Student activists denounce Columbia for 'stolen' items taken from anti-Israel encampment
A Columbia University anti-Israel group has criticized the university after items left at a 'Gaza Solidarity Encampment' have come into school possession.
However, a school official reportedly stated that the university has given the students the opportunity to retrieve such items.
An anti-Israel group at Columbia University has criticized the Ivy League institution after items left at a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” have come into the possession of a school library.
On June 8, the Columbia Palestinian Students Union wrote on Instagram: “COLUMBIA ARCHIVE STEALS ENCAMPMENT MATERIALS UNDER THE GUISE OF ‘PRESERVING HISTORY,’” following university officials taking materials from the encampment during the April 30 NYPD clearing of campus.
Despite the group’s claims that items were stolen after they were in police possession, students had the opportunity to retrieve belongings after the encampment was dispersed.
The Public Safety department at Columbia was working with an archive representative to collect items from the encampment and any students who have requested items back from the archive have received instructions on retrieval.
”Columbia’s libraries strive to balance the preservation of University history with respecting the autonomy and ownership rights of the creators,” a Columbia official told the Columbia Spectator. “All protest materials previously held in the library are available for retrieval by students in a central campus location; students who contacted the Libraries about their material have received instructions for how to retrieve them.”
The Columbia Palestinian Students Union stated in the caption of the Instagram post: “On April 30th, amidst the brutal and shameful deployment of NYPD on Protesters, there was a covert theft of materials that emulated the very zionist character that was being protested.”
The group continued: “It was only after taking stock of our materials and inquiring about missing artwork that we learned they had been stolen by an employee of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library.”
The anti-Israel students also alleged that “[b]eyond going against the ethical standard for archiving, this theft implied that our materials were history when In fact, they are living artworks embodying our living movement.”
The Palestinian Students Union has demanded that the materials from the encampment be returned.
“We refuse to have our activism co-opted by the institutions who refuse to heed our calls for divestment,” the group stated in the post.
The group also highlighted the alleged importance of the materials that are now in university possession, writing: “We know that our artifacts will tell a story, and as Edward Said asserted the right to narrate, we assert our right to archive.”
The post continued: “With Palestinians at the forefront of this movement, we understand the persistent efforts of the zionist entity and legacy media to manipulate our stories for the genocidal agenda - and we equipped ourselves with structures to resist this.”
“The student intifada will live on until Palestinian liberation is realized,” the group concluded.
In an April 21 post on Instagram, Columbia’s Students for Justice in Palestine posted a “Guide to Principled Solidarity” in which it encouraged those students who were starting encampments to “[u]se Columbia as an example of how to escalate,” and reaffirmed what it described as its “Right to Resist.”
Campus Reform has contacted Columbia University for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
