Fire at historic Black church in Memphis was intentionally set, investigators say

Fire at historic Black church in Memphis was intentionally set, investigators say
Firefighters douse the historic Clayborn Temple with water after it caught fire on April 28, 2025, in Memphis, Tennessee. (AP Photo/File)
Short Url
Updated 22 May 2025
Follow

Fire at historic Black church in Memphis was intentionally set, investigators say

Fire at historic Black church in Memphis was intentionally set, investigators say
  • The church was undergoing aenovation when flames engulfed it in the early hours of April 28
  • Investigators are searching for a person suspected of being involved with the blaze

MEMPHIS, Tennessee: A fire that severely damaged a historic Black church that served as the headquarters for a 1968 sanitation workers’ strike, which brought the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to Memphis, was intentionally set, investigators said Wednesday.

The fire at Clayborn Temple, which was undergoing a yearslong renovation, was set in the interior of the church, the Memphis Fire Department said in a statement. Investigators are searching for a person suspected of being involved with the blaze.

Flames engulfed the downtown church in the early hours of April 28. Later that day Memphis Fire Chief Gina Sweat said the inside of the building was a total loss but there was still hope that some of the facade could be salvaged.

The fire department said on May 14 that the building had been stabilized and investigators would use specialized equipment to study the fire’s cause.

“Clayborn Temple is sacred ground — home to generations of struggle, resilience and creativity,” Anasa Troutman, executive director of Historic Clayborn Temple, said Wednesday. “This act of violence is painful, but it will not break our spirit.”

Located just south of the iconic Beale Street, Clayborn Temple was built in 1892 as the Second Presbyterian Church and originally served an all-white congregation. In 1949 the building was sold to an African Methodist Episcopal congregation and given its current name.

Before the fire it was in the midst of a $25 million restoration project that aims to preserve the architectural and historical integrity of the Romanesque revival church, including the revival of a 3,000-pipe grand organ. The project also seeks to help revitalize the neighborhood with a museum, cultural programing and community outreach.

King was drawn to Memphis in 1968 to support some 1,300 predominantly Black sanitation workers who went on strike to protest inhumane treatment. Two workers had been crushed in a garbage compactor in 1964, but the faulty equipment had not been replaced.

On Feb. 1 of that year, two more men, Echol Cole, 36, and Robert Walker, 30, were crushed in a garbage truck compactor. The two were contract workers, so they did not qualify for worker’s compensation, and had no life insurance.

Workers then went on strike seeking to unionize and fighting for higher pay and safer working conditions. City officials declared the stoppage illegal and arrested scores of strikers and protesters.

Clayborn Temple hosted nightly meetings during the strike, and the movement’s iconic “I AM A MAN” posters were made in its basement. The temple was also a staging point for marches to City Hall, including one on March 28, 1968, that was led by King and turned violent when police and protesters clashed on Beale Street. One person was killed.

When marchers retreated to the temple, police fired tear gas inside and people broke some of the stained-glass windows to escape. King promised to lead a second, peaceful march in Memphis, but he was shot by a sniper while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel on April 4.

After King was assassinated and the strike ended with the workers securing a pay raise, the church’s influence waned. It fell into disrepair and was vacant for years before the renovation effort, which took off in 2017 thanks to a $400,000 grant from the National Park Service.

Clayborn Temple was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. A memorial to the sanitation workers, named “I AM A MAN Plaza,” opened on church grounds in 2018.

About $8 million had been spent on the renovations before the fire, and the exterior had been fully restored, Troutman said.

She said in a recent interview that two chimneys had to be demolished before investigators from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives could safely work on the property, but the church organ had been removed before the fire.

As the fire was burning, she said, people went to the “I AM A MAN” memorial and stood at a wall where the names of the striking sanitation workers are listed.

“I watched that wall turn into the Wailing Wall, because people were literally getting out of their cars, walking up to that wall and wailing, staring at the building on fire,” she said.


