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Columbia University administrators said late Friday that they had barred a leader of pro-Palestinian protests from the campus after a video surfaced in which the student said that Zionists “deserved to die.”
“Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists,” the student, Khymani James, was recorded saying during a Columbia disciplinary hearing in January about online comments he made at the time about being prepared to fight Zionists to the death.
James, who apologized for his statements in a post on X Friday, was a self-appointed leader of the Columbia students protesting this month on the Morningside Heights campus. The university’s leaders have been under pressure from members of Congress and some alumni to show that they are protecting Jewish students from harassment, and a statement Friday night from the university’s president, provost and board leaders specifically singled out action against James, though it did not name him.
“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,” the statement said. “We can report that one individual whose vile videos have surfaced in recent days is now banned from campus.”
The statement did not say whether he had been suspended or expelled.
James said on Friday that his statements about Zionists had been “wrong” and that he had been “unusually upset after an online mob targeted me because I am visibly queer and Black.”
