By Paras Abbasi

October 2023 was not a usual month for the students of the School of International and Public Affairs. As the war in Gaza was intensifying, so were the concerns of students on freedom of speech. On October 13, 2023 student leaders of SIPA Palestine Working Group (PWG) voiced fears about potential doxing attacks with Dean Keren Yarhi-Milo as a result of signing a Joint Statement from Palestine Solidarity Groups at Columbia University, an act of freedom of speech. Three days prior, students at Harvard had been doxed for signing a similar statement.

Bhavana, a SIPA student at the time who was doxed later that month said, “Our concerns were essentially dismissed during this meeting. We requested our information be taken off of public forums and our officer lists be hidden [from Campusgroups].”

By the time the PWG’s privacy setting on CampusGroups was changed, it was too late. By October 17, two SIPA students had been doxed, on two different websites, along with the student organizations that they represented–PWG and Conflict Resolution Collective (CRC)–for signing the joint statement.

These doxing incidents were consistently reported to the SIPA administration along with the requests to ensure that all student groups' boards were not publicly visible on CampusGroups and a meeting with Dean Yarhi-Milo.

On October 24, seventeen more SIPA students and two faculty members were listed in a petition titled “Columbia hates Jews”, calling to “take action against the violent students before it's too late.” The number of doxed students continued to increase in the later months.

By the next day, a truck appeared outside Columbia’s Morningside Campus, displaying the names and photos of students, labeling them “Columbia’s leading antisemites”. Conservative media group Accuracy in Media (AIM) was responsible for bringing the truck outside campus. That day, Dean Yarhi-Milo met with the doxed students for the first time. The affected students brought up the concern that the source of the leak was CampusGroups, as this was mentioned on the truck.

Eliza, now a SIPA alum and one of the doxed students said, “Most of our photos were the same as those used on CampusGroups, and the students without CampusGroups photos were not pictured on the truck.” 

At the meeting, students asked for CampusGroups to be made more secure and an investigation through CUIT into how the students’ names got leaked.

“The Dean’s response to our concerns that a fellow student (or faculty member) might have shared our photos and information with AIM was not only dismissive but defensive, bordering on aggressive. She cut off someone in the middle of speaking to express her outrage at our suggestion and dismissed the notion by saying that ‘CampusGroups can easily be hacked’. This only heightened our concerns and made clear that there would be no serious investigation or disciplinary action for a potential internal leak.” Eliza said.

Although Dean Yarhi-Milo condemned the act of doxing and said that she was with the doxed students, she did not promise any concrete actions at that stage to protect the students, saying that the issue would be looked after at the university level. 

By October 28, the university was able to remove the names of the doxed students from the University-wide directory. CampusGroups took weeks to secure the information.

Hannah, another former SIPA student who experienced doxing, said that multiple meetings, emails, and screenshots were required to address the issue. Ultimately, the university removed all officer information from CampusGroups, a step students hoped would not be taken, since “CampusGroups is meant to be a place where you can connect with student organizations, but the University’s inability to protect the site properly prompted a manual purging,” she said.

On October 27, the then University President Minouche Shafik sent a Columbia-wide email that described the doxed students as belonging to “Palestinian, Muslim, or Arab” communities only. This was reiterated in her following email on November 1, when she announced the establishment of Doxing Resource Group (DRG).

The doxed students condemned her statement saying that the population of doxed students was incredibly diverse and to discount this diversity undermined their experience. They said that while it was important to highlight the additional consequences that people of marginalized identities faced, Shafik’s statement contributed to the polarization, pinning Arabs, Muslims, and Palestinians, against Israelis and Jews. 

Dean Yarhi-Milo announced the formation of the SIPA Task Force on Doxing and Student Safety (DTF) on October 31, 2023, with the aim to “develop recommendations to prevent doxing, protect the identities and personal information of our students.”

The DTF consisted of faculty/staff and doxed student representatives, who met regularly in the fall and spring semesters after its formation. However, doxed student representatives said that despite spending hundreds of hours advocating for doxed students, they were deeply disappointed with the response.

“There were times our precious meeting time was wasted because Chair Michael Nutter would ask students to repeatedly share why it is that we continue to feel fear from the presence of the doxing truck and personal websites…There was a point in April that I created a PowerPoint presentation to explain the continued professional insecurity and fear we feel because of the doxing…” Hannah said.

 

Students’ Demands and the Administration’s Response

To the doxed students’ foremost demand for an investigation into how the leak happened through CampusGroups, the doxed students were informed that no evidence of improper UNI access, anonymous logins, or excessive passwords was found. The investigation also revealed that student group pages were publicly available, concluding that there was a chance that the student profiles may have been sourced from the public version of CampusGroups. The findings also revealed that there was no way of knowing whether individuals with UNI access took this information and passed it on.

The doxed students were offered a curation of existing university resources by the university, including expedited counseling/therapy services at the Medical Center, Public Safety escort services, and contact information of the Public Safety Officer assigned to doxed students.

