NEW YORK, NEW YORK - APRIL 29: A demonstrator breaks the windows of the front door of the building in order to secure a chain around it to prevent authorities from entering on Tuesday, April 30, 2024 in New York City. Demonstrators from the pro-Palestine encampment on Columbia's Campus barricade themselves inside Hamilton Hall, an academic building which has been occupied in past student movements,. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched around the "Gaza Solidarity Encampment" at Columbia University as a 2 P.M. deadline to clear the encampment given to students by the university passed. The students were given a suspension warning if they do not meet the deadline. Columbia students were the first to erect an encampment in support of Palestine, with students demanding that the school divest from Israel amid the Israel-Hamas war, where more than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip. (Photo by Alex Kent/Getty Images)
  • The Columbia University janitors who were held hostage during the violent takeover of a campus building last spring are suing their alleged captors for battery, assault, and conspiracy to violate their civil rights.
  • The suit alleges that over 40 Columbia students and “outside agitators” held the janitors against their will, assaulted and battered them, and derided them as ‘Jew-lovers’ and ‘Zionists.’
  • The “occupiers” named in Torres and Wilson’s lawsuit include leaders of Columbia’s most vocal anti-Israel groups, such as the Columbia University Apartheid Divest Coalition, Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voices for Peace. 
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