NEW YORK (WPIX/CNN) - Video of a Columbia University student yelling about white superiority has many at the Ivy League school asking questions.
Some say the university needs to respond more strongly to the incident.
"We built modern civilization! White people are the best thing that ever happened to the world!" says student Julian Von Abele in the video.
In a racially charged rant, the Columbia sophomore harasses and shouts white supremacist ideologies at a group of primarily minority students.
"We built the modern world!" he says.
"Who?"
"Europeans!"
The incident happened early Sunday morning outside of Butler Library on the Morningside Heights campus. The students involved say he had targeted them, having followed them from a campus eatery to outside the library.
"We invented science and industry and you want to tell us to stop because, 'Oh my God, we're so bad,'" Von Abele says.
Video of the rant has now gone viral and is raising a lot of questions.
"I knew there were racists on campus; I just didn't expect to meet one personally," said student Blossom Maduafokwa.
Students Maduafokwa and Kwolanne Felix were among those harassed by the young man, who was identified by the university's campus newspaper as Von Abele.
While they did acknowledge a number of driving factors, both students feel his behavior also is a byproduct of a curriculum at the university that tends to lean toward western European superiority.
"What are they doing on an institutional level to assure that there is a narrative outside of western European knowledge based and knowledge spreading, assuring that there are students of color that can actually see themselves inside the curriculums?" Felix said.
In a statement posted on its Twitter page, Columbia denounced the incident and tried to assure students and faculty that it's under investigation.
Von Abele did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The now-viral rant comes in wake of other hate speech incidents that have occurred in New York and across the country.
Posters for a white supremacist group recently surfaced near the Columbia campus, further escalating tensions.
Von Abele's Twitter profile describes him as a physicist, author and 2016 presidential candidate.
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