House Democrats urged Education Secretary Linda McMahon not to make cuts to the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights as employees work through the backlog of cases, which includes scores of civil rights complaints from Jewish students alleging discrimination at their universities since the Oct.7, 2023, attacks on Israel. 

After Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ) accused McMahon and the Trump administration of being broadly unconcerned with civil rights, citing the Office of Civil Rights and the Education Department “being decimated,” McMahon responded: “It isn’t being decimated. We have reduced the size of it; however, we are taking on a backlog of cases that were left over from the Biden administration.”

Asked why she’d reduce resources to the office given the backlog from the previous administration, McMahon replied, “Because we’re working more efficiently in the department.”

Rep. Lois Frankel (D-FL) similarly urged McMahon not to make cuts to OCR “if you are sincere about fighting antisemitism and also all kinds of unlawful discrimination.” Frankel also referenced several other programs she wanted McMahon to protect, a number of which McMahon expressed openness to considering. 

After recounting an experience of a Jewish friend who took their children out of the Washington, D.C., public school system due to its unwillingness to address concerns about antisemitism, Rep. Stephanie Bice (R-OK) offered McMahon an opportunity to speak about the rise of antisemitism in primary and secondary education. 

“Certainly the president has made it very clear that he does not condone any kind of discrimination — racial and especially, we’ve seen religious, we’ve seen it across our college campuses, some of the most elite in the country. We took very strong and very decisive action against those universities who clearly were not protecting Jewish students against antisemitism,” McMahon told the committee. 

“When you see students barricaded in a library, and others pounding on the glass going, ‘Death to Jews. Death to Israel. Death to United States,’ that is unacceptable at our college campuses. And we reacted,” she continued.

McMahon went on to discuss her engagement with Columbia University, praising its acting president, Claire Shipman, for her response to student protesters involved in the takeover of the school’s main library earlier this month.

“We reacted to Columbia first. This incident happened at Columbia, and I met with the president of Columbia. I’ve had two conversations now with the current president of Columbia. We’ve talked about things that we need to do at those universities. We want to be able to be supportive, but those universities, albeit they’re private, do receive federal funding. We have leverage to withhold some of that federal funding or to cancel some of the grants, and we would do that unless it could be proven that these colleges and universities are going to respect all rights and set their policy in place and enforce them,” McMahon said.

“I was complimentary to the acting president now at Columbia, Claire Shipman, when I talked to her last week, and I said, ‘You reacted just as you said you would to the recent uprising on campus. You were looking at whether or not– you’ve suspended students, are you going to expel them?’ And that’s still what she’s looking at. So we’ve seen that that kind of action can deliver results,” she continued. 

For a brief moment, it looked like 2024 all over again: Tents were erected at Yale University’s central plaza on Tuesday night, with anti-Israel activists hoping to loudly protest the visit of far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir to campus. Videos of students in keffiyehs, shouting protest slogans, started to spread online on Tuesday night.

But then something unexpected happened. University administrators showed up, threatening disciplinary action, and the protesters were told to leave — or face consequences. So they left. The new encampment didn’t last a couple hours, let alone overnight. The next day, Yale announced that it had revoked its recognition of Yalies4Palestine, the student group that organized the protest. (On Wednesday night, a large protest occurred outside the off-campus building where Ben-Gvir was speaking.)

Meanwhile, at Cornell University, President Michael Kotlikoff announced on Wednesday that he had canceled an upcoming campus performance by R&B singer Kehlani because of her history of anti-Israel social media posts. He wrote in an email to Cornell affiliates that he had heard from many people who were “angry, hurt and confused” that the school’s annual spring music festival “would feature a performer who has espoused antisemitic, anti-Israel sentiments in performances, videos and on social media.” 

The quick decisions from administrators at Yale and Cornell to shut down anti-Israel activity reflect something of a vibe shift on American campuses. One year ago, anti-Israel encampments were, for a few weeks, de rigueur on campus quads across the nation. University leaders seemed paralyzed, unsure of how to handle protests that in many cases explicitly excluded Jewish or Zionist students and at times became violent. That’s a markedly different environment from what’s happening at those same schools so far this spring. 

“In general, protest activity is way down this year as compared to last year,” Hillel International CEO Adam Lehman told Jewish Insider. 

There is no single reason that protests have subsided. Jewish students, campus Jewish leaders and professionals at Jewish advocacy organizations attribute the change to a mix of factors: stricter consequences from university leaders, fear of running afoul of President Donald Trump’s pledge to deport pro-Hamas foreign students and the issue generally losing steam and cachet among easily distracted students. 

Last spring, an encampment at The George Washington University was only dismantled after the university faced threats from Congress. Now, no such protest is taking place — which Daniel Schwartz, a Jewish history professor, said was likely due in part to the “sense that the university was going to be responding much more fiercely to anything resembling what happened last year.” 

“For the most part, the enforcement of rules, the understanding of what the rules are, what you can do, what you can’t do, requiring people to get permits for protests, has really calmed things down [from] the sort of violence that we saw last year,” said Jordan Acker, a member of the Board of Regents of the University of Michigan, who has faced antisemitic vandalism and targeted, personal protests from Michigan students.

