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Columbia University Punishes Pro-Palestinian Protesters Who Occupied Building 

People gather outside of a New York court to protest the arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil at Foley Square on March 12, 2025 in New York City. (Getty Images via AFP)
People gather outside of a New York court to protest the arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil at Foley Square on March 12, 2025 in New York City. (Getty Images via AFP)
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Columbia University Punishes Pro-Palestinian Protesters Who Occupied Building 

People gather outside of a New York court to protest the arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil at Foley Square on March 12, 2025 in New York City. (Getty Images via AFP)
People gather outside of a New York court to protest the arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil at Foley Square on March 12, 2025 in New York City. (Getty Images via AFP)

Columbia University on Thursday said it had doled out a range of punishments to students who occupied a campus building last spring during pro-Palestinian protests.

The announcement came a week after President Donald Trump's administration announced that it had canceled $400 million in federal grants and contracts in response to what it said was the Ivy League school's poor response to antisemitism on campus.

Columbia University's interim president, Katrina Armstrong, has called the administration's concerns legitimate and said her institution was working with the government to address them. Campus protests and pro-Israel counter-protests have drawn allegations of antisemitism, Islamophobia and racism.

The university said in a statement on Thursday that its "judicial board determined findings and issued sanctions to students ranging from multi-year suspensions, temporary degree revocations, and expulsions related to the occupation of Hamilton Hall last spring."

The university's judicial board is comprised of students, faculty and staff selected by the university Senate.

The university, citing legal privacy restrictions, did not release the names of students who were disciplined, nor did it say how many students faced punishments, which the students can appeal.

The union representing Columbia student workers, UAW Local 2710, said in a written statement that its president, Grant Miner, was among the students expelled, just one day before contract negotiations with the university were set to begin, a move the union called "the latest assault on First Amendment rights ..."

A university spokesperson said they had no comment on the union statement.

Columbia was the epicenter of anti-Israel protests that hit several US college campuses.

The demonstrations began after the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023 and subsequent US-supported Israeli assault on Gaza. Protesters demanded that university endowments divest from Israeli interests and that the US end military assistance to Israel, among other demands.

The Trump administration has vowed a severe crackdown on what it labels as pro-Hamas protesters.

Over the weekend federal immigration agents detained Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of last year's campus protests whom the administration seeks to deport. The administration has said that his detention was the first of many it hopes to carry out. Khalil's deportation has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge.

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World

Mahmoud Khalil Sues Columbia for Alleged Failure to Protect Pro-Palestinian Students

Pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil (R) speaks during a press conference outside Columbia University, announcing he filed a federal lawsuit against the university, in New York, New York, US, 14 September 2026. (EPA)
Pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil (R) speaks during a press conference outside Columbia University, announcing he filed a federal lawsuit against the university, in New York, New York, US, 14 September 2026. (EPA)
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Mahmoud Khalil Sues Columbia for Alleged Failure to Protect Pro-Palestinian Students

Pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil (R) speaks during a press conference outside Columbia University, announcing he filed a federal lawsuit against the university, in New York, New York, US, 14 September 2026. (EPA)
Pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil (R) speaks during a press conference outside Columbia University, announcing he filed a federal lawsuit against the university, in New York, New York, US, 14 September 2026. (EPA)

Mahmoud Khalil and other pro-Palestinian student activists sued Columbia University on Monday, accusing the Ivy League school of being deliberately indifferent to years of pervasive harassment because of their advocacy.

Khalil became a face of the Trump administration crackdown on students' pro-Palestinian protests after US immigration agents arrested him in March 2025 in the lobby of his university residence, though he was a lawful permanent resident — or green card holder — and not accused of a crime.

The complaint filed in Manhattan federal court by Khalil, the SIPA Palestine Working Group and its president, Mohammad Zubairi, said Columbia violated federal civil rights law through its failure to protect students from threats, doxxing and other harassment based ‌on their perceived ‌Arab or Muslim ancestry, or their advocacy for Palestinian rights.

The war ‌in ⁠Gaza still sparks ⁠fierce debate at schools including Columbia, where the central pedestrian walkway across campus has been closed for nearly three years as the university tries to balance safety concerns against the desire for greater normalcy and openness.

At a press conference at Columbia announcing the lawsuit, Khalil said the university exhibited a "rotten, institutionalized anti-Palestinian bigotry" entrenched in every department and backed by its board of trustees.

“We are suing because no student, regardless of their background, should go through the hell that Columbia put us through over ⁠all these years,” Khalil said.

Columbia declined to comment on the lawsuit, ‌but a spokeswoman said: “Creating a campus environment where every member ‌of our community feels welcome, supported, and safe is fundamental to who we are as a university. ‌It is also a responsibility we take seriously."

UNIVERSITY SAW 'SECURITY RISKS,' LAWSUIT SAYS

Khalil said he began ‌reporting harassment during the spring semester in 2023, several months before Israel went to war in Gaza.

The complaint said that instead of investigating reported harassment, Columbia treated pro-Palestinian protests as "security risks" and revised its policies to treat any on-campus criticism of Israel’s military or government conduct as subject to discipline.

"Defendants’ failure to respond ‌to Mr. Khalil’s, Mr. Zubairi’s, and other PWG members’ legitimate reports of ongoing harassment and violence, and the retaliatory actions they actively took in ⁠response to these reports, ⁠placed PWG members at risk of violence and caused sustained, ongoing harm," the complaint said.

