Hundreds of Columbia University alumni led by high-profile graduates demanded that cops end the pro-terror protests Tuesday — and faculty who support them be suspended.
More than 2,000 people signed an open letter to the college’s under-fire president, Minouche Shafik, calling for “immediate and resolute action” to end the antisemitic protests.
The alumni spoke out after students smashed their way into Hamilton Hall on the Morningside Heights campus in the early hours of Tuesday after a deadline to quit their tent encampment on the lawn had passed.
The “Stand Columbia” group, which says it supports the school’s Jewish Alumni Association, called on the administration to immediately expel students involved in the violence and place professors providing “material or emotional support” on administrative suspension.
David Friedman, who was US ambassador to Israel from 2017 to 2021, said he was proud to sign the letter.
Friedman, who graduated from the school with a degree in anthropology in 1978, told The Post Tuesday that the Columbia administration and Shafik have lost control.
“They’re sending the wrong signals by bringing in the police and then telling them to leave,” Friedman said, referring to the university’s decision to call police to break up the protest on April 18, resulting in 108 arrests, then not using them to clear out the tent city which mushroomed in subsquent days.
“It’s a misguided and appeasing policy when dealing with criminal behavior. The faculty is siding with criminals.”
The Stand Columbia letter also decries the “wanton disregard for university policies” and “the presence of masked outside agitators …and self-proclaimed leaders…spewing vile anti-semitic vitriol while directing this chaos.”
Video footage showed masked protestors smashing a glass door and carrying furniture and metal barricades to Hamilton Hall where 60 protestors occupied the building and vowed not to leave Tuesday.
“The university must act forcefully and decisively to end the anarchy that has been allowed to overtake and endanger the Columbia campus,” the letter said.
“This untenable situation requires an emphatic response befitting the gravity of these destructive and discriminatory acts.
“Anything less than the full enforcement of laws and policies signals a surrender of Columbia’s fundamental identity.”
Other signatories of the letter include Lisa Landau Carnoy, a former chair of the university’s governing body who has been a major donor.
Another signatory, Sherri Wolf is the current president of the Columbia College Alumni Association, representing thousands of graduates of the liberal arts school.
And it was also signed by a series of members of the Columbia Board of Trustees, which acts as an advisory board to Shafik, and by at least one member of the Senate of Columbia, Jonathan Susman. The Senate selects the trustees and has already demanded a probe into Shafik’s handling of the crisis.
The Columbia Jewish Alumni Association was founded just after the October 7 massacre of hundreds of defenseless Israelis by Hamas terrorists, and amid an upswell of anti-Israel protests on the campus.
Hedge fund billionaire Leon Cooperman, who has vehemently criticized the Columbia riots in the past told The Post that administrators have themselves to blame for the “anarchy.”
“I’ve said it before, but I think these kids have sh–t for brains,” said Cooperman, a graduate of Columbia Business School in 1967.
“What we are seeing on campus is blatant antisemitism.” he continued. “These kids should be ashamed of themselves. They’re stupid.”
However, Cooperman, who is of Polish-Jewish origin, said he is is not pulling his donations from Columbia Business School, drawing a distinction between it and the rest of the university.
He has donated more than $50 million to the school, including a $25 million grant in 2012 for construction of a new facility in Manhattanville, north of the university’s main campus.
“The university has to deal with this now,” he told The Post. “There are too many left-wing professors at the school.”
The school’s press department did not return a request for comment Tuesday.
