Columbia University expelled student for anti-nazi protest – in 1936

It’s not uni’s first collaboration rodeo

Columbia University in New York has been rightly criticised for its failure to try to protect its students who have stood against genocide from the predations of the Trump government – which has now disappeared at least two current or former students, Mahmoud Khalil and Leqaa Kordia, and while acknowledging they have committed no crime – and even its active collusion in the persecution.

According to the Columbia Palestine Solidarity Coalition, the university refused to allow students and faculty to cancel classes or hold them online because of fears of abduction by the regime – and has not yet condemned the kidnapping of Khalil, who is reportedly suing Columbia for colluding in the state’s breach of his civil and constitutional rights:

And the university was accused of colluding with the government to assault students’ rights – and students themselves and even teachers – when it called in riot police that assaulted them in a ‘day of shame’.

But Columbia’s attacks on students protesting against nazis and fascists go back a lot further than last year. It expelled a student in 1936 – for leading a protest against the original nazis as Hitler consolidated power in Germany and re-armed in preparation for the Second World War:

The Establishment – whether in the US or the UK – will always unite against those protesting injustice if it feels it is in its interests to do so. And now UK universities are copying the tactics of their US counterparts in repressing students protesting against genocide, caving to pressure from pro-Israel lobby groups:

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