Latest news with #ColumbiaUniversity
New York Post
9 hours ago
- Politics
- New York Post
Hamas taunted Israeli hostages with images of antisemitic Columbia University protests: ‘We have our own people everywhere'
Hamas captors cruelly taunted Israeli hostages with news stories and photos of antisemitic protests at Columbia University — and bragged about having an 'army' of propagandists to spread their hate, according to new court papers. Freed hostage Shlomi Ziv claimed he was shown disturbing images and stories of the protests that engulfed the Upper Manhattan campus last year while he was in captivity in the Gaza Strip. 5 A new filing in a federal lawsuit claims anti-Israeli Columbia University protesters are 'foot soldiers' for Hamas. AP Advertisement 5 Columbia University's Upper Manhattan campus has been a hotbed of anti-Israeli sentiment since the Oct. 7 attack. AFP via Getty Images 'With the news report on, his captors told him, 'You see, we have our own people everywhere,' a court filing from Thursday said. 'They then told him that Hamas has an 'army' operating out of Gaza that focuses specifically on media and sending Hamas propaganda and messaging throughout America.' The shocking allegation was revealed in an amended lawsuit filed against a slew of anti-Israel groups in Manhattan federal court for 'aiding and abetting Hamas' continuing acts of international terrorism and violations of the law of nations' following the terror groups Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel that left 1,200 dead and hundreds kidnapped. Advertisement Ziv, who is a plaintiff in the suit, was held in captivity for 246 days before he and four others were rescued in an Israel raid in June 2024. He claimed he was shown Al-Jazeera stories and pictures of the Columbia protests and that his captors 'bragged about having Hamas operatives on American university campuses.' Filed on behalf of former hostages, the families of slain hostages, and former Israeli military personnel drawn into the Jewish State's counter-offensive against Hamas in Gaza, the suit claims the Ivy League school's protest organizers are essentially an arm of the terror group that impacted their lives. 5 Shlomi Ziv was taken hostage by Hamas and held for over 240 days in the Gaza Strip before being freed. GoFundMe 5 Anti-Israeli organizers at Columbia University are essentially part of the Hamas terror network, a new lawsuit claims. REUTERS Advertisement 'The associated defendants acted as Hamas' foot soldiers in New York City and on Columbia's campus and enacted [protest organizer's] plan to disrupt Columbia's operations to assist Hamas,' the suit said. The lawsuit, originally filed March 24, names several campus groups, including Within Our Lives, United for Palestine, Columbia Students for Justice In Palestine, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, Columbia-Barnard Jewish Voice For Peace, and individual group founders or leaders. Ziv, an Israeli citizen, was working security at the Nova Music Festival on Oct. 7 when he was kidnapped. He and other hostages were starved and beaten 'almost every day,' their doctor said. The Manhattan campus has been a hotbed for anti-Israeli demonstrations that have terrorized Jewish students — including some of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit who were enrolled at the school. Advertisement The school is among dozens of colleges and universities in the US that have seen pro-Palestinian protests, and anti-Israeli encampments following the Oct. 7 attack. 5 Shlomi Zi after his rescue by Israeli military forces in Gaza, where he was held for more than 240 days. AFP via Getty Images Last week, students burned their diplomas in protest on the Columbia campus, two weeks after masked student protesters stormed into the Butler Library at the school. Last year, a mob of students took over Hamilton Hall on the campus and had to be forced out in a wild NYPD raid, leading to several arrests.
Fox News
11 hours ago
- Business
- Fox News
Trump says he wants foreign students who don't 'cause trouble,' slams Harvard for being 'a big shot'
President Donald Trump during a news conference in the Oval Office on Friday said he is in favor of allowing international students on U.S. college campuses, clarifying he is against welcoming students who are "causing trouble." Singling out Harvard University, which has come under fire in both public opinion and the courts, Trump noted nearly 30% of its students are foreign. "Our country has given $5 billion plus to Harvard over a short period of time," he said. "Nobody knew that. We found that out. I wouldn't say that was a [Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)] thing, but we found that out over a period of time, that was sort of a Trump thing." During ongoing litigation, which the president attributed to the university being "very anti-semitic," he said the administration found out that the government gave them more than $5 billion in funding. "We're having it out with them, and let's see what happens," Trump said. "I think we have a very good, well, it's a very sad case. It's a case we win. We can't lose that case because we have the right to make grants. We're not going to make any grants like that." He went on to say Harvard has not "been acting very nicely," and said other institutions like Columbia University in New York City "wants to get to the bottom of the problem." "They've acted very well, and there are other institutions, too, that are acting, but Harvard's trying to be a big shot," Trump said. "And all that happens is every three days, we find another $100 million that was given." Two days ago, the president said his administration had found an additional $200 million in grants given to Harvard. "The money's given to them like gravy," he said. Offering an alternative, Trump said he would like to see the money go toward creating the world's best trade school system. "I'd like to see the money go to trade schools where people learn how to fix motors and engines, where people learn how to build rocket ships," he said. "Because, you know, somebody has to build those rocket ships." "Yep," Elon Musk, who departed DOGE on Friday, chimed in from the side of Trump's desk. "I'd like to see trade schools set up, because you could take $5 billion plus hundreds of billions more, which is what's spent, and you could have the greatest trade school system anywhere in the world, and that's what we need to build his rockets and robots and things that he's doing, and to build lots of other things." He added he went to school with peers who could "fix the engine of a car better than anybody I've ever seen" and "take it apart blindfolded." "They had an ability at that, and they did very well," Trump said. "They made a lot of money. You know, it's a very skilled job. … I'd like to see a lot of money going into trade schools. I've always felt that, and we probably found our pot of gold, and that's what's been wasted at places like Harvard."
