00:00Today, I'm filing a lawsuit against Columbia University and CIPA Dean, Karen Yare-Mailo,
00:07for their gross and systematic discrimination against Palestinian students at Columbia.
00:13I'm joined by my friends at the Palestine Working Group.
00:19Columbia laid the groundwork for my targeting by the Trump administration
00:24through its deliberate indifference and discrimination aimed at intimidating Palestinian students.
00:33For over two years, we pleaded with Columbia.
00:38Columbia did not care.
00:40Our safety and well-being did not serve the ideological project its board of trustees was protecting,
00:48so they traded us away.
00:51Today, we are suing because no student, regardless of their background,
00:57should go through the hell that Columbia put us through over all these years.
01:03After October 7th, all of this institutionalized racism surfaced.
01:08Within days, Columbia pushed a false narrative about the nature of our protests.
01:14I met with Columbia officials multiple times, pleading for support for the Palestinian community.
01:21Those pleas went nowhere.
01:24Columbia banned SJP and JVP.
01:27For two years, Columbia turned our lives into help.
01:31It prioritized the protection and well-being of a subset of students while ignoring our concerns and pleas.
01:40It intentionally created a hostile environment for us to intimidate us.
01:47It said that Palestinian students did not matter.
01:51That our concerns are unworthy of task forces, of investigations, of any protection.
01:58Because no one could care about us.
02:01Then came the morning of March 7th, when I emailed the president back then, Armstrong, urging for any support because
02:12of the vicious harassment against me.
02:18What Columbia did on March 8th, the day of my abduction, was a choice.
02:25A choice to support me, a student, a member of the Columbia community.
02:32A choice to support me, stand behind me, demand my release, as it did for others a year later.
02:41Or a choice to erase me, to scapegoat me, to never even mention my name.
02:49It shows the latter.
02:51A year and a half since my unlawful detention, Columbia has not reached out one time to offer any support
02:58to me.
02:59On the contrary, they barred me from campus.
03:03The only time they emailed us was actually to ask us to leave Columbia Housing.
03:10It is time to hold those who discriminate against Palestinians accountable.
03:17It is time to hold them for all these crimes and abuses that they inflicted upon us.
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