On October 21, 2017, students at Columbia University who are involved with the Liberation Coalition issued the following statement in which 12 demands were made of the Columbia University Administration:
"Our Demands
"Columbia has a history of abusing its institutional power as a University by intimidating students, workers as well as the nearby Harlem community. We refuse to let this be another opportunity for them to do so behind closed doors. Furthermore, Columbia should hold CUCR accountable for fueling the fire of intolerance under the guise of free speech. At the same time, we recognize that Columbia's complicity in white supremacy goes much further than giving white supremacists a platform to speak on our campus. Consequently, we have compiled the following list of demands inspired by discourses centered on black radical feminism, decolonization, and social justice:
"1. We demand that the university drop its investigation into allegations of interrupting the CUCR event on October 10, 2017. We affirm the rights of students and community members to protest.
"2. We demand that the university revise and replace its oppressive university rules. While we affirm the principle of free speech, we recognize that the invocation of free speech by the university obfuscates deeper underlying concerns about power, dominance, and violence. If we acknowledge that the principle of free speech has its roots in colonialism and violence and that the current political climate in the U.S. is complicit in perpetuating these acts of violence, then we must begin to problematize the university's fundamentalist support for the principle of free speech in its rules.
"3. "We demand that the university actively protect and provide sanctuary to all intersections of identities that suffer at the hands of white supremacist ideologies including but not limited to students and community members of the Queer and Trans' communities, people living with disabilities, human beings labeled undocumented immigrants, community members and students of the Muslim community, and indigent students and community members of all colors.
"4. We demand that the university recognize the formation and establishment of a Graduate Workers Union. Columbia's continuous obstruction of the unionization of student workers is an injustice that can no longer be allowed.
"5. We demand that the university provide free tuition for indigenous and Black people as compensation for its historic role in perpetuating violence against these communities. Restore balance and justice amongst the people who built and died for Columbia University to exist. Columbia recently made available historical documents of the role of wealthy slave merchants in the founding of the university. President Bollinger, in a New York Times article this year, said that addressing Columbia's `complicity' in the slave trade was a necessary step toward addressing current injustices.
"6. We demand that Columbia University stop over-policing the Harlem community but instead provide services that would mitigate systems of oppression that manifest in historic and contemporary forms of trauma.
"7. We demand that Columbia University utilize scholarships for residents of Harlem from disenfranchised communities. On May 18, 2009, Lee Bollinger signed the West Harlem Community Benefits Agreement. Some of the recitals and agreements of this contract include constructing about 6.8 million square feet of space over the next 25 and scholarships to 40 admitted students into Columbia College and FU School of Engineering per year (page 31 of contract).
"8. "We demand that the university decolonize curricula throughout Columbia University. Uplift the voices of marginalized people by utilizing literature, exercises, experiences, and professors from those communities.
"9. "We demand that the university decolonize this campus. We demand that the university rename buildings and replace statues of Thomas Jefferson, Nicholas Murray Butler, and Alexander Hamilton who were all enthusiasts of indigenous and Black genocide in addition to the capturing, raping, and enslaving of African people. Instead, we believe in a restorative justice approach to how history is depicted on our campus. We demand that the true American liberators such as Harriet Tubman, Langston Hughes, and representatives from the Nanticoke-Lenni Lenape Nation, have statues and portraits, have a presence and are celebrated on this campus.
"10. We demand that the university stop forcibly removing people with Black and Brown bodies from the Harlem community via the process of gentrification.
"11. We demand that Columbia divests from all prison labor. In 2015, Columbia University was the first university to divest from prisons, however, this is not inclusive of all companies that profit from us.
"12. We demand that the voices of marginalized bodies be centered on this campus. We demand equity. We demand our right to protest be protected. We maintain our right to shut down White Supremacy on this campus and in this greater community. We demand liberation."
