BUZZ
And will not stop fighting until their ‘righteous’ demands are met
The “unrecognized” Columbia University student group Students for Justice in Palestine is unhappy that, after nearly a three-year delay, the school is opening its latest global center in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Originally slated to debut in 2023, the center’s opening was “slowed” after the surprise Hamas attack against Israel in October of that year, the Columbia Spectator reports.
The center will allow Columbia to “build on its existing collaborations in Israel and facilitate further engagement and partnerships.”
Columbia has ten similar centers in locales such as Amman, Jordan; Tunis, Tunisia; and Instanbul, Turkey.
Students for Justice in Palestine ripped the announcement of the center in a Friday Instagram post, referring to School of International and Public Affairs Adjunct Nadav Eyal (who made the announcement) as a “Zionist mouthpiece,” and Israel as the “Zionist entity.”
The SJP accused Columbia of “covertly continuing” the development of the Tel Aviv center “amidst a full-scale genocide, mass displacement, state-sponsored settler raids […] and the systematic destruction of not only the people and land of Palestine but the peoples and lands of the entire region.”
The group added that its and supporters’ demands over the last three years have been “righteous,” that the establishment of the center violates Columbia’s claims of institutional neutrality and “discrimination and access,” and that it will “not stop fighting” until its demands are met.
These demands include shutting down the center, ending the dual-degree program with Tel Aviv University, and divestment of “all holdings” from the “Zionist entity.”
As noted by the Spectator report, after the center was first announced in 2023, now-former Columbia Law Professor Katherine Franke (who also headed the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law), circulated a petition in opposition to it which received almost 100 signatures the first day.
“The state of Israel, through formal and informal law, policy, and practice, refuses to abide by international human rights laws and norms both domestically and in its treatment of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories,” the letter read.
Franke (pictured) had told The College Fix that the university announced the center “knowing that a number of our students and faculty will not be able to access this academic program/resource on account of their national origin, a clear violation of Title VI, the federal law that prohibits national origin discrimination.”
Franke left Columbia after reaching an agreement regarding her alleged harassment of Israeli students. In an early-2025 statement, Franke wrote “While the university may call this change in my status ‘retirement,’ it should be more accurately understood as a termination dressed up in more palatable terms.”
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