Columbia University has been accused of being soft on anti-Israel student demonstrators, but school officials did boot a student who declared that “Zionists don’t deserve to live.”
Top university leaders said that a student has been “banned from campus” shortly after a video surfaced on social media of junior Khymani James, a prominent member of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, saying that Zionists, fascists, racists and others “shouldn’t live in this world.”
The officials that the “one individual whose vile videos have surfaced in recent days now banned from campus.”
“Chants, signs, taunts, and social media posts from our own students that mock and threaten to ‘kill’ Jewish people are totally unacceptable, and Columbia students who are involved in such incidents will be held accountable,” said the Friday statement.
The statement was signed by Board of Trustees Co-Chairs David Greenwald and Claire Shipman; President Minouche Shafik, and Provost Angelo Olinto.
They didn’t say whether the student has been expelled or suspended over the January video, which was unearthed by the Daily Wire.
In the recording, Khymani James said that “Zionists in my DM [direct messages] wanting to meet up and fight, I don’t fight to injure or for there to be a winner or loser, I fight to kill,” adding that he has never killed anybody.
“Zionists, they don’t deserve to live comfortably, let alone, Zionists don’t deserve to live,” he said. “The same way we’re very comfortable accepting that Nazis don’t deserve to live, fascists don’t deserve to live, racists don’t deserve to live, Zionists, they shouldn’t live in this world.”
He continued: “Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists. I’ve never murdered anyone in my life, and I hope to keep it that way.”
Mr. James backtracked after the video went viral, acknowledging that “What I said was wrong,” but that when the video was recorded, “I had been feeling unusually upset after an online mob targeted me because I am visibly queer and Black.”
“I am frustrated that words I said in an Instagram Live video have become a distraction from the movement for Palestinian liberation,” he said in the post on X. “I misspoke in the heat of the moment, for which I apologize.”
A shocking viral video surfaced (courtesy of the Daily Wire) of Khymani James, a student leading the antisemitic protests at Columbia University, releasing a video claiming that Zionists don’t deserve to live. pic.twitter.com/TLH7z9bP3q
— Jordan Sekulow (@JordanSekulow) April 26, 2024
Jonathan Turley, George Washington University Law School professor, said “James embodies the type of radical chic culture that pervades higher education among both faculty and students.”
“Administrators, faculty and admissions committees have fostered this radicalized environment,” said Mr. Turley on his blog. “It is not because radical views are expressed, but the intolerance for opposing views, the purging of faculties of conservatives and dissenting views, and the echo chamber created on campuses.”
Columbia went last week to hybrid learning over safety fears spurred by virulent pro-Palestinian student protests, including an encampment that covers the West Lawn.
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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