Every year, Columbia University hosts a “Giving Day” to raise funds for the school, its programs, and causes. For the past 12 years, the amount donated on each day has increased – until now.
For the first time, the university suffered a massive drop in donations, after pausing the event in 2023 after the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, the Columbia Spectator reported. Since resuming the event, the school has had a nearly 30% drop in donations.
In 2022, Columbia raised $30 million on Giving Day, compared to $21.4 million raised in 2024 – a 28.8% drop. This was the lowest amount raised since 2018.
The number of donations also declined 27.9% this year after rising steadily for the first 10 years of the event, the Spectator reported.
The drop comes after a year of anti-Israel protests on Columbia’s campus beginning after Hamas’ October 7 attack. Some of the campus’ anti-Israel groups called for the “total eradication of Western civilization,” The Daily Wire reported in August.
The Columbia University Apartheid Divest coalition, which has a list of demands, including that Columbia “[s]ever academic ties with Israel universities” and “Defund Public Safety and disclose and sever all ties with the NYPD,” made the demand in an Instagram post.
“We are Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization,” the coalition stated. “We stand in full solidarity with every movement for liberation in the Global South. Our Intifada is an internationalist one—we are fighting for nothing less than the liberation of all people. We reject every genocidal, eugenicist regime that seeks to undermine the personhood of the colonized.”
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”As the fascism ingrained in the American consciousness becomes ever more explicit and irrefutable, we seek community and instruction from militants in the Global South, who have been on the frontlines in the fight against tyranny and domination which undergird the imperialist world order,” they continued.
Even after protesters took over and trashed a building on campus, charges against them were dropped by leftist District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who claimed there wasn’t enough evidence against 31 of the 46 people charged with trespassing, The Daily Wire reported in June.
Anti-Israel protests weren’t the only problem Columbia faced this past year, as the school’s administrators were caught mocking complaints from Jews about anti-Semitism on campus. In a group text, Columbia administrators used vomit emojis to dismiss the concerns of Jewish students. At least three administrators involved in the group chat have been fired, and the university’s president resigned following this scandal and the protests.
