Pro-Palestinian students at Columbia University have organized a tuition strike for the spring 2024 semester over “Israeli apartheid.”
“We want our university to refuse to invest in ethnic cleansing and genocide abroad. We refuse to accept our university’s silencing of student voices demanding decolonization on our campus,” reads a document by the students, who intend to announce a tuition strike after 1,000 pledges. “We refuse to allow our tuition dollars to fund apartheid.”
The strike is organized by the Barnard Columbia Abolitionist Collective, the Young Democratic Socialists of America, and Student-Worker Solidarity organizations.
The protesters demand a referendum for students across all Columbia University schools “on the issue of divestment from companies profiting from or otherwise supporting Israeli apartheid and Columbia’s academic ties to Israel.”
The students demand that Columbia remove Board of Trustees members whose personal investments, financial commitments, employment, or other business relations entail “profit from or support for Israeli apartheid,” and further demand a commitment to annually issuing “a comprehensive list of Board of Trustee conflicts of interest with Columbia’s investments.”
The students demand that the campus police disclose budget details, release organizational information and training requirements for staff members, as well as cease contact with the New York Police Department “for the purposes of crowd control and protest support.”
A strike pledge form states that “Columbia University has brought dozens of NYPD officers onto campus for these peaceful protests” and “these officers have only served to make students of color feel unsafe on their own campus and to stand idly by while students have been harassed and doxxed by outside organizations.”
The students clarify why they are calling for changes to campus policing.
“The standing practice of policing on campus overwhelmingly surveils and targets racialized bodies, rendering Black, indigenous and other marginalized students vulnerable to institutional and structural harm,” the document states. “College campuses across the country should be taking the steps to reduce their reliance on campus policing and campus safety personnel to address social problems, and should instead opt for alternative methods of safety and security that promote community care and restorative justice.”
The organizers of the strike did not respond to National Review’s request for comment by the time of publication.
In a document titled “Tuition Strike FAQ,” the students acknowledge that “our demands would require Columbia to give up millions of dollars in revenue” and therefore “the only way to get Columbia to agree to this will be to make the cost of not conceding our demands higher than the cost of conceding our demands.”
The organizers are hoping for at least 1,000 students to strike, which they estimate is roughly 10 percent of the tuition-paying student body and would entail a $20 million loss in revenue for the university. Currently, Barnard students are not encouraged to participate in the tuition strike given “unique risks” such as housing loss.
A document prepared by “a research team of Columbia Law students” outlines possible risks of participating in the tuition strike. It begins with a disclaimer, stating that “nothing shared here should substitute for legal advice from a lawyer” and “this is also a living document that is being updated in real-time so inaccuracies may exist.”
A document titled “Guide to Talking to your Parents” states that “it’s highly unlikely that students participating in the tuition strike would face disciplinary action of any kind,” adding that “students are routinely late on and miss their tuition payments for a variety of economic and logistical reasons, and it would be absurd for the university to suspend, expel, or punish a student for this lateness.” The document advises students “Don’t bring this [disciplinary action] up unless your parents do — the less they think about this, the better!”
The Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace organizations encouraged the tuition strike, writing on social media that “this is truly such a low risk, low effort movement if everyone affirms their commitment to it” and “you just have to not spend money!”
“The University continues to support students who wish to express themselves through speech. At the same time, students are expected to pay their tuition in order to register for classes,” a Columbia University spokesperson wrote to National Review.