Columbia University Apartheid Divest is a coalition of student organizations that see Palestine as the vanguard for our collective liberation. We are a continuation of the Vietnam anti-war movement and the movement to divest from apartheid South Africa. We support freedom and justice for the Palestinian people, and for all people. We know that true collective safety will arise when everyone has access to clean air, clean water, food, housing, education, healthcare, freedom of movement, and dignity.

Israel is bombing hospitals, schools, and homes while cutting off food, water, medicine, and electricity to the more than two million Palestinians in Gaza, half of whom are children. Over 10,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel’s bombs and thousands more are expected to be killed via starvation and dehydration. The brutal onslaught over the last month is but another chapter in over 75 years of violence, dispossession, and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people—funded by U.S. taxpayer dollars, and further enabled by financial investments made by institutions like Columbia University.

As students across the country rise up to defend Palestinian lives, campus administrations like ours are trying to silence our voices. They underestimate our resolve. We will not rest until Columbia divests from apartheid Israel, Palestinians are free, and liberation is achieved for all oppressed people worldwide.

The CUAD Coalition initially formed in 2016 and passed a Columbia College-wide referendum in 2020 in favor of divestment that former University President Lee Bollinger overturned. Our coalition was reactivated in October 2023 in response to the overwhelming support for Palestinian freedom from students on Columbia’s campus. We are further moved to action by the ostensibly politically motivated suspension of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace.

As a coalition, our chief goal is to challenge the settler-colonial violence that Israel perpetrates with the support of the United States and its allies. We have previously refused to focus on concerns pertaining to free speech, academic freedom, and student safety on campus, as they distract from Israel’s actively committing genocide and ethnic cleansing. However, the University’s weaponization of policy to silence students enables the atrocities that Israel has subjected Palestinians to for decades—atrocities that began when Zionist militias violently forced over 700,000 Palestinians, 75 percent of the population, out of their homes in 1948, and which have continuously escalated with virtual impunity since.

The Zionist project is reaching its apex as Israel continues to violate international law by indiscriminately bombing civilians and cutting off their access to food, water, medicine, and fuel. According to reports from the World Health Organization, during the time we spend writing this, a Palestinian child is killed every 10 minutes. These attacks are explicitly connected to Israel’s attempt to annex and ethnically cleanse more Palestinian land of its indigenous population. As such, it is imperative that we act now. If we wait, there may not be a Gaza left to defend.

We cannot take action to stop further atrocities if individuals and authoritative bodies at the University distort and stifle our message. The Columbia administration’s negligence severely compromises the safety of students, and threatens our ability to advocate for this issue. The Columbia administration has set a dangerous precedent by erasing the Palestinian struggle through one-sided decisions and emails that threaten and suppress the voices of students who support justice for Palestine, enabling a violent, repressive environment that puts Palestinian students, as well as all their Arab, Muslim, Jewish, and BIPOC peers, at risk through surveillance and policing.

We know that antisemitism, Islamophobia, and racism—in particular racism against Arabs and Palestinians—are all cut from the same cloth: Western colonization, imperialism, white supremacy, and anti-Blackness. Silencing Jewish voices for Palestine is arguably antisemitic: it conflates Judaism with Zionism and imposes an external definition on an entire group’s religion and culture. The University ignores, misreports, and twists the reality of the brutality unfolding in Gaza while erasing Jewish voices from the Palestinian liberation movement.

Truth and justice are on our side. Our power is in the collective. We keep us safe. Our only solution is to keep speaking out. The more Columbia attempts to silence us, the louder we will be.

Columbia University Apartheid Divest is a coalition of student organizations working toward achieving a liberated Palestine and the end of Israeli apartheid by urging Columbia to divest all economic and academic stakes in Israel. We seek an end to all interlocking systems of oppression through collective action and solidarity with oppressed people worldwide.

We envision a free Palestine. We necessarily envision an entire world free from colonialism and imperialism, and from all the interrelated systems of oppression that uphold them.

We believe in liberation. All systems of oppression are interlinked: The fates of the peoples of Palestine, Kurdistan, Sudan, Congo, Armenia, Ireland, Puerto Rico, Korea, Guam, Haiti, Hawai’i, Kashmir, Cuba, Turtle Island, and other colonized bodies are interconnected.

We are committed to creating a multi-generational, intersectional, and accessible space dedicated to fighting for abolition, transnational feminism, anticapitalism, and decolonization, and also to combating anti-Blackness, queerphobia, Islamophobia, and antisemitism.

We keep each other safe. We do not believe that prisons, police, profit over people, militarism, war, colonialism, or imperialism will keep us safe. We reject the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency’s weaponizing of the United States’ racist immigration laws to prevent our international comrades and peers from speaking up. We reject the violence of the Israel Defense Forces-trained, police-industrial complex that chokes our communities and disproportionately enacts brutality against people of color. We believe that true, collective safety will only arise when we divest from death-making institutions and invest in life-affirming institutions—when everyone has access to clean air, clean water, food, housing, education, healthcare, freedom of movement, and dignity. There can be no exceptions.