Michael Simon, the executive director at Northwestern Hillel, came into the school year with a “big question mark” of how the school’s new policies, which provide strict guidance for student protests and the type of behavior allowed at them, would be applied. “I’m going to say it with a real hedging: at least up until now, I would say we’ve seen the lower end of what I would have expected,” he said of campus anti-Israel protests.

Many major universities like Northwestern spent last summer honing their campus codes of conduct and their regulations for student protests, making clear at the start of the school year that similar actions would not be tolerated again. In February, for instance, Barnard College expelled two students who loudly disrupted an Israeli history class at Columbia,. 

“For the most part, the enforcement of rules, the understanding of what the rules are, what you can do, what you can’t do, requiring people to get permits for protests, has really calmed things down [from] the sort of violence that we saw last year,” said Jordan Acker, a member of the Board of Regents of the University of Michigan, who has faced antisemitic vandalism and targeted, personal protests from Michigan students.

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has pressured top universities to crack down on antisemitic activity. The president’s threats to revoke federal funding if universities don’t get antisemitism under control has drawn pushback — Harvard is suing the Trump administration over its decision to withhold $2.2 billion in federal funds from the school — but it has also led universities to take action to address the problem. 

Sharon Nazarian, an adjunct professor at UCLA and the vice chair of the Anti-Defamation League’s board of directors, said there is “no question” that “the national atmosphere of fear among university administrators for castigation and targeting by the [Trump] administration is also present” at UCLA and other University of California campuses.

“My sense is that being anti-Israel is not as much of the popular thing anymore,” Evan Cohen, a senior at the University of Michigan, said at a Wednesday webinar hosted by Hillel International for Jewish high school seniors. “On my campus, there are other hot topic issues. There might be more focus on what’s happening with U.S. domestic politics.” 

Rule-breaking student activists also face a heightened risk of law enforcement action. A dozen anti-Israel student protesters were charged with felonies this month for vandalizing the Stanford University president’s office last June. On Wednesday, local, state and federal law enforcement officials in Michigan raided the homes of three people connected to anti-Israel protests at the University of Michigan. Protesters’ extreme tactics  have scared off some would-be allies.

“I think some of the most activist students went too far at the end of last year with the takeover of the president’s office and a lot of pretty intense graffiti in important places on campus,” said Rabbi Jessica Kirschner, the executive director of Hillel at Stanford. “I think a lot of other students looked at that and said, ‘Oh, this is perhaps not where we want to be.’”

Students’ priorities shift each year, and other issues beyond Israel are also vying for their attention. Trump’s policies targeting foreign students are drawing ire from students at liberal universities, many of which have large populations of international students.

“My sense is that being anti-Israel is not as much of the popular thing anymore,” Evan Cohen, a senior at the University of Michigan, said at a Wednesday webinar hosted by Hillel International for Jewish high school seniors. “On my campus, there are other hot topic issues. There might be more focus on what’s happening with U.S. domestic politics.” 

But the lack of protests does not mean that campus life has returned to normal for Jewish students, many of whom still fear — and face — opprobrium for their pro-Israel views.

“It’s easy to avoid the protests but if you are an Israeli student or a Jewish student perceived to be a Zionist, you should expect to be discriminated against in social spaces at the university,” Rabbi Jason Rubenstein, executive director of Harvard Hillel, told JI. “That is the most powerful way students are impacted by all of this.”

Ken Marcus, founder and chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which since Oct. 7 has represented dozens of Jewish students in Title VI civil rights cases against their universities, said that campus-related lawsuits are only faintly slowing down this semester. 

“A lot of the staff and the administration think that, ‘OK, since there’s no protest outside, all the Jewish students must feel OK, and let’s put all this stuff that happened in the spring behind us.’ It’s really not the case,” said Or Yahalom, a senior at Northwestern University who was born in Israel. “That doesn’t mean that it’s all better for students. Jewish students are increasingly afraid to speak openly about their identity or connection to Israel, except in private, safe Jewish spaces.”

“Some campuses have been less intense than during last year’s historically awful period, but others have been bad enough,” Marcus told JI. “I believe that the federal crackdown, coupled with the impact of lawsuits and Title VI cases, has had a favorable impact at many campuses, but the problems have hardly gone away.”

Or Yahalom, a senior at Northwestern University who was born in Israel, recently attended a dinner with Northwestern President Michael Schill, who has faced criticism from Jewish Northwestern affiliates — including several members of its antisemitism advisory committee — for what they saw as the administration’s failure to adequately address antisemitism. 

“A lot of the staff and the administration think that, ‘OK, since there’s no protest outside, all the Jewish students must feel OK, and let’s put all this stuff that happened in the spring behind us.’ It’s really not the case,” said Yahalom. “That doesn’t mean that it’s all better for students. Jewish students are increasingly afraid to speak openly about their identity or connection to Israel, except in private, safe Jewish spaces.” 

