One day after Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., questioned Columbia University administrators about the mistreatment of students protesting Israel’s war on Gaza, the school suspended Omar’s daughter and two other students for participating in a campus protest.

Omar’s questions to the administrators during a Wednesday congressional hearing on antisemitism at Columbia touched on the school’s response to students being sprayed with a chemical at a campus rally for Gaza and its policy surrounding professors harassing students online.

University President Nemat Minouche Shafik announced that two students were suspended in relation to the January protest and that a professor was under investigation for complaints over his social media posts about students. 

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During a hearing premised on the idea that there is rampant antisemitism on Columbia’s campus, Omar also got Shafik to say that there had been no protests targeting specific ethnic or religious groups — Muslims, Arabs, Palestinians, or Jews. 

“I think that the line of questioning which my mother asked was definitely a pressure for Columbia University,” said Omar’s daughter, Isra Hirsi, who is a junior at Barnard College, Columbia’s women’s school.

Hirsi, who has been an active participant in campus protests over the war and said she hadn’t received any prior disciplinary warning, noted that other factors may have been at play too. “And then added pressure from me also giving interviews and people knowing that I am the daughter of her at the same time,” she told The Intercept.

Scare Tactics

On Thursday morning, Barnard sent interim suspension notices to Hirsi, Maryam Iqbal, and Soph Dinu for participating in an on-campus encampment that has rallied hundreds of students for over 24 hours. The demonstration began in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, ahead of the House Committee on Education and Workforce’s hearing on antisemitism at the school.

According to the notice, the trio had received “repeated requests from Barnard and Columbia” to leave the encampment on Wednesday.

“Barnard College,” the notice read, “has determined that your continued unauthorized encampment on the Columbia campus poses an ongoing threat of disruption to, or interference with, the normal operations of the College and the University.” Because of the suspension, the students are barred from residence halls, dining facilities, and classrooms while the full disciplinary process plays out. 

The students told The Intercept that they had not received any warning other than the code of conduct warning flyers school officials distributed to the masses. (Asked about the suspensions, Barnard pointed to a public statement that said that senior staff members issued written warnings to protest participants at around 7 p.m. on Wednesday, warning them of interim suspension if they did not leave by 9 p.m. The school said that it would continue to place encampment participants on interim suspension as it identifies them.)

“They’re trying to get students too afraid to show up to protests.”

Iqbal noted that she, Hirsi, and Dinu have been visible participants in the protests and have made themselves available to media using their full names. She added that the school had previously identified her as an organizer with Students for Justice in Palestine, which the school suspended last year, and had asked her about SJP activities in recent months.

Both Iqbal and Dinu have been involved in disciplinary discussions about their participation in protests, they said.

“I see the hearings as one of the many scare tactics the administration uses to try to divide and conquer us,” Dinu told The Intercept. “They’re trying to call in as many students as possible to try to get whatever information they can. They’re trying to get students to become scared and to share a bunch of information to try and target the movement. They’re trying to get students too afraid to show up to protests. But as we have seen, that does not work. It only serves to galvanize the student body more.”

The trio were at the January rally where a noxious chemical was sprayed, and Iqbal said she was among those who went to the hospital for treatment afterward. (In a pseudonymous lawsuit filed this week, a Columbia student said that he had sprayed a non-toxic gag spray “in the air — not directly at any individual.”) 

During the Wednesday congressional hearing, Shafik publicly revealed for the first time that two students were suspended in relation to the incident. Hirsi noted that the university has been relatively quiet about that investigation, while it has quickly published information about unauthorized events held by students protesting the Gaza war.

“That is very scary and concerning about how the university plays out who deserves due process, who deserves to be publicly shamed, and who doesn’t.”

“We had no idea. I mean, we heard through the grapevine about their suspension, but no public correspondence about what had happened,” she said. “And I think that that is very scary and concerning about how the university plays out who deserves due process, who deserves to be publicly shamed, and who doesn’t.”

This week’s encampment was organized to “protest Columbia University’s continued financial investment in corporations that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide, and occupation in Palestine,” organizers said. The demonstrators are calling for transparency for all of Columbia’s financial investments and amnesty for students involved “in the encampment or the movement for Palestinian liberation.”

Students, citing faculty senators, said the school has agreed to some form of greater investment transparency. 

“We welcome an opportunity to discuss the topic of transparency with our community, and to hear where additional information would be impactful,” a Columbia spokesperson told The Intercept. “Students can follow an established process to request information about university investments.”

On Thursday afternoon, Shafik, “with great regret,” authorized the New York Police Department to clear out the protest site. Police arrested more than 100 people, a student group said in a statement.

One adjunct faculty member found the decision troubling, given that the school has its own public safety department ostensibly trained to help manage student and campus affairs.

“I was there yesterday and these students were literally just singing and chanting and handing out flyers,” said the professor, who requested anonymity out of concern for workplace reprisal. “Shouldn’t the cops have been required to disarm before entering campus to avoid possibility of accidental discharge or some other horrible thing?”

Update: April 18, 2024, 4:47 pm. ET
This article was updated to include information about arrests at the protest site as well as additional details from Barnard College’s statement about the suspensions.

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