NEW YORK, May 7 – Columbia University in New York, which is witnessing demonstrations denouncing the Israeli occupation’s aggression against the Gaza Strip, and in solidarity with Palestine, announced on Monday that it has decided to cancel its graduation ceremony next week.
The university said it would “abandon the university-wide ceremony scheduled for May 15” and will organise a series of small events instead, Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.
The student movement was sparked in the United States on April 18, when students rejecting the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip began a sit-in on the campus of Columbia University in New York, demanding that its administration stop its academic cooperation with Israeli universities and withdraw its investments in companies that support the occupation.
Students in American universities are seeking to put pressure on the American administration to withdraw investments from the occupying state and the companies that support it, and to boycott Israeli universities that are complicit in the genocide of the Palestinian people.
The unprecedented student movement in support of Palestine in the United States also spread to universities in countries such as France, Britain, Germany, Canada, Switzerland, India and Australia.