Hannah said that student representatives asked for these resources to be expanded, but these requests were denied. For example, the students asked the Public Safety escort services, applicable only to late night hours to a limited area around campus, to be expanded to cover any hours the doxed truck/AIM was on campus and transportation to doxed students’ residences but it was not provided. 

To students’ request to protect them from further doxing and removal of hateful information online, the DTF facilitated in offering reimbursement of two products: a one-year service of Brightlines, concierge data scrubbing service, and the GoDaddy buyback program that allowed the doxed students to put in a request to buy the domain of their names once the domain used by the doxing organization expired after a year and was available for purchase.

“On October 23, we all had alarms and reminders set to try to re-purchase the URLs with our full names that AIM so thoughtfully created for us, but were disappointed, though not surprised, to learn that AIM had set up an auto-renewal for all of the sites. The AIM website is now at the top of my Google search results page,” Eliza said.

On November 1, more than a hundred SIPA students staged a solidarity walkout at 3 PM on the fourth floor of IAB to express solidarity with doxed students. They walked out of several classes including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Dean Yarhi-Milo’s class, Inside the Situation Room. This act was significant in putting pressure on the administration to protect the safety of doxed students and respond to their concerns.

By November 2023, Columbia retained the services of a law firm for doxed students to assist with legal guidance at no cost, but it did not include litigation services. Eliza said that the law firm told the students that there were no legal remedies available for them and the school had no legal jurisdiction over the doxing truck due to free speech.

Another doxed student, who wishes to remain anonymous due to privacy concerns, echoed the same views and said that the lawyers told them to consider reneging on support for the letter they signed, “when we now know that other law firms see a case to go after AIM.”

A consistent demand of the doxed students was that the university write letters of good standing for the doxed students, a demand that was acknowledged by the university. However, there was a huge discrepancy in terms of the kind of letter the students had asked for versus the letter of good standing they received.

The students had requested a letter signed by Dean Yarhi-Milo stating that neither the student, the statement, nor the student organization of which the student was a part, were antisemitic in any way.

The Office of the General Council (OGC) at Columbia had communicated to doxed students through the DTF that since the term ‘antisemite’ does not have a legal definition, the university cannot attest to the entirety of a person’s character.

“We asked if they were able to determine if the statement we signed was not antisemitic and if this was legally possible, and the OGC indicated that it could not do this because there are disputed definitions of antisemitism,” Hannah said.

Yet, the Task Force on Anti-semitism was able to develop a ‘working definition’ of antisemitism. There was “clearly no willingness from the OGC or the Doxing Resources Group (DRG) to compare it to our statement,” Hannah said. Hannah is Jewish along with several others at the university who were doxed. Her major part of work before attending SIPA was focused on antisemitism education, teaching students about the differences between anti-zionism and antisemitism.

She said that the students asked if, instead of a university-wide statement, SIPA could put out a statement saying that the students’ signed statement was not antisemitic since most of the doxed students were from SIPA. However, the SIPA administration refused to put out any such statement saying that it would deviate from the approach taken by other schools within the university, which were not making similar statements.

The students’ insistence on a public statement by Columbia or SIPA was to counteract the online narrative against the students. A need for a generic letter of good standing to show to potential employers would only arise if a potential employer reaches out and asks about the doxing incident and the student’s standing at the university. However, this would not work if a potential employer sees the website first on a Google search and does not even reach out to the student, harming their job prospects.

A public statement by the university would have given the students an “extra layer of security so that the search result from our names produces more positive content than just the personal doxing website and online petition.” Hannah said. 

The letter of good standing that the university eventually wrote for the doxed students acknowledges that the student was subjected to doxing by individuals outside the university community. The letter confirms that the doxed student is in good academic and disciplinary standing at Columbia University and is signed by an OSA dean.

In an effort to resolve online harassment associated with doxing, an idea of securing a reputation management firm for doxed students was brought up by the Office of the General Counsel (OGC) to one of the DTF staff members as a potential solution. This idea was pushed forward by the doxed students arguing that it would help in “addressing feelings of insecurity physical, emotional, professional insecurity and aid in job prospects, ensuring SIPA’s post-grad employment statistics remain consistent.” However, this recommendation was not included in the final recommendations made by the Chair of DTF, Micheal A. Nutter, to Dean Yarhi-Milo.

There was also an insistence from the doxed students to meet directly with Dean Yarhi-Milo to relay their concerns and follow up with her directly.

According to Hannah, although in her first meeting with doxed students, Dean Yarhi-Milo told them that she would have more direct meetings with students to ensure proper advocacy at the highest level, these meeting requests were repeatedly ignored with no follow-ups.

“Then, in mid-April, two hours before a scheduled DTF meeting, we received an email from the Dean’s office that she was able to attend that day’s meeting for 15 minutes…Over the two meetings in October and April, the Dean spent 45 minutes with the doxed students.” Hannah said.

Completion of Academic Year and Continuation of Student Harassment and Doxing

Even after the completion of the academic year and graduation of doxed students from the university, the students turned alumni continued to be doxed and harassed. 

