Stupiditywatch: Columbia's pro-Hamas protestors tear up their own diplomas for the cameras

 College educated Idiots

In a publicity stunt that highlights their own stupidity, Columbia's pro-Hamas protestors ripped up their own diplomas for the cameras, supposedly to protest the expected repatriation of a pro-Hamas alumnus, saying the university didn't do enough for him.

According to NBC News:

Instead of joining in Columbia University’s annual “Alumni Day” celebrations for the School of International and Public Affairs, several alumni gathered to denounce the school by ripping up their diplomas in protest.

The protest follows the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), a Palestinian activist and a green card holder. Khalil was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at his university-owned apartment on March 8.

The demonstration was organized by SIPA Alumni for Palestine and began with a group of alumni and current student speakers, a few dozen people chanting and then a collective ripping of diplomas.

“It’s not easy to do this, with none of us doing this lightly. There’s no joy in this,” said Amali Tower, a 2009 SIPA graduate who spoke at the protest.

Actually, they were having a grand old time if this video is any indication -- get a load of those smiles:

Like that was the school's job, somehow, to interfere with federal immigration enforcement matters in the case of an alumni who supported Hamas terrorists, helped disrupt school operations for those who wanted to study, and spread antisemitic venom throughout the campus. He was so close to Hamas he might have been one or at least known some, given that he had worked for UNRWA. UNRWA was home to about a dozen verified participants in the Oct. 7 massacre on some 1,200 Israelis.

So instead of taking their protest to Washington, they blamed Columbia University, and in line with their ridiculous logic, ripped up their own diplomas for the cameras, like any of us are going to care if they go without their own diplomas.

Given Columbia's weak leadership (I think they are on their third president since the pro-Hamas protests laid that university low) and Washington's strong leadership, they saw where the caving to their agenda might occur, and wanted to get some attention, same way John Kerry once did by throwing his own medals over the White House fence.

Like Kerry's act, it was an empty gesture. What the pro-Hamas alumni did was not a renunciation of their actual degrees, which they'll keep, thank you very much, for their resume purposes, the better to burrow into America's institutions in time. It was just a rip-up of their piece of paper. They can just call up the university alumni office and have them print them up a new one. Kerry got his replaced, too.

In other words, they didn't give anything up. They just figured out a way to cause more work for the university to print more out and I hope the university charges them big for it when they come crawling back eventually to ask the school to print them a new one.

Many have commented that their cheap stunt highlighted how worthless the degrees were. I'm not entirely sure about that, though it could be that the school has gone downhill in the wokester era. Given that these were School for International and Public Affairs degrees, they probably took some work to get the diploma if the school is anything like what it was when I took classes there 20-some years ago. 

No, this was just a cheap publicity stunt. They still have their degrees. They just wanted to blame the school and do all they could to make prospective students avoid the place like a bad smell, not because of the school, but because of them.

How stupid can you get? I'll be happy if the university refused to print up any new diplomas for them, and as an additional favor, revoked their degrees for them, too. Since that won't happen, the best thing to do now is laugh and point at these boobs, cutting off their noses to spite their faces. Everyone can see that what they are doing is gesture politics of no significance whatsoever.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/03/stupiditywatch_columbia_s_pro_hamas_protestors_tear_up_their_own_diplomas_for_the_cameras.html