With no access to education beyond the 6th grade, girls in Afghanistan turn to religious schools

With no access to education beyond the 6th grade, girls in Afghanistan turn to religious schools
Updated 6 sec ago
Follow

With no access to education beyond the 6th grade, girls in Afghanistan turn to religious schools

With no access to education beyond the 6th grade, girls in Afghanistan turn to religious schools
  • At the age of 13, Nahideh is in the last grade of primary school — the limit of education allowed for girls in Afghanistan
  • The country’s Taliban government banned girls from secondary school and university three years ago

KABUL: For six hours every day after school, Nahideh works in a cemetery, collecting water from a nearby shrine to sell to mourners visiting loved ones’ graves. She dreams of becoming a doctor — but knows it is a futile dream.

When the next school year starts, she will be enrolling in a madrassa, a religious school, to learn about the Qur’an and Islam — and little else.

“I prefer to go to school, but I can’t, so I will go to a madrassa,” she said, dark brown eyes peering out from beneath her tightly wrapped black headscarf. “If I could go to school then I could learn and become a doctor. But I can’t.”

At the age of 13, Nahideh is in the last grade of primary school, the limit of education allowed for girls in Afghanistan. The country’s Taliban government banned girls from secondary school and university three years ago — the only country in the world to do so. The ban is part of myriad restrictions on women and girls, dictating everything from what they can wear to where they can go and who they can go with.

With no option for higher education, many girls and women are turning to madrassas instead.

The only learning allowed

“Since the schools are closed to girls, they see this as an opportunity,” said Zahid-ur-Rehman Sahibi, director of the Tasnim Nasrat Islamic Sciences Educational Center in Kabul. “So, they come here to stay engaged in learning and studying religious sciences.”

The center’s roughly 400 students range in ages from about 3 to 60, and 90 percent are female. They study the Qur’an, Islamic jurisprudence, the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, and Arabic, the language of the Qur’an.

Most Afghans, Sahibi noted, are religious. “Even before the schools were closed, many used to attend madrassas,” he said. “But after the closure of schools, the interest has increased significantly, because the doors of the madrassas remain open to them.”

No recent official figures are available on the number of girls enrolled in madrassas, but officials say the popularity of religious schools overall has been growing. Last September, Deputy Minister of Education Karamatullah Akhundzada said at least 1 million students had enrolled in madrassas over the past year alone, bringing the total to over 3 million.

Studying the Qur’an

Sheltered from the heat of an early summer’s day in a basement room at the Tasnim Nasrat center, Sahibi’s students knelt at small plastic tables on the carpeted floor, their pencils tracing lines of Arabic script in their Qur’ans. All 10 young women wore black niqabs, the all-encompassing garment that includes a veil, leaving only the eyes visible.

“It is very good for girls and women to study at a madrassa, because … the Qur’an is the word of Allah, and we are Muslims,” said 25-year-old Faiza, who had enrolled at the center five months earlier. “Therefore, it is our duty to know what is in the book that Allah has revealed to us, to understand its interpretation and translation.”

Given a choice, she would have studied medicine. While she knows that is now impossible, she still harbors hope that if she shows she is a pious student dedicated to her religion, she will be eventually allowed to. The medical profession is one of the very few still open to women in Afghanistan.

“When my family sees that I am learning Qur’anic sciences and that I am practicing all the teachings of the Qur’an in my life, and they are assured of this, they will definitely allow me to continue my studies,” she said.

Her teacher said he’d prefer if women were not strictly limited to religious studies.

“In my opinion, it is very important for a sister or a woman to learn both religious sciences and other subjects, because modern knowledge is also an important part of society,” Sahibi said. “Islam also recommends that modern sciences should be learned because they are necessary, and religious sciences are important alongside them. Both should be learned simultaneously.”

A controversial ban

The female secondary and higher education ban has been controversial in Afghanistan, even within the ranks of the Taliban itself. In a rare sign of open dissent, Deputy Foreign Minister Sher Abbas Stanikzai said in a public speech in January that there was no justification for denying education to girls and women.

His remarks were reportedly not well tolerated by the Taliban leadership; Stanikzai is now officially on leave and is believed to have left the country. But they were a clear indication that many in Afghanistan recognize the long-term impact of denying education to girls.

“If this ban persists until 2030, over four million girls will have been deprived of their right to education beyond primary school,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said in a statement at the start of Afghanistan’s new school year in March. “The consequences for these girls — and for Afghanistan — are catastrophic. The ban negatively impacts the health system, the economy, and the future of the nation.”

