‘We will resist institutional repression just as the Palestinians have resisted occupation,’ Aidan Parisi says
A Columbia University graduate student who was suspended over his involvement in the now-infamous “Palestinian Resistance 101” event is refusing to leave campus and pledging to “resist institutional repression just as the Palestinians have resisted occupation.”
Aidan Parisi, a graduate student in Columbia’s School of Social Work, received an “interim” suspension over his involvement in the event, which featured a number of terror-tied speakers who advocated for violence against Jews. While the suspension requires Parisi to leave campus and bars him from returning without prior approval, he is refusing to leave, he announced in a string of social media posts.
“Over the weekend I have been unable to leave my home in fear of an illegal lockout by my landlord, Columbia University,” Parisi, who lives in an on-campus apartment, wrote in a Monday tweet. In a follow-up on Tuesday, he wrote, “Update on my illegal eviction by Columbia: I am still in my home. Columbia has tried to intimidate me into leaving, but has yet to follow the legal procedures.”
Parisi also pledged to “resist” what he called “institutional repression” at Columbia and praised the “intifada.”
“We will resist institutional repression just as the Palestinians have resisted occupation,” he wrote on Instagram. “Que viva la intifada. … Inshallah, we will rise victorious.” Parisi has a long history of anti-American and anti-Israel activism, having posted a photo of the two nations’ flags burning on July 4, 2020. “No love for any colonizer flag,” he wrote in his caption.
Parisi’s noncompliance comes as Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, prepares for an April 17 congressional hearing on campus anti-Semitism. In the build-up to the hearing, Shafik has suspended four students involved in the “Resistance 101” event and launched an investigation into others.
Students who refuse to participate in the investigation will be disciplined, as will those who attended another unsanctioned anti-Israel event held Thursday, Columbia administrators said last week. It’s unclear how and whether the university will follow through on those threats and enforce its suspension of Parisi. A Columbia spokeswoman said the school “continues to work through the disciplinary process.”
The now-infamous “Resistance 101” event, which the Washington Free Beacon attended virtually, was hosted by Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition of student groups, on March 24. The event featured speakers who explicitly endorsed terrorism against Jews.
Image - Aidan Parisi/Twitter screen shot