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Josh Whitford
Josh Whitford’s Participation in the Pro-Hamas Encampment at Columbia University (Columbia)
Josh Whitford participated in the pro-Hamas encampment at Columbia in mid-2024. The encampment was also in support of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Josh Whitford is a Columbia associate professor who participated [00:01:49] in the encampment on April 22, 2024. He can be seen in the video at the extreme left of the frame wearing a bright yellow vest.
Numerous Columbia faculty and staff members participated in the encampment wearing bright orange vests with yellow and gray stripes. Taped to each vest was a label that said either “FACULTY” or “STAFF.” They had organized to support the student protestors in various ways. Some made up a “human barricade” to prevent Jewish students from entering [00:03:16] the campus, and some held signs saying: “HANDS OFF OUR STUDENTS" and [00:00:31] “No cops on campus.” Other faculty and staff “lined up in front of the encampment in a show of solidarity with the student body."
There was also a group of Columbia faculty and staff members who wore [00:01:00, 00:02:12] yellow vests with gray stripes during the encampment. On one occasion, they prevented [00:03:06] those they deemed “provocateurs” [00:01:09, 00:01:26] from entering Columbia as well.
Whitford also showed support for the encampment by attending an anti-Israel ceremony organized by “The People’s Grad for Palestine” on May 16, 2024.
The event, titled: “The People’s Graduation,” was planned by “an independent group of faculty [who] wanted to create a graduation ceremony for their students who have been excluded from campus for peacefully protesting Israel’s genocide in Gaza [at the Columbia encampment].”
The ceremony was organized “following the cancellation of [Columbia’s] Universitywide Commencement ceremonies and in the aftermath of the April 18 and April 30 police sweeps of the ‘Gaza Solidarity Encampment’ and occupied Hamilton [Hall].”
Columbia is located in New York, New York.
On April 17, 2024, Columbia students and anti-Israel activists set up a pro-Hamas “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on the university's main lawn. Many participants were arrested and the encampment featured multiple violent incidents, including taking over a campus building and taking a university worker hostage.
Activists protested Israel’s war against Hamas and demanded that Columbia “divest from companies and institutions that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide and occupation…”
The action had reportedly been planned for months and was organized by the Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) coalition. The encampment was also organized by Columbia’s banned pro-Hamas activist group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the university chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). Activists reportedly received training from National SJP and other anti-Israel organizations.
Among the encampment leaders was Columbia student Khymani James who had said [00:00:25]: “Zionists…They are nazis!... They’re supporters of genocide! Why would we want people who are supporters of genocide to live?... Be glad, be grateful that I am not just going out and murdering Zionists.” Aidan Parisi, another encampment leader, responded to Columbia’s demand to disband the encampment by declaring online that: “COLUMBIA WILL BURN.”
The encampment was forcibly dismantled at the directive of Columbia’s president and administration. The NYPD [New York Police Department] entered the area, cleared the encampment and arrested more than 100 protestors, approximately 80 of whom were Columbia students. The students were charged with trespassing and suspended from Columbia indefinitely.
The next day, activists created a new encampment. When divestment negotiations with Columbia failed, protesters illegally forced their way into the university’s Hamilton Hall on April 30, 2024. They smashed [00:00:55] through a glass-paneled door, broke security cameras, threw university property out of the windows and unfurled [00:00:01] a banner in the building’s wall that read: “INTIFADA,” a term in Arabic for uprising or insurrection that carries the connotation of violence.
While barricading themselves in the building, agitators kept three Columbia custodians hostage and stopped them from leaving. When the NYPD raided and dismantled the encampment a second time, they arrested more than 100 students, nearly half of whom were reportedly not affiliated with Columbia.
NYPD shared on Twitter photos of objects the police found in Hamilton Hall. These included knives, hammers, gas masks, ropes and a pamphlet that read [video 1]: “...DISRUPT/RECLAIM/DESTROY zionist business interests everywhere! DEATH TO ISRAELI REAL STATE! DEATH TO AMERICA!...LONG LIVE THE INTIFADA!”
Just outside the encampment area, Jewish students were called [slide 2]: “Uncultured a** b**ches!” and were told to “Go back to Europe!” Activists also said [slide 3] to them: “Yahoodim [Jews], yahoodi [Jew], f**k you!” and “Stop killing children!” as they walked from campus to their dorm rooms.
Also just outside the encampment area, anti-Israel activists chanted [slide 5]: “Ya Hamas, ya habib, odrob, odrob Tel Aviv! [Oh Hamas, oh loved one, strike, strike Tel Aviv!]”, a chant that celebrates Hamas rocket attacks against Israel.
An activist just outside the encampment area held [photo 4] a sign that said, referring to the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing: “AL-QASAM’S NEXT TARGETS.” Her sign contained an arrow pointing to a pro-Israel crowd.
On May 31, 2024, Columbia SJP announced that its activists had set up a third encampment at the university. At the encampment, protesters reportedly displayed on a big screen a video that portrayed Hamas as a peace-seeking organization and made a sign that contained an inverted red triangle, a symbol in support of Hamas.
The Columbia encampment reportedly inspired a wave of protest encampments across North American campuses, where pro-Israel students were blocked or restricted from campus facilities. Jewish students were reportedly harassed in several other ways.
There were over 140 pro-Hamas and anti-Israel college encampments set up in North America, and over 20 more globally, in the spring of 2024. The first began on April 17, 2024, at Columbia University. The encampments were unofficially known as the “student intifada,” borrowing a term associated with terrorist violence.
Protesters harassed Jewish students, blocked Jews from campus facilities and shouted anti-Semitic slogans. They occupied campus grounds, in many cases illegally, caused property damage, violently took over buildings, celebrated terrorism and promoted the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Activists set up encampments to oppose Israel’s right to wage war against the Hamas terror group following October 7, 2023, when Hamas murdered approximately 1,200 people, including 32 American and 8 Canadian citizens. Hamas also kidnapped 252 people, including 11 Americans and the bodies of 2 murdered Canadians.
Josh Whitford is a supporter [no. 56] of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, having signed a 2016 BDS petition.
Whitford also expressed [no. 794] support for disgraced anti-Israel Professor Steven Salaita.
In 2014, The University of Illinois withdrew an offer of employment to Salaita after becoming aware of his anti-Semitic tweets. One tweet, posted shortly after Hamas kidnapped three teenage Israeli high school students, read: "You may be too refined to say it, but I’m not: I wish all the f**king West Bank settlers would go missing.”
In 2017, Salaita posted to Facebook: “People ask if I would go back in time and change anything. I would not…I will die unapologetic.” In February 2019, Salaita stated that he had become a school bus driver in the Washington, D.C., area.
As of September 2024, Whitford’s Columbia faculty page listed him as an associate professor in the university’s Department of Sociology, as well as the director of the department’s graduate studies.
Also as of September 2024, Whitford’s Columbia faculty page said he received a PhD in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2003.
