Anti-Israel agitators rally outside Columbia University on April 23, 2024, in New York City. (Jeenah Moon/Getty Images)
Palestine Legal – a nonprofit legal group defending people who advocate for the "Palestine solidarity movement"— filed the complaint on behalf of four students and the student activist group Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).
"Columbia has actively contributed to pervasive racism and discrimination against Palestinian students on campus, causing both mental and physical harm," the legal group said. "For example, students have been arrested, assaulted, suspended, locked out of campus and their classes, forced to seek medical attention, and forced to drop classes and delay their own graduation."
The complaint comes as students at a growing number of U.S. colleges and universities are forming anti-Israel protest encampments with a unified demand that their schools stop doing business with Israel. Negotiations between Columbia administrators and demonstrators to clear the "Gaza Solidarity Encampment" are ongoing as of Friday morning.
Since the attacks after October 7, the legal group claimed it "has received reports of over 1,800 incidents, over five times the number we received in all of 2022, reflecting an exponential rise in anti-Palestinian repression across the U.S."
USC CLOSES CAMPUS ‘UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE’ FOLLOWING ANTI-ISRAEL PROTEST, 93 ARRESTED FOR TRESPASSING
Columbia University, where students have set up what is being referred to as a Gaza Solidarity Encampment, is shown in New York on April 24, 2024. (Getty Images)
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Fox News' Lawrence Richard and Michael Ruiz contributed to this report.
Jamie Joseph is a writer who covers politics. She leads Fox News Digital coverage of the Senate.
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