Columbia University – where pro-Palestinian students calling for an end to the war in Gaza have been setting up a tented demonstration for more than a week – has announced that it has banned one of the protest leaders, Khymani James, from entering the campus , who declared in a video in January that “Zionists do not deserve to live.” In announcing the decision to exclude the student from campus, the university did not clarify whether the boy had been permanently suspended or expelled.
James had made the controversial comments during and after a disciplinary hearing with Columbia administrators, which he recorded and later posted on Instagram. The hearing, held earlier this year, focused on an earlier comment he had shared on social media, in which he said, among other things, that “Zionists are white supremacists and Nazis.” «All this is the antithesis of peace. And so, yes, I feel very comfortable, very comfortable, asking for these people to die,” the student noted in the video.
Yesterday, James admitted on social media that what he had said “was wrong”. “Every member of our community deserves to feel safe”, the phrase with which he tried to remedy this, specifying that he had made these comments in January before being involved in the protest movement currently taking place on campus. For their part, other pro-Palestinian student groups have noted, according to the New York Times, that one student’s statements do not reflect the movement as a whole.
