Columbia University denounces student filmed harassing black students in 'racially charged' rant

Columbia University has denounced a “racially charged” tirade from a student who was caught on video telling a group of fellow students that white people “built modern civilization” and “did everything”.

The student reportedly followed a group made up mostly of black students from the school’s library as they left. It was there he was filmed shouting white supremacist comments at his classmates, according to the Columbia Daily Spectator. A white student also appeared to be in the group who the student ranted at.

“Statements of white racial superiority conflict with the university’s core value of inclusivity as well as the educational work and research that take place on our campuses,” said a statement from the university’s deans, the academic officials who oversee Columbia’s colleges.

It continued: “Yet even with the many opportunities we have to build bridges across differences, we have seen public declarations of hostility and intolerance both in our own community and, increasingly, in our nation. Comments of this sort cut against core values of our community, even when they are within someone’s rights to express.”

In the video, the student, who was identified by the student newspaper as Julian von Abele, can be seen speaking to the group of his classmates, and praising white people. He claims that white people created science and industry, and then says that white people built the modern world.

“I don’t hate other people, I just love white men”, Mr von Abele says.

The video was later posted online, and has gone viral with nearly 1.4m views on Twitter.

The university’s response has been met with criticism itself, with students saying that the school teaches a predominantly Eurocentric world view and that more should be done to combat what has been seen as a rise in white supremacist and racially motivated incidents in recent years.

Those incidents have included racially motivated hate speech and violence against minorities on college campuses. The rate that white supremacist propaganda has been seen on college campuses has increased by 258 per cent between 2016 and 2017, according to the Chronicle for Higher Education.

Messages sent to Mr von Abele were not returned.