Aidan Parisi, the son of a longtime State Department official who emerged last spring as a Columbia University encampment leader and is best known for owning an “emotional support rabbit,” was among the students Columbia expelled for storming Hamilton Hall, he announced Thursday night.
Parisi, a graduate student in Columbia’s School of Social Work, wrote on X that he was among the student activists expelled nearly a year after they stormed and occupied Hamilton Hall. Last spring, Parisi, the son of longtime State Department official Elizabeth Daugharty, emerged as a constant presence in the illegal encampment that plagued campus for weeks in April. He was also suspended shortly after his involvement in a pro-Hamas event, “Palestinian Resistance 101,” held on campus in March 2024, which featured a number of terror-tied speakers who explicitly called for violence against Jews.
“An expulsion for Palestine is an honor, a sacrifice that pales in comparison to those of the Palestinian people,” Parisi wrote Thursday.
An expulsion for Palestine is an honor, a sacrifice that pales in comparison to those of the Palestinian people
— ايدن 🔻 (@allegedlyaidan) March 13, 2025
“Been getting asked what I need [sic] re my expulsion from columbia, but I’m okay. Palestinians living under occupation and genocide need us. Immigrants facing deportation need us,” he added Friday morning. “In the face of fascism, the only response is community.”
Columbia announced Thursday evening that it punished students who stormed Hamilton Hall with multi-year suspensions, expulsions, and temporary degree revocations. The university declined to say how many were sanctioned, but Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD)—the Ivy League school’s most notorious anti-Semitic student group—claimed 22 students across Columbia and its sister school, Barnard College, were disciplined, including nine expulsions.
Grant Miner, the president of Columbia’s graduate student union who was arrested for storming Hamilton Hall, was also expelled Thursday. The self-described “medievalist” is the son of veteran California lobbyist and former Arnold Schwarzenegger aide Paul Miner, who owns a $1.8 million Sacramento home, the Washington Free Beacon reported. In October 2023, just two days after Hamas’s terror attack on the Jewish state, the younger Miner was photographed at a New York City rally holding a sign that read, “Resistance against occupation is a human right.”
Last spring, Parisi had pledged to “resist” what he called “institutional repression” at Columbia and praised the “intifada.” He also has a long history of anti-American and anti-Israel activism, having posted a photo of the two nations’ flags burning on July 4, 2020. “No love for any colonizer flag,” he wrote in his caption.
It’s unclear what role Parisi played in organizing the “Resistance 101” event, but when Columbia suspended him over his involvement, he refused to leave his university apartment, saying that doing so would require him to find “housing that would accept his emotional support rabbit.”
That event, which CUAD hosted and the Free Beacon attended virtually, featured speakers who explicitly endorsed terrorism against Jews.
One speaker, Charlotte Kates, a leader of the Israeli-designated terror group and U.S.-designated terror financier Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, praised Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attack for showing “the potential of a future for Palestine liberated from Zionism.” Kates’s husband, Khaled Barakat, a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) activist, also lauded the terror group’s airplane hijackings as “one of the most important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.” Shortly after the event, Columbia student radicals launched the anti-Israel encampment and eventually stormed Hamilton Hall.
In October, the United States sanctioned Samidoun and Barakat for providing support to the PFLP, a terrorist organization that participated in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack.
Parisi also contributed to the mayhem that engulfed campus, serving as a leader of the unauthorized encampment zone and a participant in the overtake of a campus building, for which he was arrested on April 30.
While the encampment was ongoing, Parisi scrawled messages across the eviction notices the university had issued to the radicals. “COLUMBIA WILL BURN,” one read. “I AINT READING ALL THAT FREE PALESTINE,” read another.
Day 13 at the Columbia encampment—students have been given a 2pm deadline to vacate.
This is the response from a suspended student, Aidan Parisi
‘COLUMBIA WILL BURN”@FreeBeacon pic.twitter.com/Odbjr4l1yQ
— Jessica Costescu (@JessicaCostescu) April 29, 2024
Parisi, meanwhile, was spotted Tuesday at a violent anti-Israel protest in New York City against the detainment of Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia student activist and foreign national whom the Trump administration moved to deport over his pro-Hamas campus organizing. Police arrested several agitators after they refused to clear the roadway in front of City Hall.
In February, Parisi and two other Columbia encampment leaders sued the university, alleging that its disciplinary actions against them caused “severe emotional and psychological harm.” One of their attorneys, James Carlson, stormed Hamilton Hall last spring and clashed with a facilities worker.
Interim president Katrina Armstrong’s residence was vandalized overnight with red and black spray paint spelling “FREE THEM ALL.” At the end of the caption was an upside-down triangle—a symbol that Hamas uses to denote Israeli targets.
BREAKING: The President’s House at Columbia University was vandalized last night with fake blood and a message of “Free them all.” pic.twitter.com/K755bjuZEH
— Stu (@thestustustudio) March 14, 2025
“The Columbia President’s mansion has been redecorated,” CUAD posted to Instagram Friday morning. “The people will not stand for Columbia University’s shameless complicity in genocide! The University’s repression has only bred more resistance, and Columbia has lit a flame it can’t control.”
“Katrina Armstrong you will not be allowed peace as you [sic] NYPD officers and ICE agents on your own students for opposing the genocide of the Palestinian people,” the student group added.
CUAD is also organizing a campus protest Friday afternoon, vowing to “mass disrupt” Columbia and “all genocidal institutions.”
“IT IS OUR DUTY TO DISRUPT. IT IS OUR DUTY TO ESCALATE FOR OUR PEOPLE,” the group posted on Instagram Thursday night. “This repression won’t end unless we fight back NOW.”
