Columbia’s anti-Israel protesters say Trump pulling $400M in grants from college is a ‘scare tactic’

A bunch of anti-Israel scholar protesters at Columbia College on Saturday criticized the Trump administration’s choice to rescind greater than $400 million in federal grants to the college over its alleged failure to handle antisemitism on campus throughout demonstrations held within the aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, assault in opposition to Israel.

The coed group, Columbia College Apartheid Divest, responded on social media Saturday evening for the primary time for the reason that announcement of the administration’s choice, which the group slammed as a “clear scare tactic.”

“The Trump administration’s announcement that it plans to cancel $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia is a clear scare tactic,” the group wrote on an Instagram slideshow. “The choice has nothing to do with the fabricated prices of antisemitism they’re utilizing as a skinny cowl to slash funding.”

“The federal authorities is as soon as once more trying to extend the US-backed genocide and ethnic cleaning of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Financial institution by redirecting outrage from the US’s position in genocide to the decolonial scholar protesters who it baselessly labels antiemetic,” the publish continued.

COLUMBIA READY TO WORK WITH TRUMP TO BOLSTER DISCIPLINARY PROCESS THAT WAS ‘ONLY ON PAPER’

Scholar protesters march round their encampment on the Columbia College campus, Monday, April 29, 2024, in New York.  (AP Picture/Stefan Jeremiah)

The group mentioned the final two months of a “hack job” by President Donald Trump and his senior advisor Elon Musk to “destroy public establishments” has “made clear that the billionaires in authorities are systematically dismantling each establishment that does not privately enrich them.”

The college’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, responded to Trump’s funding cuts on Friday by saying that the college takes the cuts “very significantly” and is ready to work with the federal authorities on its “official issues.”

“Once I accepted the position of Interim President in August 2024, I knew Columbia wanted a reset from the earlier 12 months and the chaos of encampments and protests on our campus,” Armstrong wrote. “The College additionally wanted to acknowledge and restore the harm to our Jewish college students, who have been focused, harassed, and made to really feel unsafe or unwelcome on our campus final spring.”

TRUMP CUTS MORE THAN $400 MILLION IN GRANTS TO COLUMBIA OVER ANTISEMITISM CONCERNS, POTENTIALLY MORE TO COME

Columbia College, the place college students have arrange what’s being known as a Gaza Solidarity Encampment, is proven in New York on April 24, 2024. (Getty Photographs)

The coed protesters requested of their Instagram publish, “President Armstrong who do you serve?”

The group mentioned the college has spent the final 17 months “appeasing Zionists and fascists,” which it mentioned contains consenting to slicing range, fairness and inclusion packages, rising surveillance and even expulsion of pro-Palestinian college students, “brutally” arresting protesters “on the whim of rich donors’ WhatsApp chats” and firing pro-Palestinian employees.

The coed protesters mentioned the college additionally rejected their calls to divest from Israel.

Professional-Palestine college students exhibit on Columbia College’s campus in New York Metropolis on Thursday, April 18, 2024. (Peter Gerber for Fox Information Digital)

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“Columbia College has bent over backwards to satiate the Zionist dying machine — brutalizing it’s [sic] personal college students, awarding former IOF [Israel Occupying Force] troopers hundreds of {dollars} after assaulting protestors, surveilling and shutting out the Harlem neighborhood — was it price it?” the group wrote within the caption of the Instagram publish.

“The establishment won’t ever preserve us secure,” it continued. “These cuts gained’t be hurting Armstrong’s pockets, as a substitute our most marginalized communities will face the brunt of its impacts. It’s as much as us preserve us secure.”

The social media publish featured a number of slides, together with one which mentioned “Zionists won’t ever love you” and one other that known as for “organized resistance to apparent injustice.”