We believe in the right of self-determination, Land Back, and the Right of Return, from Palestine to Turtle Island.

We believe in solidarity and the power of relationship building. We believe in collectivity. We commit to actively refuting elitism and hierarchy in our work. We are part of a movement—of a larger collective.

We are not reactionary, but proactive. We are, in the words of Mary Hooks, “willing and ready to be transformed in service of the work.”

The Columbia University Apartheid Divest demands Columbia University immediately divest all economic and academic stakes in Israeli apartheid in accordance with the results of the 2020 student body referendum. Furthermore, we demand that the University:

1. Call on President Biden, Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer, Rep. Adriano Espaillat, and all other government officials to support an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, in line with the demands of the majority of Americans.

2. Divest from companies profiting from Israeli apartheid, noting that both former Columbia and Barnard presidents unilaterally and anti-democratically ignored the student body referendums to divest in 2020 and in 2018.

3. Cancel the opening of the Tel Aviv Global Center, noting that Palestinian affiliates of Columbia would be restricted from access to this program given Israel’s apartheid policies, and further noting that this, therefore, violates Columbia’s very own non-discrimination policy.

4. Cease the dual-degree partnership with Tel Aviv University, for the same reason.

5. Stop repressing and vilifying pro-Palestinian activism and vigorously protect the academic freedom and right to political speech of students, staff, and faculty as they face McCarthyite smear campaigns. Accordingly, the University must change policy so that protests and events can be sanctioned within three days to allow students to organize under urgent circumstances, such as the current Palestinian genocide.

6. Reinstate Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, and issue an official apology for their unjust suspension in violation of University procedure.

Signed,

1. Students for Justice in Palestine

2. Jewish Voice for Peace

3. Sunrise Columbia

4. Somali Student Association

5. Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race Student Advisory Board

6. Young Democratic Socialists of America

7. Columbia Queer and Asian

8. Asian American Alliance

9. Columbia Queer Alliance

10. African Students Association

11. Barnard Columbia Abolitionist Collective

12. Housing Equity Project

13. AAPI Interboard

14. VP&S Muslim Students Association

15. White Coats 4 Black Lives

16. Global Learning Exchange

17. CU Afghan Student Alliance

18. Graduate Muslim Student Association

19. Columbia Social Workers for Palestine

20. Poetry Slam

21. Proud Colors

22. Student Worker Solidarity

23. Law School Coalition for a Free Palestine

24. Student Workers of Columbia

25. Black Student Organization

26. SIPA Palestine Working Group

27. Columbia Vietnamese Students Association

28. Columbia Law Students for Palestine

29. Dar: the Palestine Student Union

30. Columbia National Lawyers Guild

31. Muslim Students Association

32. African Studies Working Group

33. Caribbean Students Association

34. Barnard Organization of Soul and Solidarity

35. AZINE Asian / American Arts & Zine Collective

36. CU Turath (Arab Students Association)

37. Columbia Humanitarian Organization for Migration and Emergencies

38. Reproductive Justice Collective

39. Columbia University Black Pre-Professional Society

40. Pakistani Students Association

41. Barnard Columbia Urban Review (missing rep 2 #)

42. Sabor

43. Masaha

44. Club Bangla

45. Mixed Heritage Society

46. Columbia Chicanx Caucus

47. VP&S Black and Latinx Student Organization

48. Columbia Middle Eastern Law Association

49. RightsViews (Human Rights Graduate Journal)

50. School of Social Work Abolition Caucus

51. Hifi Snock Uptown

52. Take Back The Night

53. Native American Council

54. VP&S Global Health Organization

55. VP&S Equity and Justice Fellowship

56. Columbia Law Restorative Justice Collective

57. Mujeres

58. The Columbia Review

59. Student Organization of Latines

60. Alianza

61. GSAS Queer Graduate Collective

62. CU Amnesty International

63. Columbia South Asian Feminisms Alliance

64. Union Theological Seminary Students for a Free Palestine

65. Muslim Law Students Association

66. Columbia Law Parole Advocacy Project

67. Mariachi Leones de Columbia

68. Columbia Asian Pacific American Medical Student Association

69. Columbia Law and Political Economy

70. Columbia Care Access Project

71. Columbia University Asian Pacific American Heritage Month

72. Native American Law Students Association

73. Columbia University Students for Human Rights

74. Raw Elementz

75. WBAR Radio

76. South Asian Law Students Association

77. Latinx Law Students Association

78. Columbia Law School Empowering Women of Color

79. Black Law Students Association at Columbia Law

80. Sexual and Reproductive Health Action Group at Mailman School of Public Health

81. CSSW Queer Caucus

82. CURA Collective

83. Students for Sanctuary

84. Journal for Criminal Justice

85. CLS Human Rights Association

86. Columbia's New York Small Claims Advisory Service

87. Students for Free Tibet

88. Payments for Placements Caucus at Columbia School of Social Work

89. Columbia Policy Institute

90. 4x4 Magazine

91. Genderev

92. Anthropology Graduate Student Association

93. Human Rights Solidarity Network

94. CLS Society for Immigrant and Refugee Rights