The protests at Columbia divided the university, with many supporting the protesters and others saying they felt unsafe or considered some activity antisemitic.

They led to the spread of so-called solidarity encampments on dozens of college campuses, and to the resignation of Columbia's president.

POSSIBLE DEPORTATION

Khalil is an Algerian citizen born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria.

He spent 104 days in a Louisiana jail following his arrest, missing the birth of his first child, before being released on bail.

Khalil still faces possible deportation, after a federal appeals court in Philadelphia said a district court judge lacked jurisdiction when he ordered Khalil's release from custody last year.

SIPA is short for Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs, where Khalil had been a graduate student.

Khalil also sued Columbia in March 2025, less than one week after his arrest, challenging the university's disclosure of student disciplinary records to a House of Representatives committee.

World

Russia Hits Petrol Station, Warehouse Facilities in Kyiv, Mayor Says

Firefighters work at the site of a non-residential building hit by a Russian drone strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine, September 11, 2026. (Reuters)
Firefighters work at the site of a non-residential building hit by a Russian drone strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine, September 11, 2026. (Reuters)
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Russia Hits Petrol Station, Warehouse Facilities in Kyiv, Mayor Says

Firefighters work at the site of a non-residential building hit by a Russian drone strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine, September 11, 2026. (Reuters)
Firefighters work at the site of a non-residential building hit by a Russian drone strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine, September 11, 2026. (Reuters)

A drone hit a petrol station in Ukraine's capital of Kyiv early on Tuesday, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said, just a day after US President Donald Trump said Ukraine and Russia had agreed not to target each other's energy assets.

The attack injured one person, and there was also a strike on warehouse facilities in ‌another part ‌of the city, Klitschko added on the Telegram ‌messaging ⁠app. A Reuters ⁠witness heard an explosion in Kyiv.

Russia has recently started hitting petrol stations in Kyiv, expanding the range of target facilities. In recent months, Russia hit some 300 petrol stations, mainly in or near Ukraine's frontline regions, according to Ukrainian authorities.

As Moscow was striking Ukraine, neighboring Poland briefly began military aviation operations as a preventive step, Poland's ⁠Armed Forces said in a statement on social ‌media website X, adding later there ‌was no violation of its airspace.

Military drones straying into the airspace ‌of Ukraine and Russia's neighbors have stoked concerns that Russia's ‌war in Ukraine is spilling over NATO's borders.

In Lithuania, a NATO fighter jet shot down a drone early on Tuesday, the Lithuanian National Crisis Management Centre said, after a drone alert was issued earlier in the ‌capital Vilnius and the surrounding region.

In Russia, which invaded Ukraine in 2022, a Ukrainian missile attack damaged ⁠a warehouse ⁠of the e-commerce company Ozon in the southern port city of Taganrog, among other facilities, the regional governor said on Telegram.

Separately, a drone attack hit an industrial facility in Samara region on the Volga River, Governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev said on Telegram, without naming the facility. The region is home to a number of large oil refineries.

Reuters could not immediately independently verify the reports.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday that Kyiv was ready to support a US proposal for a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire on energy sites only if Washington could ensure Moscow was genuinely ready to end its war on Ukraine.

World

US Military Says Iran War Has Led to Munitions Shortfall

An Iranian woman stands next graffiti reading in Persian, “We have a blood feud with the US,” in a street in central Tehran, Iran, 13 September 2026. (EPA)
An Iranian woman stands next graffiti reading in Persian, “We have a blood feud with the US,” in a street in central Tehran, Iran, 13 September 2026. (EPA)
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US Military Says Iran War Has Led to Munitions Shortfall

An Iranian woman stands next graffiti reading in Persian, “We have a blood feud with the US,” in a street in central Tehran, Iran, 13 September 2026. (EPA)
An Iranian woman stands next graffiti reading in Persian, “We have a blood feud with the US,” in a street in central Tehran, Iran, 13 September 2026. (EPA)

The US Defense Department's inspector general revealed Monday that the United States is facing a shortfall in ammunition as a result of its costly war in Iran.

In a first-of-its-kind mandatory report to Congress, the inspector said that between February 28 and June 30, Operation Epic Fury (OEF) had an estimated cost of $33.4 billion, with $22.3 billion of that spent on expended munitions alone.

The report noted "the munitions expenditure on OEF has resulted in strategic inventory shortfalls and revealed industrial base bottlenecks for munitions resupply."

It also lists losses to the American fleet, including four F-15s destroyed, one F-35 damaged, seven KC-135 tanker aircraft damaged and up to 30 MQ-9 Reaper drones destroyed.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly brushed off concerns of depleted weapons stores during the six months of war in the Middle East, saying the US has "virtually unlimited" ammo just a couple weeks ago.

On Monday Trump posted to his Truth Social platform saying again the US is producing "more Exquisite and Elite Weapons than at any time in our History."

CNN has previously reported shortages of long-range guided missiles and air-defense interceptors had affected Trump's strategy in the conflict with Iran, with the US military having "nearly exhausted 80%" of its stock of THAAD interceptors.

During the first 24 hours of war against Iran, the United States struck more than 1,000 targets, US Central Command (CENTCOM) has said, and has not returned to such large-scale attacks in recent months.