A shocking lawsuit filed last month alleged that several student organizations at Columbia University had advance knowledge of the Hamas October 7 terrorist attack. Among the people and organizations being sued are Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), student and UAW member Mahmoud Khalil, and Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) – an organization closely tied to UAW Local 2710.
According to the legal filing, SJP had allegedly remained dormant before being suddenly reactivated shortly before the attack, posting seemingly pre-prepared public relations materials. In the case of SJP, the organization started publishing materials shortly before the attack actually took place.
The lawsuit lists several people taken hostage by Hamas as plaintiffs, and includes allegations from them that their Hamas captors “bragged about having Hamas operatives on American university campuses” and “showed [the hostages] Al-Jazeera stories and photographs of protests at Columbia University that were organized by [CUAD, SJP, and the other anti-Israel groups at Columbia].”
SJP would be suspended for its activities in November 2023, and its members immediately started using CUAD as a mouthpiece in its place – an organization that SJP helped found several years ago but remained mostly inactive until SJP was suspended.
One of CUAD’s other founders was Columbia student Grant Miner, the president of UAW Local 2710.
Along with being a founder of CUAD and a UAW local president, Miner has led his union to be a significant anti-Israel force on campus. Under his stewardship, Local 2710 signed on to CUAD’s anti-Israel coalition (alongside SJP), pressured the university to divest from Israel, and took part in the university’s anti-Israel encampment.
Several weeks ago, Miner was expelled from Columbia for his anti-Israel activism. The national UAW union released a statement on the expulsion, calling it a “gross injustice.” Later, UAW President Shawn Fain would personally call out the expulsion in a union livestream.
Perhaps the union should have kept a closer eye on what its campus members are up to before writing them blank checks of support. Or perhaps the increasing proportion of UAW membership made up of college student employees is pushing the union towards radical campus activism.
