ALBAWABA – Robert Kraft, CEO of Kraft Group and Columbia alumni, pulled financial support for Columbia University as tensions with students protesting the Israeli war on Gaza reached a peak point with the University calling for NYPD to dismantle the encampment.
"I am no longer confident that Columbia can protect its students and staff and I am not comfortable supporting the university until corrective action is taken,” Kraft said in a statement.
According to Politico, the turning point for Kraft was the revoked campus access to radical Israeli professor Shai Davidai, who has spoken to i24 describing the students' protests as "terrorism" and has been linked to having ties with weapon manufacturing for Israel according to an investigation by The Super Slice.
The pro-Palestine protests in question are being held due to the ongoing Israeli aggression on Gaza which resulted in the killing of more than 34,000 Palestinians and left at least 77,084 injured since Oct. 7. Columbia students filled up the plaza even during midnight to show their solidarity and demand a ceasefire.
Minouche Shafik, President of Columbia University, announced in a statement the switch of education to online platforms last Monday in the wake of the protests, however, the decision has been extended until the end of the semester, BBC reports, causing rage among students.
The protests in Columbia have sparked similar standoffs across American universities, causing widespread arrests. According to Politico, more than 100 Columbia University students and staff members, 120 protestors at New York University, and scores of students at Yale University in Connecticut have all been taken into custody by local police in the last week due to protests.
In a statement by the Department of Sociology, faculty members addressed the escalations and expressed their disappointment in the decisions taken by the University, reading “As quoted in the Columbia Spectator, the NYPD Chief asserted that “the students that were arrested were peaceful, offered no resistance whatsoever, and were saying what they wanted to say in a peaceful manner.”
— tey meadow (@dr_tey) April 23, 2024
The statement adds “Finally, the suspensions of the arrested students seem to us irregular, unnecessary and resting on shaky legal ground. We call on the university to immediately reverse these suspensions and allow the affected students to return to their dorms and to their courses.”
Soph Askanas, a protestor joining the students at Columbia spoke to BBC, saying that “Being uncomfortable is different than being unsafe,” regarding media claims of Anti-Semitism caused by the protestors, adding that "being arrested and dragged, having red marks on your wrist for days after the fact, or having a seizure in jail like one of my friends did - that is what's unsafe."
In an email sent out to the school community on Tuesday night, according to Fox News, Shafik said that officials would need to "consider alternative options for clearing the West Lawn and restoring calm to campus so that students can complete the term and graduate" if talks to end the protests fail.
