Two university staffers were reportedly among the group of pro-Palestinian protesters arrested inside the Columbia University building that they broke into and occupied this week, according to school officials.
Violet Bupp-Chickering, a laboratory technician at the Simon John Lab of the Columbia University Ophthalmology department and Gabriel Yancy, a Fordham graduate who now works as a research assistant at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute, were among those arrested at the scene.
Columbia University declined to comment on Bupp-Chickering or Yancy’s employment status, and did not mention what discipline they might face in light of their arrests.
Earlier this week, American Faith reported that the wife of a known terrorist was allegedly involved in the anti-Israel protests at Columbia University.
Sami Al-Arian, who was deported for aiding Islamic Jihad, shared on social media that his wife, Nahla, was “in solidarity with the brave and very determined Columbia University students.”
In 2006, Al-Arian pled guilty to a “charge of conspiring to provide services to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ),” the Department of Justice said.
He was sentenced to 57 months in prison.
Al-Arian admitted that “during the period of the late 1980’s and early to mid-1990’s, he and several of his co-conspirators were associated with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad,” according to the DOJ. “He further admitted that he performed various services for the PIJ in 1995 and thereafter, knowing that the PIJ had been designated as a Specially Designated Terrorist and that the PIJ engaged in horrific and deadly acts of violence. Such services included filing for immigration benefits for individuals associated with the PIJ, hiding the identities of individuals associated with the PIJ, and providing assistance for an individual associated with the PIJ in a U.S. court proceeding.”