Trump expands the Columbia anti-Israel protest investigation. The organization requests modifications to the arrangement, including a cover boycott. Government specialists investigate campus dorms. New York, Walk 14 (Reuters): The United States Equity Office revealed on Friday that it is looking into the possibility of a law against fear-based oppression being violated in connection with dissents at Columbia College regarding the Gaza war. This puts more weight on the issue that was at the center of nationwide anti-Israel activism last year. Agent Common Lawyer Todd Blanche described the investigation as a part of President Donald Trump's larger effort to combat antisemitism and called it "long overdue." The move was quickly criticized by rights advocates, who argued that the first Correction safeguards the protesters' right to free speech. The declaration emphasizes the ongoing crackdown on pro-Palestinian student activism and college policies that, according to the Trump administration, encourage antisemitism on campuses. As portion of its requests, the organization has told Columbia that it must execute a arrangement of arrangement changes some time recently discourses can start on restoring $400 million in government financing that was suspended final week.

 The requirements were laid out in a letter sent on Thursday, as government officials looked at two quarters rooms at Columbia's Modern York campus. This occurred fairly a week after activists detained Mahmoud Khalil, a key organizer of the dissents from last year, in an attempted expulsion case that is currently being challenged in government court. The Division of Instruction reported earlier this week that 60 colleges had been investigated for allegedly providing a hostile environment for Jewish students. Additionally, it stated that it was investigating complaints that 45 schools had expressed interest in a differences program that utilized race-based qualification criteria, a practice that, according to the organization, violates the 1964 Gracious Rights Act.


SEARCHES IN THE REST The campus demonstrations that precipitated the federal scrutiny began after the October 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel, and the subsequent U.S.-supported Israeli assault on Gaza, the Palestinian enclave controlled by Hamas, which the U.S. has designated as a terrorist group. Protesters demanded that the United States stop providing Israel with military assistance and that university endowments stop supporting Israeli interests. Brian Hauss, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union and part of Khalil's legal team, said the Justice Department probe was misguided.




"The First Amendment does not allow for grounds to conflate between being pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas," he said at a briefing.
In a statement, interim president Katrina Armstrong said that agents from the Department of Homeland Security searched the dorms after serving Columbia with warrants signed by a federal magistrate. No one was detained, no items were removed, and no further action was taken, she said.
According to Blanche, the searches were part of an investigation into whether or not Columbia University had illegal immigrants living on its campus. Students claim that dorms and student housing on Columbia's Manhattan campus have frequently been spotted by federal immigration agents. The Trump administration demanded, among other things, that Columbia formally define antisemitism, prohibit the wearing of masks "intended to conceal identity or intimidate," and place its Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies departments under "academic receivership," which would remove faculty control.

It too requested that the school change its confirmations and universal selecting approaches in compliance with government law, but advertised no specifics.
Columbia said it was looking into the letter. "We are committed at all times to progressing our mission, supporting our understudies, and tending to all shapes of segregation and scorn on our campus," it said in a articulation.
This week, it said it had dispensed out a extend of disciplines - counting suspensions, ejections and the repudiation of degrees - to understudies who possessed the building final spring. It did not title the understudies or say how numerous were taught.
As hundreds of Khalil's supporters illustrated at Columbia's fundamental entryway on Friday, a graduate understudy passing by who inquired to be distinguished as it were by his to begin with title, Demetri, said the disposition on campus was discouraging.
"The government government can't be managing what and whom it does and doesn't educate, like who can and cannot be conceded," he said.