Columbia University has disciplined over 70 students for participating in two student-led protests, a source familiar with the matter said.
The university confirmed in a statement Tuesday that it was punishing students who participated in the protest at the school’s Butler Library, where at least 80 people were detained, as well as a similar demonstration during its annual alumni weekend last year.
Columbia said it would not release the “individual disciplinary results of any student” but said that “sanctions from Butler Library include probation, suspensions (ranging from one year to three years), degree revocations, and expulsions.”
The source familiar with the matter told NBC News in a phone call that two-thirds of the suspended students were suspended for two years.
Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a student group advocating for the university to divest its ties to Israel, said in a news release that nearly 80 students were informed Monday afternoon that they would be suspended for one to three years or expelled for participating in the protest in May.
The student group claimed that the disciplinary letters required suspended students to submit apologies to the university to return to campus — or face expulsion.
In its statement Tuesday, Columbia said, “Our institution must focus on delivering on its academic mission for our community.”
“Disruptions to academic activities are in violation of University policies and Rules, and such violations will necessarily generate consequences,” it said.
The disciplinary crackdown comes several months after the Trump administration cut hundreds of millions of dollars in federal research grants to the university.
Following those cuts, Columbia implemented a long list of new policies at the request of the Trump administration to begin negotiations on restoring federal funding.
The university agreed to adjust its disciplinary process, ban masks at protests in most cases and hire dozens of new security officers, among other measures, according to a document the university said it shared with the federal government and posted on its website.
Last year’s student protests and encampments at the university, galvanized by the ongoing war in Gaza, drew both outrage and applause around the world.
The unprecedented nature of the student-led protests — which marked the first time Columbia allowed police to suppress demonstrations at the university since protests against the Vietnam War in 1968 — made the university the de facto epicenter of similar demonstrations at universities nationwide.
But some of Columbia’s students previously told NBC News that protesting on the campus in recent months had become “dangerous” following the university’s agreement with the Trump administration and the detainment of student activist Mahmoud Khalil by immigration authorities.
Khalil, a graduate student who helped lead negotiations between student protesters and the university, was held at an immigration detention center in Louisiana for more than 104 days before he was released last month.
However, the fears did not stop dozens from protesting the war and the university’s ties to Israel in May.
Dozens of demonstrators occupied a room in Butler Library during the May protest, as students were studying for their final exams. Protesters wore keffiyehs, chanted slogans and clashed with police and campus security officers, according to video of the demonstration posted on social media.
Police officers prevented the demonstrators from leaving the library without presenting identification for some time before they began arresting students, the videos show.
The protest resulted in the detainment of at least 80 people, according to New York police. Two campus security officers were injured during the protest, the university said at the time, because of a crowd surge.
Columbia took similar disciplinary action in March for pro-Palestinian protests that took place on campus last year. It issued “multi-year suspensions, temporary degree revocations and expulsion” for students who overtook a university building, Hamilton Hall, at the height of last year’s protests.