“Since graduation, the doxing truck, websites, and news articles continue to reemerge from time to time, plunging us back into periods of high stress.” Eliza said.

The doxing truck appeared in front of Columbia students’ residences including at least one SIPA student’s (now alum) residence in July, not only endangering the students but also their families. The doxed alumni alerted the DTF and DRG and asked for meetings to discuss the next steps including expanding Brightlines services to all doxed students’ families and exploring escalations through federal law enforcement. DRG responded by confirming that they had expanded the Brightlines service for up to five family members of doxed students/alumni. No meetings or federal law enforcement involvement was promised.

The 2024 fall semester began with high security on campus with Public Safety (and sometimes NYPD) checking CUID of students at all times to let them enter. And yet, this did not do anything to counter the presence of the doxing truck appearing at random times outside the Columbia campus.

Chair of the DTF, Michael A. Nutter, submitted DTF’s final memo and recommendations to Dean Yahri-Milo on August 26.

The doxed alumni wrote to the DTF Chair that “the student representatives cannot in good conscience support this memo as complete.” 

In the same email, the doxed students’ representatives sent their own set of recommendations to Dean Yarhi-Milo and Michael A. Nutter on September 4, 2024, saying, “While we have no expectation that the university will consider our perspectives, we dedicated so much time and energy to this document that we wanted to share it once more.”

“I firmly believe that if the university had taken a stronger stance to protect students from doxing and affirm academic free speech, the presence of a doxing truck on campus would not remain an issue. When classes began in September, we saw that more students who were involved in the encampment had also been doxed, which prompted us to reach out again. Our final email to Mayor Nutter was on September 4 and we have received no response to date.” Bhavana said.

At least one SIPA doxed student, now an alum, Phil Crane, has been followed by AIM at his place of work twice along with the doxing truck. The most recent update was posted publicly by AIM on November 18, 2024. AIM has also targeted Columbia Law alumni at their places of work.

Institutional Response After a Year 

On November 15, 2024, Dean Yahi-Milo sent an email sharing the recommendations of the DTF and the SIPA Anti-Hate Task Force and the changes implemented as a result. Neither of the two task forces took the recommendations of student representatives into account.

Based on the DTF Chair’s recommendations, the resulting changes, such as ‘student leader training to include information about doxing and signing on statements’ place the burden on students and student leaders. Instead of implementing strong measures to prevent doxing or ensuring that such incidents are consistently condemned at the school and university level, the focus is on training students to understand the risks and assess the potential consequences of advocacy–for causes aligned with the student organizations’ visions. This approach shifts the burden onto students to protect themselves, rather than providing them with the security and institutional support they need.

The Morningside Post reached out to Dean Yarhi-Milo after her email to the SIPA community and asked how the SIPA administration had taken into account the doxed ex-students’ recommendations in protecting their identities and personal information online such as through a reputation management firm and other avenues. She responded that DTF “took a variety of actions to help students protect their online information. This included removing student names and photos from CampusGroups and the Columbia online Directory (by request) and providing individualized supports and resources to students impacted by doxing.”

Although the doxed students have not received any response from the DTF or Chair Micheal Nutter to their emails, Dean Yarhi-Milo confirmed that DTF and University's Doxing Resource Group (DRG) “email addresses remain staffed and active.”

On a question regarding safeguards provided to doxed ex-students when the doxing truck appeared at one of the students' houses, and on campus in September 2024, Dean Yarhi-Milo said, “For privacy reasons, we do not address individual student or alumnus cases.”

The lack of support from the university has made the students leading student organizations extremely anxious about signing public petitions for the fear of being targeted, and has lost the trust of doxed student alumni. 

“I’ve stopped expecting anything fruitful to come out of our advocacy with Columbia and SIPA. At the end of the day, it never felt like Columbia or SIPA was set up to serve its students. Rather, it served, and continues to serve, the interests of its trustees.” Eliza said.

Bhavana shared her dismay with The Morningside Post: “I have given up on Columbia to adequately protect their students… In the wake of the doxing, it was the SIPA faculty and fellow students who showed genuine support and solidarity, far beyond what the institution provided. When the truck first appeared, it was students who organized shifts to cover our names while the university remained silent and inactive.” Bhavana credited Tsuya Yee for her empathy, patience, and support. She also said that following the events in the past year, “I don’t believe I will ever be able to trust Columbia or SIPA as an institution again.”

Methodology: The Morningside Post realizes that the issue of doxing is extremely critical to our student community. All measures were taken to fact-check and speak to as many doxed students who were willing to talk about their experiences. Students’ first names were shared after their consent, and other names were anonymized upon the students’ request to protect their identity. This investigation draws on interviews with doxed students, meeting recording and notes, post-meeting emails, email correspondence between DTF members, final recommendations made by Michael A Nutter to Dean Yarhi-Milo, student representatives’ response to both, and university communications to provide a comprehensive account of the events.

Paras Abbasi (MPA ‘25) is the Managing Editor for The Morningside Post.