Columbia University students staged a walkout Wednesday during a lecture by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, according to news reports.
The subject of the lecture was women’s involvement in the peace process, co-presented by Keren Yarhi-Milo, dean of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia, The New York Times reported.
About 30 of the 300 students gathered their belongings, stood up and left during the two-hour presentation.
Columbia University students walk out on Hillary Clinton lecture, in another Israel conflict protest | Just The News https://t.co/zjS08w5RBY
— John Solomon (@jsolomonReports) November 2, 2023
The students joined a larger group in the lobby of the International Affairs Building to protest “what they perceived as the school’s role in publicly shaming students whose photographs appeared last week on the video screen panels on a truck seen near campus,” the Times reported.
A vehicle labeled a “doxxing truck” drove near the Ivy League school’s Manhattan campus on Oct. 25, displaying photos of students labeled “Columbia’s Leading Antisemites,” according to the New York Post.
The “anti-Semite” label was an apparent reference to pro-Palestinian students who were quoted as blaming Israel for a deadly attack that killed more than 1,400 Israeli civilians on Oct. 7.
Similar trucks also appeared at Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania, apparently sponsored by the “nonprofit news watchdog” Accuracy in Media, according to the report.
The students pictured on the trucks “were members of groups that had signed a statement about the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel that said, in part, ‘The weight of responsibility for the war and casualties undeniably lies with the Israeli extremist government,’” the Times reported.
The Times quoted students as saying the photographs used in the mobile display “were taken from a ‘private and secure’ online platform for students at the School of International and Public Affairs.”
Wednesday’s protesters demanded “immediate legal support for affected students” and “a commitment to student safety, well being and privacy,” the Times reported.
In response to the clashing of the pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups, Columbia formed an anti-Semitism task force “to address the ‘terribly resilient’ hatred that has swept across its campus,” the New York Post reported Thursday.
The school also said it had formed a “doxxing resource group to protect pro-Palestinian students,” according to the report.
The former U.S. first lady and two-time presidential candidate last week spoke in favor of Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas and refused to call for a cease-fire, according to The Jerusalem Post.
“People who are calling for a cease-fire now, don’t understand Hamas …” Clinton explained, according to the report.
“It would be such a gift to Hamas because they would spend whatever time [that] there was a cease-fire in effect rebuilding their armaments … to be able to fend off an eventual assault by the Israelis.”
Another recent appearance by Clinton was disrupted Friday when a heckler demanded she respond to allegations her husband, former President Bill Clinton, had ties to notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, the New York Post reported.
That heckler was dragged out of the event in Houston, Texas.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.