A former Boston School Committee student representative, now a leader of pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia University, has come under fire for calling for the eradication of Zionists in a lengthy video that resurfaced this week.

Khymani James, a 2021 graduate of Boston Latin Academy who cited “adultism” and “racism” when resigning his post on the School Committee that year, is in the midst of disciplinary proceedings with Columbia University around a social media post that stated he would “fight to kill Zionists.”

“Zionists don’t deserve to live,” James said in a January video that came to light on Thursday, referring to the Jewish national movement. “Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.”

The video depicts antisemitic remarks James made during and after a disciplinary hearing conducted by two officials from the university’s Center for Student Success and Intervention, when he compared Zionists to Nazis and white supremacists who he feels “very comfortable” in “calling for those people to die.”

After calling the student’s attention to a prior social media post that prompted the disciplinary hearing, where he posted, “I fight to kill Zionists,” an administrator asks James whether he sees why that would be “problematic in any way.”

“No,” James said in a video he live streamed on Instagram in January and went viral after it was posted by the conservative news outlet Daily Wire this week.

When asked whether he thought there was a “serious weight in taking someone’s life,” James responds that while he does, in certain cases it’s “necessary and better for the overall world.”

A Columbia University spokesperson condemned the remarks in a Friday statement, but would not comment as to what, if any, disciplinary action was taken against the student.

“Calls of violence and statements targeted at individuals based on their religious, ethnic or national identity are unacceptable and violate university policy,” the spokesperson said.

Columbia is the latest university to be grilled by Congress about the safety of Jewish students amid the Israel-Hamas War, following prior hearings that led to the resignations of the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania.

Following blowback, James issued a statement aimed at rolling back his remarks on Friday, stating that while they were wrong, they were taken out of context.

“What I said was wrong,” James said. “Every member of our community deserves to feel safe without qualification.”

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What he should have stated, he said, was that he opposes Zionism in the “strongest terms,” a movement defined as being aimed at the creation of a Jewish nationalist state in Palestine, but which James described as an “ideology that necessitates the genocide of the Palestinian people.”

“I am frustrated that words I said in an Instagram Live video have become a distraction from the movement for Palestinian liberation,” James wrote.

The resurfaced video comes amid 20-year-old James’ emergence as a public face at the pro-Palestinian student protest encampment at Columbia University, similar to those that have cropped up in Greater Boston this week, including one involving Emerson College students that led to more than 100 arrests on Thursday morning.

James was also the center of a firestorm three years ago, when he resigned from his position as the Boston School Committee’s sole student representative and as a member of the Boston Student Advisory Council, saying then that the overall bodies of both structures were “harmful to the progressive agenda of students.”