At Least 1,400 Academics Call To Boycott Columbia For Free Speech Crackdown

A steadily climbing list of academics have committed to boycott Columbia University and Barnard College over the schools’ decisions to punish students and faculty who speak against Israel’s U.S.-backed destruction of Gaza, and collaborate with the Trump administration while federal immigration officials detain their students.

As of Thursday evening, more than 1,400 academics signed onto a statement condemning Columbia’s participation in what they called “an authoritarian assault on universities aimed at destroying their role as sites of teaching, research, learning and activism essential to building a free and fair world.”

“Universities cannot pretend to hold higher education sacred while repressing students and faculty, undermining free speech and academic freedom, and prohibiting dissent,” the statement read. “Every such act of craven suppression and compliance only further undermines the university and emboldens the reactionary forces intent on destroying it.”

The statement comes just days after Columbia leadership announced it will implement multiple alarming policies demanded by the Trump administration so it can receive the $400 million in grants initially withdrawn by the government earlier this month ― something constitutional law scholars warned “creates a dangerous precedent for every recipient of federal financial assistance.”

A spokesperson for Columbia declined HuffPost’s request for comment. On Tuesday, interim president Katrina Armstrong defended her decision to implement the Trump administration’s demands, which she said include immediately strengthening “enforcement rules on demonstrations, identification and masking” to help combat antisemitism.

“These attacks are fueled by anti-Palestinian racism and enabled by the dangerous weaponization of antisemitism,” the signatories said. “They expose classrooms, dorms, labs and other common spaces to the surveillance predation of a federal government that has declared war on higher education.”

The boycott includes refusing to participate in academic or other cultural events that are either held at or sponsored by Columbia or Barnard, such as workshops and conferences. Boycotters will also stop working with faculty who hold positions within university administration, including co-authorship of papers and collaboration on new grants. Some participants may boycott individual faculty “based on their complicity with Columbia and Barnard’s actions.”

The boycott terms were originally drafted in April 2024 ― a year before the Trump administration’s demands ― when Columbia instigated the anti-war student protests on campus by calling New York police to violently clear the solidarity encampment and arrest participants.

The school and administration came under fire for targeting pro-Palestinian students and faculty with suspensions, expulsions and degree revocations, and faced renewed backlash earlier this year when immigration agents took graduate student Mahmoud Khalil for peacefully protesting on campus. Despite the public calling Khalil’s detention an effort to crush free speech, Columbia gave the federal government his and other students’ disciplinary records. His legal case is ongoing, and Khalil has described himself as a political prisoner.

“Bullies are never stopped by acquiescence. Never has it been more urgent to dissent and stand with our students, for our profession and for democracy and social justice,” the boycotters said, calling on the school to reinstate the students and faculty it punished, and “reverse all changes” made in compliance with the Trump administration’s “harmful and illegitimate demands.”

Khalil’s unlawful arrest ― and Columbia’s lack of protection for him ― launched a precedent that has since resulted in ICE arresting more mostly brown students, both at Columbia and other college campuses. Many of those students are foreign nationals whose visas and green cards were proudly revoked by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

In addition to Khalil, ICE has taken Ranjani Srinivasan, an Indian national studying at Columbia; Badar Khan Suri, an Indian national studying and teaching at Georgetown University; Romeysa Ozturk, a Turkish national studying at Tufts University; and Alireza Doroudi, an Iranian national studying at the University of Alabama. ICE agents unsuccessfully tried to take Yunseo Chung, a Columbia student and Korean green card holder who has lived in the U.S. since she was 7.

“We unequivocally condemn the snatching of students from anywhere, especially their campus, and call on all colleges and universities across the country to do better to protect their students,” the organizers of Thursday’s statement told HuffPost. “We are committed to standing with students everywhere, and this boycott is the beginning, not the end, of faculty action on this matter in the wake of these new horrors.”

The American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association filed a lawsuit earlier this week arguing that the Trump administration’s policy encouraging ideology-based deportations violates the First Amendment and creates a climate of fear on campus.

“The Trump administration is going after international scholars and students who speak their minds about Palestine, but make no mistake: they won’t stop there,” AAUP president Todd Wolfson said. “They’ll come next for those who teach the history of slavery or who provide gender-affirming health care or who research climate change or who counsel students about their reproductive choices.

“We all have to draw a line together,” he continued. “As the old labor movement slogan says: an injury to one is an injury to all.”