University students on Monday filed a lawsuit against the school administration challenging their suspensions related to pro-Palestine activism, according to an exclusive from the outlet Drop Site. 

The students, Aidan Parisi, Brandon Murphy and Catherine Curran-Groome, were set to graduate this coming spring prior to their suspensions. After “a monthslong convoluted, and often intimidating, disciplinary process,” Parisi and Murphy were given one-year suspensions and Curran-Groome was given a two-year suspension.

According to Drop Site, the complaint alleges that “the university violated its own policies during the disciplinary process, that the university targeted the students for their views, and that it violated New York’s landlord tenant laws when it evicted the students from university housing.”

“They singled out a few of us to try to make an example out of us,” Curran-Groome told Drop Site. “None of us, absolutely none of us, deserved what we’ve experienced this year at Columbia in terms of the targeting and the discrimination and the violence and the repression.”

The university was also sued back in March 2024 by the New York Civil Liberties Union and Palestine Legal, a legal advice and advocacy group, over its suspension of the school’s chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. [The New York State Supreme Court dismissed the case in November.]

Columbia University was the site of vigorous pro-Palestine (and pro-Israel) activism starting in fall 2023, following a deadly Hamas attack on Israel that prompted a devastating Israeli military campaign in the Gaza Strip. Pro-Palestine students and student groups at Columbia demanded that the university divest from companies with ties to Israel, [which continued a longstanding campaign at the school].

In spring 2024, students launched two successive Gaza solidarity encampments on Columbia’s campus. The launch of the first encampment coincided with an appearance by the university’s then-president, Minouche Shafik, before Congress. (Shafik resigned in mid-August.)

Curran-Groome and Parisi were first suspended on an interim basis prior the launch of the first encampment for their involvement in a March 2024 event that featured speakers who discussed the history of different strategies for confronting occupation and colonialism, including armed resistance, according to Drop Site. Curran-Groome helped organize the event in her capacity as co-president of the Palestine Working Group, an official student organization. 

According to the legal complaint, Curran-Groome sought approval to hold the event on campus. University officials allegedly said that the group could have the event on Zoom, hold it on another date, or move it off campus. The Palestine Working Group chose the third option, according to Drop Site.

After the event, however, Columbia issued a statement calling it “unsanctioned” and “unapproved.” 

Later, the school told Parisi and Curran-Groome they had been interim suspended for violating university policy and compromising the “well-being and safety of the university community,” according to Drop Site, quoting the email that the students received.

“After the encampment was established, the students received an additional interim suspension, alleging they violated the first order by being on campus,” according to Drop Site.

The school “used that suspension to then levy additional disciplinary actions, alleging that the plaintiffs had violated that first illegitimate interim suspension by then returning to campus,” James Carlson, an attorney representing the students, told Drop Site.

The outlet did not give the specific circumstances around Murphy’s suspension.

Eloise Goldsmith is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

This article is from Common Dreams.

Views expressed in this article and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

1 comment for “Pro-Palestine Students Sue Columbia University

  1. Jim Thomas
    February 4, 2025 at 11:12

    It is great to see some pushback against the absurd attack on free speech by the “elite” educational institutions such as Columbia. These institutions have shown to the world that they are corrupt to the core and have no integrity whatsoever. They have resolutely refused to defend free speech and freedom of thought, two principles which academia has heretofore purported to defend. Instead, they follow the dictates of their donors, proving that their interest is making money and preserving the privileges afforded to them and their administrators. I hope this suit is successful and achieves some level of justice for the many supporters of Palestine who have been so unfairly treated by these corrupt academic institutions.

Comments are closed.