Columbia University’s investment in silencing activism for Palestine goes much deeper than just succumbing to Trump’s threats to defund universities that allow any space for the issue of genocide to be raised, its leadership has personal experience in doing so. Keren Yarhi-Milo, Dean of Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), served as an intelligence analyst for the Israeli occupation forces — her job was literally to spy on Palestinians — and she’s now bringing that experience to Columbia's campus.
Yarhi-Milo is using her position not to educate, but to suppress. Under her leadership, Columbia has enabled the persecution of students who speak out for Palestine, with Mahmoud Khalil — a SIPA graduate— now detained by ICE without charge after being targeted for his activism. Instead of protecting students, Yarhi-Milo has helped manufacture a climate of fear, and stoked anti-Palestinian rhetoric on campus. This is antithetical to everything a university is supposed to stand for. SIPA claims to educate students to serve and to lead in support of the global public interest, yet it is stifling the very voices that challenge power and demand justice. Universities are places where ideas are meant to be debated, where boundaries are meant to be pushed — not where students are criminalized for speaking truth to power.
Send a letter to tell Keren Yarhi-Milo: Your job is to educate, not suppress students!
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