Columbia University says it banned Khymani James, protester who said ‘Zionists don’t deserve to live’

Columbia University said Friday it has banned a student protest leader from campus after a video resurfaced Thursday that showed the student saying Zionists “don’t deserve to live.”

A university spokesperson said the student, Khymani James, had been “banned from campus.” The university did not provide further details about the circumstances of the ban or offer any information about disciplinary proceedings.

In a statement Friday night about the ongoing protests, Columbia officials said a person whose “vile videos” recently surfaced has been banned.

“Chanting, signs, taunts, and social media posts by our own students that mock and threaten to ‘kill’ Jews are completely unacceptable, and Columbia students who are involved in such incidents will be held accountable,” the statement said.

James, a junior and member of the group Columbia University Apartheid Divest, or CUAD, and a self-identified spokesperson for the student camp at Columbia, is seen making the comments in a clip from the video verified by NBC News.

“Zionists don’t deserve to live comfortably, much less Zionists don’t deserve to live,” James said in the video, which has been circulating on social media.

“In the same way, we are 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,” James added.

The video resurfaced amid a wave of pro-Palestinian camps and protests against Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza that have been established on college campuses across the United States. The demonstrations sometimes resulted in arrests and some pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel protesters clashed. Jewish students have also reported instances of anti-Semitism.

Negotiations between protesters and administrators about dismantling the Columbia camp, which has existed since April 17, are ongoing, the university said. Protesters there and on other campuses called on schools to divest from companies that do business with Israel.

James, who uses he/she/they pronouns, said in a statement posted on X on Friday that their comments were “wrong” and that they “regret it,” adding that “all members of our community deserve to feel safe without restrictions.”

James added that they wish they had said that “Zionism is an ideology that demands the genocide of the Palestinian people. I oppose that in the strongest terms.”

According to Anti-Defamation League“Zionism is the movement for self-determination and statehood for the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland, the land of Israel.”

It does not necessarily refer to the Jewish people as a whole, since Jews do not have to be Zionists.

James said in the statement that the comments were made before he engaged with CUAD and that both CUAD and the Gaza Solidarity Camp “made it clear” that his comments on the video were “not in line with CUAD’s community guidelines.” .

“These words do not represent CUAD,” James said. “They don’t represent me either.”

It’s unclear whether James is still a spokesperson. James did not appear to be at Friday’s protests.

CUAD said in an Instagram post on Friday that “James’ words in January do not reflect his views, our values, nor the camp’s community agreements” and that the group remains “committed to our peaceful protest and will continue to call on the University to disassociate itself from Israel’s brutal genocide against the Palestinians.”

NBC News has not confirmed the circumstances surrounding why the video was taken, but The New York Times and the university’s student publication, the Spectator from Colombia, reported that James made the comments during a meeting with Columbia’s Center for Student Success and Intervention in January. James recorded and streamed the meeting on Instagram Live.

The January meeting was called in reference to an earlier comment James made on social media about fighting Zionists, in which James said: “I don’t fight to hurt or for there to be a winner or a loser, I fight to kill ,” according to the Times and Spectator.

Columbia’s Center for Student Success and Intervention did not immediately respond to a request for comment and more information.

In a longer version of the video edited and published by the Daily Wire on Thursday night, James said he didn’t understand why his comments were problematic, compared Zionists to white supremacists and Nazis, and said he felt comfortable calling for death. of the Zionists.

James also said administrators should be grateful that James is not acting on his words.

In Friday’s statement, James said the comments were edited without context and that at the time they made the statements, “I was feeling strangely upset after an online mob attacked me because I am visibly gay and black.”

James did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday on X. Other contact information was not immediately available.

In a statement, White House spokesman Andrew Bates said President Joe Biden has made clear that “violent rhetoric, hate speech and anti-Semitic comments have no place in America.”

“These dangerous and appalling statements are stomach-churning and should serve as a wake-up call,” Bates said. “It’s horrible to advocate the murder of Jews.”