Columbia University Takes a Powder as the Ivy League Wrestles With Antisemitism on Campus

Absent from last week’s congressional hearing with the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and Penn, who refused to answer the question of whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” violates their codes of conduct or rules against bullying, was the president of Columbia University, Minouche Shafik.According to Congresswoman Virginia Foxx’s chief of staff, Ms. Shafik was supposed to be present but was traveling out of the country. While Ms. Shafik may have avoided the national limelight last week, pressure has been mounting for Columbia to do something about the rise of antisemitism on campus since October 7. The school recently issued a statement posing the question “What is Columbia doing to address antisemitism on campus and what is Columbia’s reaction to calls for genocide against Jews?” Its response was, compared to the answers before Congress by Harvard, Penn, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, relatively straightforward.“President Shafik,” the statement said, “has repeatedly said that we will not tolerate antisemitic actions and are moving forcefully against antisemitic threats, images, and other violations as they are reported… our rules of conduct do not allow or condone language that promotes or supports violence in any manner.”“Calls for genocide against the Jewish community or any other group,” the statement continued, “are abhorrent, inconsistent with our values and against our rules. Incitement to violence against members of our community will not be tolerated.” What the university is formally condemning and what it is in actuality condoning, though, turn out to be different matters. A few weeks ago Columbia temporarily suspended Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, two of the most active anti-Israel student groups. Yet that suspension has had little impact. The same students are reorganizing under other student groups or even under the original groups, disrupting campus life and intimidating students. The student groups’ call for a “Free Palestine” from “the River to the Sea” is seen by some as a demand for the end of the Israeli state and even for the death of millions of Jews. This week, Jewish Voice for Peace, which is technically not allowed to organize events on campus, planned a menorah lighting ceremony, inviting people to join them to “meditate on the parallels between the Hanukkah story and current events, the importance of grassroots activism, and the significance of solidarity in the face of oppression and suppression,” as expressed on their Instagram page.When asked about how this event was allowed to happen, a university spokeswoman, Samantha Slater, explained that the university had “communicated with” Jewish Voice for Peace “that this is an unsanctioned event by an unsanctioned student group.“The University supports students who wish to commemorate religious holidays, including by lighting menorahs and celebrating the festival of Hanukkah. Our event policies are in place to ensure that group gatherings are as safe as possible, and to minimize any disruption of ongoing instruction, research, and other activities taking place on campus.”On Monday, hundreds of students and faculty members gathered to march through Barnard’s campus for an event titled “Barnard 4 Palestine, Emergency Protest.” They used megaphones to chant “Free Free Palestine” and “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free.”Students were waving Palestinian flags from the Milstein Center, Barnard’s library, and another group of students had hung a huge banner with the words “Barnard 4 Liberation.” The chants and drumming could clearly be heard from across Broadway on Columbia’s campus.The rally lasted an hour with no visible attempts to shut it down. A freshman at Columbia, Noam Woldenberg, tells the Sun that he is “shocked that the school hasn’t taken stronger action against people who continuously violate school policy, especially when the rhetoric being used is so dangerous and hateful.”Last week, the dean of the Columbia School of Social Work, Melissa Begg, issued a statement denying any knowledge or endorsement of a “teach in” being organized at the School of Social Work to justify Hamas’ massacre on October 7, and saying that this anti-Israel event would “not go forward” at the School of Social Work.Two days later it took place anyway. The school put out another statement the following day, saying that “School and University administrators informed the students of the possibility of disciplinary action and urged them to disperse, which they did.” The event lasted over an hour before being broken up. Mr. Woldenberg, who got into the event, said it was horrifying, “offering justification for the mass rape and mass murder of Jews.” Shai Davidai of Columbia’s Business School, as well as other professors and alumni, are demanding Columbia “permanently ban the organizations that broke their suspension terms.” All this is leaving Jewish students feeling unsupported and unsafe, the Columbia Spectator reports, as their colleges, once bastions of academic freedom, have been overtaken by Free Palestine rhetoric, divisiveness, and groupthink in which if you aren’t marching with them you are branded a colonialist racist Nazi. In the face of intimidation, students are avoiding their homes on campus. A freshman at Columbia, Ella Waisman, changed dorms her first semester because she was feeling unsafe. She had a mezuzah on her door frame, and students were banging on her door in the middle of the night harassing her.Ms. Waisman’s father, Haim Waisman, a professor at Columbia and chairman of the Department of Civil Engineering and a professor at Columbia, said that many nights she prefers to sleep at home because she feels safer. Mr. Waisman called upon Ms. Shafik to take a stance. “She should not stay in the shadows. There is good and evil and you cannot just sit on the fence. You need to take a stance and be an example for everyone inside and outside the university.”________Correction: Noam Woldenberg is a freshman at Columbia. An earlier version misstated his class affiliation.

Columbia University Takes a Powder as the Ivy League Wrestles With Antisemitism on Campus

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