The importance of religious education

For some in this deeply conservative society, the teachings of Islam are hard to overstate.

“Learning the Holy Qur’an is the foundation of all other sciences, whether it’s medicine, engineering, or other fields of knowledge,” said Mullah Mohammed Jan Mukhtar, 35, who runs a boys’ madrassa north of Kabul. “If someone first learns the Qur’an, they will then be able to learn these other sciences much better.”

His madrassa first opened five years ago with 35 students. Now it has 160 boys aged 5-21, half of whom are boarders. Beyond religious studies, it offers a limited number of other classes such as English and math. There is also an affiliated girls’ madrassa, which currently has 90 students, he said.

“In my opinion, there should be more madrassas for women,” said Mukhtar, who has been a mullah for 14 years. He stressed the importance of religious education for women. “When they are aware of religious verdicts, they better understand the rights of their husbands, in-laws and other family members.”


Trump’s trip to Scotland highlights his complex relationship with his mother’s homeland

Trump’s trip to Scotland highlights his complex relationship with his mother’s homeland
Updated 13 min 13 sec ago
Follow

Trump’s trip to Scotland highlights his complex relationship with his mother’s homeland

Trump’s trip to Scotland highlights his complex relationship with his mother’s homeland
  • He’s likely to get a mixed reception on the trip, which includes visits to his two Scottish golf resorts
  • He has faced opposition from environmental campaigners and some neighbors over his Trump International Scotland course in northeast Scotland

LONDON: US President Donald Trump ‘s trip to Scotland this week will be a homecoming of sorts, but he’s likely to get a mixed reception.

Trump has had a long and at times rocky relationship with the country where his mother grew up in a humble house on a windswept isle.

He will be met by both political leaders and protesters during the visit, which begins Friday and takes in his two Scottish golf resorts. It comes two months before King Charles III is due to welcome him on a formal state visit to the UK

A daughter of Scotland

Trump’s mother was born Mary Anne MacLeod in 1912 near the town of Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis, one of the Outer Hebrides off Scotland’s northwest coast.

“My mother was born in Scotland — Stornoway, which is serious Scotland,” Trump said in 2017.

She was raised in a large Scots Gaelic-speaking family and left for New York in 1930, one of thousands of people from the islands to emigrate in the hardscrabble years after World War I.

MacLeod married the president’s father, Fred C. Trump, the son of German immigrants, in New York in 1936. She died in August 2000 at the age of 88.

Trump still has relatives on Lewis, and visited in 2008, spending a few minutes in the plain gray house where his mother grew up.

A long golf course battle

Trump’s ties and troubles in Scotland are intertwined with golf.

He first proposed building a course on a wild and beautiful stretch of the North Sea coast north of Aberdeen in 2006.

The Trump International Scotland development was backed by the Scottish government. But it was fiercely opposed by some local residents and conservationists, who said the stretch of coastal sand dunes was home to some of the country’s rarest wildlife, including skylarks, kittiwakes, badgers and otters.

Local fisherman Michael Forbes became an international cause célèbre after he refused the Trump Organization’s offer of 350,000 pounds ($690,000 at the time) to sell his family’s rundown farm in the center of the estate. Forbes still lives on his property, which Trump once called “a slum and a pigsty.”

“If it weren’t for my mother, would I have walked away from this site? I think probably I would have, yes,” Trump said in 2008 amid the planning battle over the course. “Possibly, had my mother not been born in Scotland, I probably wouldn’t have started it.”

The golf course was eventually approved and opened in 2012. Some of the grander aspects of the planned development, including 500 houses and a 450-room hotel, have not been realized, and the course has never made a profit.

A second 18-hole course at the resort is scheduled to open this summer. It’s named the MacLeod Course in honor of Trump’s mother.

There has been less controversy about Trump’s other Scottish golf site, the long-established Turnberry resort in southwest Scotland, which he bought in 2014. He has pushed for the British Open to be held at the course for the first time since 2009.

Turnberry is one of 10 courses on the rotation to host the Open. But organizers say there are logistical issues about “road, rail and accommodation infrastructure” that must be resolved before it can return.

Protests and politicians

Trump has had a rollercoaster relationship with Scottish and UK politicians.

