Hillary Clinton says ‘outside direction’ prompted ‘nasty’ anti-Israel protests at Columbia University: ‘Not student-led’

Hillary Clinton has spoken out about how students at Columbia University.

Where she teaches a class, started holding “nasty” protests against Israel instead of continuing to have “respectful” dialogue on the war in the nation. The former Secretary of State said the protests were “not student-led.”

“We basically sat down and answered questions for 45, 50 minutes, and the questions were really raw. I mean, we had a student from Palestine, a Palestinian student. We had a student from Israel, we had students from across the Middle East. We had students from Asia and obviously the rest of the world, struggling to understand what all of it meant. But it was a respectful, informative, open dialogue, and literally at the end of it, the students applauded,” Clinton told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria of a class she held last year when the war broke out in Israel.

Clinton, who co-teaches a political course at Columbia University, titled ‘Inside the Situation Room,’ said that following the October 7 Hamas attack last year, they had an “open dialogue” on campus. However, she later saw rhetoric on campus “morph into something that was not student-led.” “Within a few days, we were doing an event, and we started being protested – the dean and I and our guests – and being screamed at, being called, you know, all kinds of names. What happened in that period? And the best I can sort of unpack it, is that there, there were already existing groups within our country, and particularly on certain campuses like Columbia, who had talking points, they had a plan for protest and disruption, and I watched it sort of morph into something that was not student led, even though students participated, but which had outside funding, outside direction,” she said.

Clinton said that she is unsure “to this day” how the outside funding and outside influence prompted the students to take part in the anti-Israel protests. Demonstrators at Columbia took over the school’s Hamilton Hall building, demanding their school divest from Israel. There were protests across several other college campuses.

‘I would be met with attacks’
Clinton said that she pressed students about their anti-Israel views, only to realise that they did not have historical context about politics in Israel and the Middle East. “A lot of the videos on social media gave not just a one-sided view of the conflict, but a totally anti-Israel, pro-Hamas, not just pro-Palestinian view. And for me, it was distressing, because, look, I have my own opinions formed over many years. I am willing to sit down and have a conversation with anybody, but it’s difficult to have conversations with people who hold strong opinions with no factual and historical basis,” she said.

“And so in trying to talk to students, not just at Columbia, but elsewhere, I would be met with slogans. I would be met with attacks, and, you know, very inflammatory language. And when I would ask, ‘Well, what about, do you know what happened in 2000 at Camp David?’ ‘No.’ ‘Do you know what happened in 1947?’ ‘No.’ ‘Do you know how difficult the relationships have been?’ ‘No.’ ‘Do you know that there are Arab Israelis, and some are serving in the IDF?’ None of that. And this whole chanting of, you know, ‘from the river to the sea.’ What does that mean? What river, what sea? That’s what bothered me,” Clinton added.

Clinton went on to say that it “has been much quieter” so far this year, with “a much more educational environment.” She also condemned the fact that Jewish students were harassed on college campuses. “This was screaming at students who were Jewish, it was blocking their entry into classes or into club activities. It was nasty. And so there was something else going on here that was very troubling. And we now, you know, have seen evidence of, you know, obviously foreign money, foreign influence, the algorithms on TikTok, which were anti-Israel right off the bat. And so I think that a university particularly has an obligation to, of course, protect free speech, but also to protect students against harassment and against the kind of behavior that interfered with their learning,” she said.