Columbia protester asked for 'humanitarian aid' for Hamilton Hall occupiers so they don't 'die of dehydration and starvation'

A Columbia University anti-Israel protest leader held a press conference Tuesday during which she expressed her desire that students occupying Hamilton Hall get "humanitarian aid" — you know, so they don't "die of dehydration and starvation."

While New York City police entered the building Tuesday night and made arrests, getting an earful and eyeful of this protest leader and her wish list for her ultra-privileged, radical peers is still quite informative.

Some might even say entertaining:

A reporter asked her, "Why should the university be obligated to provide food to people who've taken over a building?"

She replied, "Well, first of all, we're saying that they're obligated to provide food to students who pay for a meal plan here."

That's right. Meal plan.

The reporter continued: "You mentioned that there was a request that food and water be brought in."

If you didn't think the protest leader — garbed in the familiar keffiyeh scarf that's pretty much required clothing for anti-Israel college students — lacked self-awareness before, she lets it all hang out from here on in.

"To allow it to be brought in," she said. "I mean, well, I guess it's ultimately a question of what kind of community and obligation Columbia feels it has to its students. Do you want students to die of dehydration and starvation or get severely ill even if they disagree with you? If the answer is no, then you should allow basic — I mean, it's crazy to say because we are on an Ivy League campus, but this is like basic humanitarian aid we're asking for. Like, could people please have a glass of water?"

The reporter, refreshingly, wasn't buying it.

"But they did put themselves ... very deliberately in that situation, in that position, so it seems like you're sort of saying, 'We wanna be revolutionaries, we wanna take over this building — now would you please bring us food and water?'"

The protest leader replied, "Nobody's asking them to bring anything. We're asking them to not violently stop us from bringing in basic humanitarian aid."

Another reporter inquired if Columbia was preventing food from getting to the protesters, and the protest leader replied, "We are looking for a commitment from them that they will not stop it. ... I don't know to what extent it has been attempted, but we're looking for a commitment."

Anything else?

In response to the Post Millennial's video of the protest leader, journalist Jordan Schachtel added on X that "I did a quick search and found that this lady, who refused to reveal her name, is named Johannah King-Slutzky. She is a paid instructor & PhD candidate at Columbia studying 'theories of the imagination & poetry as interpreted through a Marxian lens.' No, I'm not making this up."

The Post Millennial reported that King-Slutsky had been listed on Columbia's website as a Ph.D. student on Tuesday morning, but the page was missing by Tuesday evening. The outlet said King-Slutsky's biography read, "My dissertation is on fantasies of limitless energy in the transatlantic Romantic imagination from 1760-1860. My goal is to write a prehistory of metabolic rift, Marx’s term for the disruption of energy circuits caused by industrialization under capitalism. I am particularly interested in theories of the imagination and poetry as interpreted through a Marxian lens in order to update and propose an alternative to historicist ideological critiques of the Romantic imagination. Prior to joining Columbia, I worked as a political strategist for leftist and progressive causes and remain active in the higher education labor movement."

More from the Post Millennial:

King-Slutsky has a long history of activism. In January, she attended an event where the head of the UAW was speaking. "Johannah King-Slutzky, a Columbia University graduate student and member of the student workers union within the UAW, was one of several attendees who chanted 'ceasefire now' during Fain’s afternoon speech Monday. The union called for a ceasefire in Gaza in December," WHYY reported.

“Right now he’s done nothing to earn my vote,” WHYY reported King-Slutzky as saying, because “he has not acted with urgency to stop the genocide in Gaza.”

In 2021, she participated in a campus strike of graduate student workers.

This story has been updated.

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