Columbia University: Administration Uses Guilt by Association to Cancel Palestine Olive Harvest Festival

On November 12, 2025, Columbia University administrators cancelled the student-run Palestine Olive Harvest Festival hours before the event was slated to begin because the chief organizing student group, the Gender and Sexuality Alliance, was tenuously associated with Columbia University Apartheid Divest. While CUAD is prohibited from organizing events under the school’s “affirmation of zero tolerance” (AZT) policy, neither that group nor Columbia4Palestine played a role in Olive Harvest. On February 23, 2026, FIRE wrote Columbia, explaining that this is an infringement of its students’ freedom of association and urging them to not use its AZT policy to infringe on associational liberties.