The lawsuit—and Carlson’s role in it—reflects the professional support student radicals at Columbia enjoy as they engage in illegal demonstrations.

By Jessica Schwalb, The Washington Free Beacon

Three Columbia University encampment leaders are suing the school, alleging that its disciplinary actions against them caused “severe emotional and psychological harm.”

One of their attorneys is James Carlson, a professional anarchist who stormed Hamilton Hall last spring and clashed with a facilities worker.

Graduate students Aidan Parisi, Brandon Murphy, and Catherine Curran-Groome filed the suit on Monday.

They seek “damage and other relief” from Columbia, alleging that the school’s decision to suspend them and remove them from campus brought “severe emotional and psychological harm, including anxiety, depression, and trauma for which they are each seeking treatment.”

Their attorney, Carlson, accused Columbia of “repeatedly siccing the police on the plaintiffs to violently arrest them for peaceful protest” and of going “far out of its way to unjustly punish and silence these students.”

Carlson, however, was a driving force behind violent anti-Israel activism on campus, having joined the group of Columbia students who stormed and occupied Hamilton Hall in April 2024.

Inside the building, he clashed with a 45-year-old custodian, who spoke of getting “swarmed by an angry mob with rope and duct tape and masks and gloves.”

Parisi and Curran-Groome themselves guarded the perimeter of the illegal encampment they organized on Columbia’s lawn, at times forcefully expelling students who attempted to enter what they called an “anti-Zionist space,” video footage reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon shows.

The lawsuit—and Carlson’s role in it—reflects the professional support student radicals at Columbia enjoy as they engage in illegal demonstrations.

Carlson, the son of the late prominent advertising executives Richard Tarlow and Sandy Carlson Tarlow, purchased a $2.3 million townhouse in Brooklyn’s Park Slope in 2019 and lists its address on his active New York attorney registration.

Though a felony conviction would lead to Carlson’s disbarment, the Manhattan district attorney’s office reduced Carlson’s charge from felony burglary to misdemeanor criminal trespassing last year, meaning Carlson faces little risk of losing his law license, the Free Beacon reported.

The suit also attempts to use Columbia’s lax disciplinary approach against the school.

While most student protesters at Columbia—including those who stormed Hamilton Hall—returned to class in good standing last year, Parisi, Murphy, and Curran-Groome remain suspended. As a result, their suit says Columbia “singled out the plaintiffs for unwarranted scrutiny and harassment.”

In their suit, Parisi, Murphy, and Curran-Groome accuse Columbia of “negligent infliction of emotional distress,” arguing that the school pursued disciplinary action against them “with the presumption that the plaintiffs would be suspended or expelled, evicted without notice, lose their healthcare, meal plans, and other benefits, get doxed, threatened, and assaulted, and suffer widespread and compounding harms to their careers, livelihoods, reputations, family relationships, and mental health.”

At the same time, the suit openly discusses the students’ participation in the illegal encampment that plagued Columbia’s campus last spring as well as the “Palestinian Resistance 101” event that saw a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terror organization advocate for violence against Jews.

As the encampment unfolded, Parisi emerged as one of its public faces, routinely posting photos and videos that showed him leading student radicals in chants like, “Columbia, we see you, you imprison children too.”

Those posts came after Columbia suspended him and ordered him to leave campus, an order Parisi defied.

The suit nonetheless accuses a Columbia professor, Shai Davidai, of “doxxing” Parisi by sharing a Free Beacon article on the student’s suspension.

The article, according to the suit, intended to invite “harm and harassment” to Parisi by including his “social media and student status at the Columbia School of Social Work.”

Parisi’s X account remains public, and the student gave on-the-record interviews to media outlets like CBS News and the New York Times about his suspension.

The Times identified Parisi as “a suspended student from the School of Social Work.” It also noted that Parisi was “still fighting his eviction” from campus housing because it “would mean finding housing that would accept his emotional support rabbit.”

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In addition to the flag-burning incident, he was charged with trespassing after breaking into and occupying Columbia’s Hamilton Hall in April.

By Luke Tress, JTA

A 40-year-old activist has been indicted on arson charges after burning an Israeli flag during a protest at Columbia University in April.

James Carlson, who is unaffiliated with the Ivy League school in Morningside Heights, took the flag after someone else had stolen it from a Jewish person at the April 20 protest, according to the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.

He then set it on fire with a lighter, the office said in a statement.

Carlson, a resident of Brooklyn, was also indicted for a subsequent incident in which he kicked and broke a glass panel in a police holding cell following his arrest at Columbia during an April 30 protest.

He was charged with arson in the fifth degree, a misdemeanor, and several counts of criminal mischief, including one felony, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said. He pleaded not guilty.

“This defendant’s alleged activity went beyond legal and peaceful protest. Committing arson in a crowded protest endangers the safety of others, and this type of behavior will not be tolerated,” Bragg said.

Carlson was a repeat protester on Columbia’s campus last academic year, when people who were unaffiliated with the university took a central role in demonstrations that inspired copycats across the country.

In addition to the flag-burning incident, he was charged with trespassing after being part of the group of anti-Israel activists who broke into and occupied Columbia’s Hamilton Hall in April.

The university called in police to clear the building, resulting in dozens of arrests, after which Carlson allegedly broke the glass panel in the holding cell.

Most of those arrested were released without charges.

Carlson is not a student, staffer or faculty member at Columbia, Bragg’s office said.

The son of the late advertising executive Dick Tarlow, he owns a multi-million dollar townhouse in Park Slope and has a history of arrests dating to 2005, according to the New York Post.

He is one of more than a quarter of the people arrested at the Hamilton Hall protest who were not affiliated with Columbia, according to the NYPD.

The role of outsiders in the protest had become a focal point in the aftermath of the police crackdown, and Mayor Eric Adams cited the alleged presence of “outside agitators” as a reason for ordering the NYPD to clear out the building.

The Hamilton Hall incident was the most high-profile clash in a year of protest and tensions surrounding the Israel-Hamas war.

The war has continued to impact the campus as a new school year has begun.

Last month, three Columbia deans resigned after sending disparaging texts about Jewish students; then Columbia President Minouche Shafik resigned, citing campus turmoil; and weeks later, a task force investigating antisemitism at the school reported “crushing” discrimination against Jewish and Israeli students.

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