Nikkei Asia
11 hours ago
- Politics
- Nikkei Asia
Weak US may force China into 'global hegemon' role: Columbia scholar
NEW YORK -- China may have no choice but to become the dominant global player if U.S. President Donald Trump's policies weaken America and create a power vacuum, Columbia University political science professor Andrew Nathan told Nikkei on Wednesday. Nathan, who has studied Chinese politics and foreign policy for more than five decades, said in an online interview that he does not believe that Beijing currently has a fixed goal to "be the No. 1 power."
AFP
11 hours ago
- Health
- AFP
'Make America Healthy Again' report cites nonexistent studies: authors
The highly anticipated "Make America Healthy Again" (MAHA) report was released on May 22 by the presidential commission tasked with assessing drivers of childhood chronic disease. But it included broken citation links and credits authors with papers they say they did not write. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt downplayed the errors as "formatting issues" during a press briefing on May 29 (archived here). "It does not negate the substance of the report," said Leavitt, who expressed confidence in Kennedy and his team, and insisted their work was "backed on good science." Image White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt takes questions during the daily briefing at the White House in Washington, DC, on May 29, 2025 (AFP / Jim WATSON) The issues were first reported May 29 by NOTUS (archived here), a US digital news website affiliated with the nonprofit Allbritton Journalism Institute. Noah Kreski (archived here), a Columbia University researcher listed as an author of a paper on adolescent anxiety and depression during the Covid-19 pandemic, told AFP the citation is "not one of our studies" and "doesn't appear to be a study that exists at all." The citation included a link (archived here) that purported to send users to an article in the peer-reviewed medical journal JAMA Pediatrics, but it was broken. Jim Michalski, a spokesman for the JAMA Network (archived here), said it "was not published in JAMA Pediatrics or in any JAMA Network journal." Columbia University epidemiologist Katherine Keyes (archived here), who was also listed as an author of the supposed JAMA study, told AFP she does research on the topic but does not know where the statistics credited to her came from, and that she "did not write that paper." She expressed concern about the error saying: "Citation practices are an important part of conducting and reporting rigorous science." She said she would be happy to send her actual research on depressive symptoms in adolescents and young adults "to the MAHA committee to correct the report, although I have not yet received information on where to reach them." Guohua Li, another Columbia University professor named in the citation (archived here), said the reference is "totally fabricated" and that he does not even know Kreski. AFP also spoke with Harold Farber, a pediatrics professor at Baylor College of Medicine (archived here), who said the paper attributed to him "does not exist" nor had he ever collaborated with the co-authors credited in the MAHA report. Similarly, Brian McNeill, spokesperson for Virginia Commonwealth University, confirmed that professor Robert Findling (archived here) did not author a paper the report says he wrote about advertising of psychotropic medications for youth. A fourth paper on ADHD medication was also not published in the journal Pediatrics in 2008 as claimed in the MAHA report, according to the journal's publisher, the American Academy of Pediatrics. A keyword search reveals a blog post with the same title as the purported paper, "Direct-to-consumer advertising and the rise in ADHD medication use among children" but it has a different author and is not a peer-reviewed publication (archived here). The Democratic National Committee blasted the report as "rife with misinformation" in a May 29 press release, saying Kennedy's agency "is justifying its policy priorities with studies and sources that do not exist" (archived here). Citations edited The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) declined to comment, referring AFP's questions to the White House. At her briefing, Leavitt declined to answer how the report was produced and whether artificial intelligence tools may have been used to craft it, directing those questions back to HHS. t reported its analysis of the citations showed "oaicite" was attached to the URLs, the presence of which indicates the use of artificial intelligence products from OpenAI (archived here). Within hours of the briefing, an edited version of the report replaced the original paper on the White House website (archived here). Changes are not flagged or marked as corrections, but the four citations investigated by AFP were replaced with working links. The modifications are as follows: The paper said to come from the team at Columbia University was swapped out for a reference to a briefing on the Teen National Health Interview Survey published by KFF (archived here). The nonexistent paper credited to Farber was replaced with a paper on oral corticosteroid medication prescribed for asthma he published in Pediatrics in 2017 (archived here). An article published in the journal Psychiatric Services in 2006 replaced the paper initially credited to Findling (archived here). The reference to a paper on ADHD medication advertising was supplanted by a 2013 article from The New York Times (archived here) Concerns about Kennedy The revelations about the MAHA study came just a day after Kennedy attacked major medical journals, accusing them of