Draft:Columbia University Apartheid Divest

Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) is a pro-Palestinian coalition of over 120 student organizations at Columbia University in New York City. CUAD, along with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), organized the ongoing 2024 campus occupation at the university. The coalition stated that the goal of the campus occupation, done in the context of New York City's ongoing Israel-Hamas war protests, is to have the university divest from Israel.

CUAD was created in 2016. In 2020, it organized a university-wide referendum on the question of ending Columbia's financial ties with Israel, which resulted in favor of the proposal; Lee Bollinger, the university president at that time, overturned the decision. After a period of inactivity, CUAD was reactivated in October 2023, after the start of the Israel-Hamas war, in response to what it called "the overwhelming support for Palestinian freedom from students on Columbia’s campus."

CUAD describes itself as anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist, and aligned with the prison abolition and police abolition movements.