Key protest leaders in Columbia have connections to left-wing contributors

Some pro-Palestinian protesters causing chaos at Columbia University and other campuses this week belong to groups that have financial ties to prominent left-wing donors.

Tensions continue to flare at Columbia as the pro-Palestinian protesters enter their seventh day of occupying part of campus. The protest has seen more than 100 protesters arrested, attracted a massive police presence, and sparked reports of unaffiliated individuals coming onto campus, heightening concerns for student safety.

The pro-Palestinian occupation, called the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” is organized by a coalition of 116 different groups called Columbia University Apartheid Divest. The organizations involved are numerous Columbia-specific groups or Columbia chapters of national organizations, including the prominent Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace.

CUAD’s listed demands are “Divest all of Columbia’s finances, including the endowment, from companies and institutions that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide and occupation in Palestine.” The coalition of student groups also demanded that Columbia “sever academic ties with Israeli universities” and stop all “land grabs… whether in Harlem, Lenapehoking, or Palestine.”

Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace have also been behind “solidarity” protests that have spread to multiple college campuses to support the Columbia student occupation, including at Harvard University, the Ohio State University, Boston University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

As a national organization for more than 200 chapters nationwide, SJP is known for protesting Jewish speakers, promoting the boycott, divestment, and sanction, or BDS, movement, and rallying other like-minded student groups. SJP also came out in support of Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack in Israel, which left more than 1,200 Israelis dead.

According to Influence Watch, SJP is a project of the Westchester People’s Action Coalition, or WESPAC, which supports BDS, the Green New Deal, and other left-wing projects, and has assets over $1,000,000.

While SJP claims to be grassroots, the left-wing Anti-Defamation League has claimed it receives support from pro-Hamas organization American Muslims for Palestine, which the ADL has described as the “leading organization providing anti-Zionist training” in the country. According to a report from the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, American Muslims for Palestine and the U.S. Palestinian Community Network helped facilitate the first national convention for SJP in 2010.

AMP is also currently under investigation for allegedly fundraising and providing money to terrorist organizations, as the Washington Examiner reported.

Jewish Voice for Peace, another major pro-Palestinian organizing effort in Columbia and across the country, has assets of over $2.8 million and has an ideology similar to SJP’s. According to Influence Watch, the group received $3.9 million from various donors, including from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, whose director, Nicholas Burns, resigned in 2017 for its support of the pro-BDS JVP.

JVP is also supported by far-left George Soros’s Open Society Network, and since 2016 has hauled in at least $650,000 from Soros-connected groups.

Other groups in the CUAD coalition include Columbia Queer Alliance, Columbia University Students for Human Rights, White Coats 4 Black Lives, and Muslim Students Association, according to its website.

Columbia president Minouche Shafik met protest-driven tensions on Monday by moving all classes to mandatory virtual instruction in order to “deescalate the rancor and give us all a chance to consider next steps.” She also asked that students who do not live on the New York City campus to stay home.

“The decibel of our disagreements has only increased in recent days. These tensions have been exploited and amplified by individuals who are not affiliated with Columbia who have come to campus to pursue their own agendas,” Shafik said in an early-hours statement Monday morning, calling for a “reset.”

“We cannot have one group dictate terms and attempt to disrupt important milestones like graduation to advance their point of view,” she added. “Let’s sit down and talk and argue and find ways to compromise on solutions.”

The protests began early in the morning last Wednesday, the day Shafik testified before Congress about antisemitism on her campus.

Jewish leaders at Columbia have also warned students about safety on campus.

Rabbi Elie Buechler of the Columbia/Barnard Hillel and Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life told students to go home and remain there until the situation became more safe, saying in a letter to Jewish students that the school and police “cannot guarantee Jewish students’ safety in the face of extreme antisemitism and anarchy.”

Parker De Deker, a first-year Jewish student at Columbia, told the Washington Examiner he originally planned to return back to campus last night but decided to redirect his flight to observe Passover in Florida, saying, “I do not feel welcome back to campus until tensions have settled down.

De Deker, who said he has been the focus of antisemitic harassment and intimidation tactics, including being followed, likely due to him being easily identifiable as Jewish wearing a yarmulke and Star of David, said the protests have grown in danger since their onset, as he said numerous people not affiliated with Columbia have been able to make it onto campus and join the protests or otherwise make the area surrounding campus more dangerous.

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“The hardest thing about it all is that it’s a marker of your Judaism. And I wear it with pride as a means of saying: This is who I am, this is who I’m confident about, and now it’s become like identity of like a political association, where people feel the need to minimize your identity because of your outward pride of your religion,” he explained. “You have all these individuals who are not Columbia students that are coming out in front of our gates in solidarity, and they are the ones that are doing the most threatening things.”

“I firmly like to believe that the students on campus are not the ones — or I hope, I firmly hope that these students on campus are not the ones that are perpetuating these acts of antisemitism,” De Deker added, saying some people outside campus are flying the flags of terrorist groups such as Houthis, Hamas, and Hezbollah, and saying things like “We are Hamas” and “Go back to Poland.”