More than a decade ago, the Scottish government enlisted Trump as an unpaid business adviser with the GlobalScot network, a group of business leaders, entrepreneurs and executives with a connection to Scotland. It dumped him in 2015 after he called for Muslims to be banned from the US The remarks also prompted Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen to revoke an honorary doctorate in business administration it had awarded Trump in 2010.

This week Trump will meet left-leaning Scottish First Minister John Swinney, an erstwhile Trump critic who endorsed Kamala Harris before last year’s election — a move branded an “insult” by a spokesperson for Trump’s Scottish businesses.

Swinney said it’s “in Scotland’s interest” for him to meet the president.

Some Scots disagree, and a major police operation is being mounted during the visit in anticipation of protests. The Stop Trump Scotland group has encouraged demonstrators to come to Aberdeen and “show Trump exactly what we think of him in Scotland.”

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is also expected to travel to Scotland for talks with Trump. The British leader has forged a warm relationship with Trump, who said this month “I really like the prime minister a lot, even though he’s a liberal.” They are likely to talk trade, as Starmer seeks to nail down an exemption for UK steel from Trump’s tariffs.

There is no word on whether Trump and Starmer — not a golfer — will play a round at one of the courses.


US appeals court finds Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship unconstitutional, upholds block

US appeals court finds Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship unconstitutional, upholds block
Updated 24 July 2025
Follow

US appeals court finds Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship unconstitutional, upholds block

US appeals court finds Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship unconstitutional, upholds block
  • Trump’s order asserts that a child born in the US is not a citizen if the mother does not have legal immigration status or is in the country legally but temporarily, and the father is not a US citizen or lawful permanent resident

WASHINGTON: A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that President Donald Trump’s order seeking to end birthright citizenship is unconstitutional, affirming a lower-court decision that blocked its enforcement nationwide.

The ruling from a three-judge panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals comes after Trump’s plan was also blocked by a federal judge in New Hampshire. It brings the issue one step closer to coming back quickly before the Supreme Court.

The 9th Circuit decision keeps a block on the Trump administration enforcing the order that would deny citizenship to children born to people who are in the United States illegally or temporarily.

“The district court correctly concluded that the Executive Order’s proposed interpretation, denying citizenship to many persons born in the United States, is unconstitutional. We fully agree,” the majority wrote.

The 2-1 ruling keeps in place a decision from US District Judge John C. Coughenour in Seattle, who blocked Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship and decried what he described as the administration’s attempt to ignore the Constitution for political gain.

The White House and Justice Department did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

The Supreme Court has since restricted the power of lower court judges to issue orders that affect the whole country, known as nationwide injunctions.

But the 9th Circuit majority found that the case fell under one of the exceptions left open by the justices. The case was filed by a group of states who argued that they need a nationwide order to prevent the problems that would be caused by birthright citizenship only being the law in half of the country.

“We conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion in issuing a universal injunction in order to give the States complete relief,” Judge Michael Hawkins and Ronald Gould, both appointed by President Bill Clinton, wrote.

Judge Patrick Bumatay, who was appointed by Trump, dissented. He found that the states don’t have the legal right, or standing, to sue. “We should approach any request for universal relief with good faith skepticism, mindful that the invocation of ‘complete relief’ isn’t a backdoor to universal injunctions,” he wrote.

Bumatay did not weigh in on whether ending birthright citizenship would be constitutional.

The Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment says that all people born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to US jurisdiction, are citizens.

Justice Department attorneys argue that the phrase “subject to United States jurisdiction” in the amendment means that citizenship isn’t automatically conferred to children based on their birth location alone.

The states — Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon — argue that ignores the plain language of the Citizenship Clause as well as a landmark birthright citizenship case in 1898 where the Supreme Court found a child born in San Francisco to Chinese parents was a citizen by virtue of his birth on American soil.

Trump’s order asserts that a child born in the US is not a citizen if the mother does not have legal immigration status or is in the country legally but temporarily, and the father is not a US citizen or lawful permanent resident. At least nine lawsuits challenging the order have been filed around the US.


