A student protest leader has been banned from Columbia University’s campus in New York for saying that “Zionists don’t deserve to live” and that people should be grateful he wasn’t murdering them.
“The same way we’re very comfortable accepting that Nazis don’t deserve to live, fascists don’t deserve to live, racists don’t deserve to live, Zionists, they shouldn’t live in this world,” said Khymani James in a video circulating on social media.
The comments were reportedly made during and after a disciplinary hearing with the university, which Mr James recorded. He had been called to the hearing over an earlier comment on social media, in which he discussed fighting a Zionist. “I don’t fight to injure or for there to be a winner or a loser, I fight to kill,” he wrote.
In the video, he adds: “Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists. I’ve never murdered anyone in my life and I hope to keep it that way.”
Mr James has since apologised for the comments, saying he “misspoke in the heat of the moment” and that “every member of our community deserves to feel safe, without qualification”
However, Columbia said on Friday he had been barred from campus. It was not immediately clear if he had been suspended or expelled from the university.
Mr James is a member of the university’s “Apartheid Divest” campaign group, which said his views did not reflect the values of the group or the campus protests.
There has been heated debate over whether the pro-Palestine protests taking place on university campuses across the US are tinged with antisemitic perspectives.
Protest organisers say any individual touting these views does not reflect the movement as a whole and that the vast majority of those taking part are peaceful anti-war protesters.
Many universities have clamped down on the protests, citing concerns over discriminatory rhetoric and student safety and amid political pressure to take action.
Columbia and other universities have been heavily criticised for sending in riot police to arrest student protesters, with footage showing chaotic scenes and heavy-handed tactics being used to disperse the protests.
