Columbia University’s commencement was hijacked by anti-Israel student activists who chanted over President Claire Shipman’s address, booed veteran students, and even staged public diploma burnings. 

Wednesday’s graduation ceremony — the first held by the New York City Ivy since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack — was rocked by protests staged both inside and outside of the Morningside Heights campus. 

Inside the ceremony, anti-Israel students attempted to drown out Ms. Shipman’s address with rounds of “Free Palestine” chants and unyielding boos. At times the protesters called out the name of Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia graduate student who was detained by immigration officials in March for his involvement in the school’s anti-Israel protest movement. 

Other videos show students booing their fellow graduating military veterans after they were thanked by the president for their service. 

After the ceremony, numerous graduates huddled together to stage public desecrations of their diplomas. Some ripped them up, while others lit them on fire. A Columbia undergraduate degree — without any form of financial aid — runs upward of $400,000 for the full four years. 

The defiant display was chided by a Columbia watchdog group, Documenting Jew Hatred on Campus at Columbia, which shared its rebuke on X: “These pieces of paper represent hundreds of thousands of dollars in education that pro-terrorist now graduates of @columbia are burning. What a disgrace to their families and friends who helped these spoiled brats earn their degrees from @columbia,” the group wrote. 

Representative Elise Stefanik of New York took a similar stance, lamenting on X that the Ivy League diploma burnings are “a powerful symbol of how far our education system has fallen. These institutions once produced world leaders and innovators — now churn out students so consumed by DEI indoctrination that they graduate as faux activists filled with hatred.” 

Outside of the campus gates, protesters answered the call from Columbia’s anti-Israel student group, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, to prevent the graduation proceedings from going on “as usual” while what it considers “genocide” is happening. CUAD, according to a flier shared on its social media page, instructed its members to congregate on 116th Street and Broadway on Wednesday morning and bring noisemakers, signs, keffiyehs, flags, and “get loud.” 

The group shared on X: “We say firmly: there can be no graduation as usual while Columbia University remains complicit through providing investment, research, and ideological cover to genocide while repressing those who stand on the right side of history.”

About 100 demonstrators showed up for the protest and at least two were arrested by the New York Police Department after the gathering took an unruly turn. 

Wednesday’s rowdy proceedings come despite efforts by the Columbia administration to ensure a smooth ceremony. The school released an announcement ahead of time reminding attendees that interruptions were “not permitted” and that any disruptors “may be asked to leave the venue.”

Last year’s university-wide commencement ceremony was canceled due to safety concerns related to the unruly anti-Israel encampment movement that erupted on campus shortly after Hamas’s October 7 attack. The school opted to hold smaller ceremonies for its various schools instead.