Students walk out of Hillary Clinton’s lecture at Columbia University

Around 30 students on Thursday walked out of a class led by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (D) at Columbia University.

The protest was related to the Israel-Hamas war. The students protesting, according to a report by The New York Times, were demonstrating over what they saw as the school’s complicity in a truck parked near the campus last week that showed photographs of students who had signed a letter blaming Israel for the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. The photos of the students were shown under the words “Columbia’s Leading Antisemites.”

Students said the photographs were taken from an online platform for students at the School of International and Public Affairs, according to the Times, which is meant to be secure and private.

The protest was peaceful and planned, according to the Times. According to a report by the Guardian, the international and public affairs school dean, Keren Yarhi-Milo, who co-teaches the class with Clinton, spoke with the protesting students following the lecture and expressed her support for them, a university spokesperson said.

The statement signed by the students said that the “weight of responsibility for the war and casualties undeniably lies with the Israeli extremist government.”

The protest at Columbia comes amid a wave of turmoil on college campuses across the country over the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict. Last week, students at George Washington University (GWU) faced backlash and gained national attention for projecting anti-Israel messages on the side of a library on campus.

“These are genocidal messages displayed on a building at George Washington University. If the students responsible for these messages aren’t severely punished by GWU, something is terribly wrong,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) wrote in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter in response to the messages. “Genocide isn’t hip, cute, or in any way acceptable. GWU—do the right thing NOW!”