Black student dragged from his car and punched by Florida officers says he was scared and confused

Black student dragged from his car and punched by Florida officers says he was scared and confused
Updated 24 July 2025
Follow

Black student dragged from his car and punched by Florida officers says he was scared and confused

Black student dragged from his car and punched by Florida officers says he was scared and confused
  • William McNeil Jr. 's encounter with teh abusive cops happened in February, but the arrest didn’t capture much attention until the video from McNeil’s car-mounted camera went viral over the weekend

A Black college student shown on video being punched and dragged from his car by Florida law officers during a traffic stop faces a long recovery from injuries that include a concussion and a broken tooth that pierced his lip and led to several stiches, his lawyers said Wednesday.

At a news conference in Jacksonville, 22-year-old William McNeil Jr. spoke softly as he made a few brief comments with his family and civil rights attorneys by his side.

“That day I just really wanted to know why I was getting pulled over and why I needed to step out of the car,” he said. “I knew I didn’t do nothing wrong. I was really just scared.”

McNeil is a biology major who played in the marching band at Livingstone College, a historically Black Christian college in Salisbury, North Carolina, Livingstone President Anthony Davis said.

The encounter with law enforcement happened in February, but the arrest didn’t capture much attention until the video from McNeil’s car-mounted camera went viral over the weekend. That’s when the sheriff said he became aware of it and opened an internal investigation, which is ongoing. The sheriff said a separate probe by the State Attorney’s Office cleared the officers of any criminal wrongdoing — a finding fiercely criticized by McNeil’s lawyers.

Video from inside the car captures him being punched

Footage of the violent arrest has sparked nationwide outrage, with civil rights lawyers accusing authorities of fabricating their arrest report.

The video filmed by McNeil’s camera shows him sitting in the driver’s seat, asking to speak to the Jacksonville officers’ supervisor, when they broke his window, punched him in the face, pulled him from the vehicle and punched him again. He was then knocked to the ground by an officer who delivered six closed-fist punches to the hamstring of his right thigh, police reports show.

Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday defended law enforcement officers and implied the video was posted to advance a “narrative” and generate attention on social media.

“That’s what happens in so many of these things,” DeSantis said. “There’s a rush to judgment. There’s a, there’s a desire to try to get views and clicks by creating division.”

DeSantis says he hasn’t seen the video, but backs law enforcement

DeSantis said he hasn’t reviewed the viral video but has “every confidence” in Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters, who has urged the public not to cast judgment based on the footage alone.

“If people get out of line, he’s going to hold them accountable,” DeSantis said.

Body camera footage of the encounter shows McNeil had been repeatedly told to exit the vehicle. And, though he earlier had his car door open while talking with an officer, he later closed it and appeared to keep it locked for about three minutes before the officers forcibly removed him, the video shows. The vantage point of the body camera footage that was released makes it difficult to see the punches.

The cellphone footage from the Feb. 19 arrest shows that seconds before being dragged outside, McNeil had his hands up and did not appear to be resisting as he asked, “What is your reason?” He had pulled over and had been accused of not having his headlights on, even though it was daytime, his lawyers said.

On Wednesday, civil rights lawyer Ben Crump said his client had every right to ask why he was being pulled over and to ask for a supervisor.

Report that McNeil reached toward a knife is disputed

A point of contention in the police report is a claim that McNeil reached toward an area of the car where deputies found a knife when they searched the vehicle after taking him into custody.

“The suspect was reaching for the floorboard of the vehicle where a large knife was sitting,” Officer D. Bowers wrote in his report.

Crump called that police report a “fabrication,” saying McNeil “never reaches for anything.” A second officer observed that McNeil kept his hands up as Bowers smashed the window.

“After Ofc. Bowers opened the door, the subject refused to exit the vehicle, but kept his hands up,” the second officer wrote.

Sheriff says officers have been cleared of committing any crimes

The State Attorney’s Office determined that the officers did not violate any criminal laws, the sheriff said. No one from the State Attorney’s Office ever interviewed McNeil, Crump said.

Daniels called their investigation “a whitewashing.”

“But for that video, we would not be here,” Daniels said. “And we thank God Mr. McNeil had the courage to record.”

Asked about the criticism of the State Attorney’s review, a spokesperson for the office said Wednesday that “a memo to McNeil’s file will be finalized in the coming days that will serve as our comment.”

Shortly after his arrest, McNeil pleaded guilty to charges of resisting an officer without violence and driving with a suspended license, Waters said.