collaborating with the pharmaceutical industry and threatening to bar government scientists from publishing in them. Kennedy was approved as health secretary earlier this year despite widespread alarm from the medical community over his history of promoting vaccine misinformation and denying scientific facts. Since taking office, he has ordered the National Institutes of Health to probe the causes of autism -- a condition he has long falsely tied to the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. The report's chronic disease references appear to nod to that same disproven theory, discredited by numerous studies since the idea first aired in a late 1990s paper based on falsified data. It also criticizes the "over-medicalization" of children, citing surging prescriptions of psychiatric drugs and antibiotics, and blaming "corporate capture" for skewing scientific research. Image US Senator Roger Marshall (R-KS) (L) look on as Director of the National Institutes of Health Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya holds up a copy of a MAHA health report during a MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) Commission Event in the White House in Washington, DC, on May 22, 2025. A White House report detailing Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s priorities devotes sizable space to stoking fear about vaccines -- even as it tackles more grounded worries over chemicals and diet. (AFP / Jim WATSON) Read more of AFP's reporting on health misinformation here. Gwen Roley and Manon Jacob contributed reporting to this article.
Reuters
13 hours ago
- General
- Reuters
US judge warns that law clerk hiring boycotts may cross ethical lines
May 30 (Reuters) - Law clerk hiring boycotts, like the type launched by 13 conservative federal judges last year in protest of Columbia University's handling of pro-Palestinian student demonstrations on its campus, may "cross an important line," a top federal appeals court judge concluded. Chief U.S. Circuit Judge Steven Colloton reached that conclusion, opens new tab even as he dismissed a judicial misconduct complaint filed with the St. Louis-based 8th Circuit Judicial Council against one of those 13 judges, U.S. District Judge Daniel Traynor in Bismarck, North Dakota. A five-member panel of the 8th Circuit Judicial Council on Thursday voted to deny a petition to review Colloton's now-public decision. Traynor like the other judges who participated in the boycott was appointed by Republican President Donald Trump during his first term. Colloton said that when Traynor signed the letter, there was no ethical guidance suggesting that such a hiring boycott was forbidden. Traynor was not identified by name in the decision, but he is the only of the 13 judges at issue within the 8th Circuit's jurisdiction. The person who filed the complaint was also not named. Traynor declined to comment. Similar misconduct complaints have been dismissed against the other 12, with chief judges in other circuits concluding that the hiring boycott announced in a May 2024 letter did not constitute misconduct, Colloton noted. Given those circumstances, Colloton said it would be unfair to hold that Traynor's participation in the boycott constituted misconduct under the Code of Conduct for U.S. judges without him having fair notice in advance that it was forbidden. But Colloton, an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush, expressed concern about such boycotts, saying they "have the potential to embroil the judiciary in extrajudicial public controversies and to lower public confidence in the courts among reasonable people." "There is thus a substantial question whether judges cross an important line when they go beyond expressing their personal views in an effort to persuade and begin using their power as government officials to pressure private institutions to conform to the judges' preferences," Colloton wrote. He said the issue was one that may be appropriate for study by members of the U.S. Judicial Conference body tasked with revising and interpreting the Code of Conduct. In their letter last year, the Trump-appointed judges had called Columbia an "incubator of bigotry" and argued for "serious consequences" for anyone who participated in the campus demonstrations over Israel's war in Gaza that roiled Columbia's campus. They said Columbia had "become ground zero for the explosion of student disruptions, antisemitism, and hatred for diverse viewpoints on campuses across the nation" and had "disqualified itself from educating the future leaders of our country." As a result, the judges had said they would not hire anyone who attended Columbia as an undergraduate or law student, beginning with students who began their studies at the university in fall 2023. The letter's other signatories included U.S. Circuit Judges James Ho of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and Elizabeth Branch of the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, who participated in similar boycotts of clerks from Yale and Stanford over disruptions of conservative speakers on their campuses. Read more: Trump-appointed judge cleared of wrongdoing over Columbia law clerk boycott US judge boycotting Columbia law clerks won't recuse from protest case US judges cleared of misconduct over Columbia clerk hiring boycott US judiciary to consider new ethical guidance for law clerk hiring Group urges US judiciary to halt conservative judges' clerk boycotts US law clerks in rare anonymous statement decry 'genocide' in Gaza Columbia Law voices confidence in grads in face of conservative judges' boycott Conservative US judges boycott Columbia grads over campus Gaza protests