Civil rights attorneys call for accountability

“America, we’re better than this, we’re at a crossroads,” Crump said. “We are a Democracy, we believe in the Constitution. We are not a police state where the police can do anything they want to citizens without any accountability.”

Crump said his client remained calm while the officers who are trained to deescalate tense situations were the ones escalating violence. He said the case harkened back to the Civil Rights movement, when Black people were often attacked when they tried to assert their rights.

“What he exhibited was a 21st century Rosa Parks moment where an African American had the audacity to say ‘I deserve equal justice under the law. I deserve to be treated like a human being with all the respect that a human being is entitled to.’”

The sheriff has pushed back on some of the claims by Crump and lawyer Harry Daniels, saying the cellphone camera footage from inside the car “does not comprehensively capture the circumstances surrounding the incident.”

“Part of that stems from the distance and perspective of the recording cell phone camera,” the sheriff said in a statement, adding that the video did not capture events that occurred before officers decided to arrest McNeil.

Cameras “can only capture what can be seen and heard,” the sheriff added. “So much context and depth are absent from recorded footage because a camera simply cannot capture what is known to the people depicted in it.”

Many of the speakers at Wednesday’s news conference said they hope the Florida case results in accountability so that what happened to McNeil doesn’t happen to others.

“It’s incumbent upon everyone to understand that this could have been us, this could have been me, this could have been you,” civil rights lawyer Gerald Griggs said.

 


Columbia University agrees to pay more than $220M in deal with Trump to restore federal funding

Columbia University agrees to pay more than $220M in deal with Trump to restore federal funding
Updated 24 July 2025
Follow

Columbia University agrees to pay more than $220M in deal with Trump to restore federal funding

Columbia University agrees to pay more than $220M in deal with Trump to restore federal funding
  • The Trump administration pulled the funding, because of what it described as the university’s failure to squelch antisemitism on campus

NEW YORK: Columbia University has reached a deal with the Trump administration to pay more than $220 million to the federal government to restore federal research money that was canceled in the name of combating antisemitism on campus, the university announced Wednesday.

Under the agreement, the Ivy League school will pay a $200 million settlement over three years, the university said. It will also pay $21 million to settle investigations brought by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

“This agreement marks an important step forward after a period of sustained federal scrutiny and institutional uncertainty,” acting University President Claire Shipman said.

The Trump administration pulled the funding, because of what it described as the university’s failure to squelch antisemitism on campus during the Israel-Hamas war that began in October 2023.

Columbia then agreed to a series of demands laid out by the Republican administration, including overhauling the university’s student disciplinary process and adopting a new definition of antisemitism.

Wednesday’s agreement — which does not include an admission of wrongdoing — codifies those reforms while preserving the university’s autonomy, Shipman said.

The school had been threatened with the potential loss of billions of dollars in government support, including more than $400 million in grants canceled earlier this year.

“The settlement was carefully crafted to protect the values that define us and allow our essential research partnership with the federal government to get back on track,” Shipman said. “Importantly, it safeguards our independence, a critical condition for academic excellence and scholarly exploration, work that is vital to the public interest.”

As part of the deal, Columbia agreed to a series of changes previously announced in March, including reviewing its Middle East curriculum to make sure it was “comprehensive and balanced” and appointing new faculty to its Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies. It also promised to end programs “that promote unlawful efforts to achieve race-based outcomes, quotes, diversity targets or similar efforts.”

The university will also have to issue a report to a monitor assuring that its programs “do not promote unlawful DEI goals.”

The pact comes after months of uncertainty and fraught negotiations at the more than 270-year-old university. It was among the first targets of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus protests and on colleges that he asserts have allowed Jewish students be threatened and harassed.

Columbia’s own antisemitism task force found last summer that Jewish students had faced verbal abuse, ostracism and classroom humiliation during the spring 2024 demonstrations.

Other Jewish students took part in the protests, however, and protest leaders maintain they aren’t targeting Jews but rather criticizing the Israeli government and its war in Gaza.

Columbia’s leadership — a revolving door of three interim presidents in the last year — has declared that the campus climate needs to change.

Also in the settlement is an agreement to ask prospective international students “questions designed to elicit their reasons for wishing to study in the United States,” and establishes processes to make sure all students are committed to “civil discourse.”