Even without massive encampments, disruptive anti-Israel protests and campus actions have not gone away entirely, though they have been more infrequent this academic year. A Northwestern academic building housing the school’s Holocaust center was vandalized with “DEATH TO ISRAEL” graffiti last week. The office of Joseph Pelzman, an economist at The George Washington University who authored a plan calling for the U.S. to relocate Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and redevelop the enclave, was vandalized in February. The Georgetown University Student Government Association is slated to hold a campus-wide referendum on university divestment from companies and academic institutions with ties to Israel at the end of the month. Smaller-scale protests continue at Columbia, with students chaining themselves to the Manhattan university’s main gate this week to protest the ICE detention of ​​Mohsen Mahdawi and Mahmoud Khalil, two foreign students who had led protests last year. 

Leaders of the University of Michigan’s anti-Israel coalition held a sham trial for the university president and Board of Regents members in the middle of the Diag, the main campus quad, this week. The event took place without issue, and the activists left when it ended. 

“I wouldn’t want to say that it’s perfect,” said Acker, the Board of Regents member. “But it’s certainly much better than a year ago.” 

The school year isn’t over. Some students at Columbia are planning to erect another encampment this month, NBC News reported on Wednesday. 

But they’ll be doing so at an institution with new leadership, weeks after Columbia reached an agreement with the Trump administration, where the Ivy League university pledged to take stronger action against antisemitism to avoid a massive funding cut. The pressure on Columbia to crack down on any encampment will be massive.

After being let go from his post as executive editor of the Columbia Journalism Review last week, Sewell Chan pinned the firing — which he called “hasty” and “ill-considered” — in part on a recent interaction he had with a staff member “passionately devoted” to activism in support of Gaza on Columbia’s campus. 

In a statement, Chan wrote that he was informed last Monday of complaints from staff regarding three separate interactions in the past weeks during which he gave what he described as “fair and critical feedback rooted in editorial rigor.” Among those communications, according to Chan, included a talk with a fellow who was “passionately devoted to the cause of the Gaza protests at Columbia.” The student journalist had written an article about the “recent detention of a Palestinian graduate student” for a publication that he had previously covered for CJR. Chan did not disclose the name of the student or the publication. 

“I told him there was a significant ethical problem with writing for an outlet he had just covered,” Chan wrote, adding that the other two interactions involved letting go a staff member who “declined” to come into the office and write at least one story a week, despite the journalism school’s attendance policy; as well as a second conversation with an editor working on a “sensitive” investigation about sexual harassment.

“This was the first time in a 25-year career that I’ve ever been subjected to discipline in a job — much less terminated from one,” Chan wrote. “I have immense respect for Jelani Cobb as a journalist and educator, but the decision to let me go was hasty, ill-considered and quite frankly baffling,” he said, referring to the dean of Columbia’s journalism school and publisher of CJR. Cobb did not respond to a request for comment from Jewish Insider and Chan declined to comment. 

CJR was founded in 1961 “to assess the performance of journalism in all its forms, to call attention to its shortcomings and strengths, and to help define—or redefine—standards of honest, responsible service,” according to its mission statement. 

Chan, a seasoned journalist who previously served as editor-in-chief of the Texas Tribune, was selected for the prestigious role at CJR in June following a lengthy search process. He began his tenure in September — as a fresh wave of anti-Israel demonstrations kicked off a new school year on Columbia’s campus. 

In an interview with the student newspaper, The Columbia Spectator, upon assuming the position, he praised the undergraduate student reporting of last spring’s anti-Israel encampment movement and reporting on the occupation of Hamilton Hall.

“I was really, really impressed by the quality of the student journalism, both the radio station and the Spectator, during the Columbia protests,” he said. “I think a lot of that work from them was courageous and happened under very difficult circumstances—and on a story that is about as polarizing and difficult to cover as we could imagine.”

The arrest on Monday of a Palestinian student at Columbia University who helped organize campus anti-Israel demonstrations was the latest front in the Trump administration’s closely scrutinized crackdown on foreign activists who have expressed sympathy for Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups. 

Mohsen Mahdawi, a 34-year-old green card holder born and raised in the West Bank, was arrested and detained by federal immigration officers on Monday after he appeared at a U.S. citizenship interview in Vermont, where he resides.

Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, said in an email to Jewish Insider on Tuesday that Mahdawi “was a ringleader in the Columbia protests,” sharing a New York Post article citing anonymous State Department sources claiming that he had used “threatening rhetoric and intimidation” against Jewish students.

“Due to privacy and other considerations, and visa confidentiality, we generally will not comment on Department actions with respect to specific cases,” a State Department spokesperson told JI on Tuesday.

Mahdawi’s lawyers filed a habeas corpus petition on Monday calling his detention unlawful. “This case concerns the government’s retaliatory and targeted detention and attempted removal of Mr. Mahdawi for his constitutionally protected speech,” the petition said.    

Representatives for Columbia declined to comment on Mahdawi’s arrest, citing federal student privacy law.

Like Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian green card holder and recent Columbia University graduate arrested by federal immigration agents last month, Mahdawi has not yet been charged with a crime. Instead, he appears to have been detained on a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act cited by Secretary of State Marco Rubio to justify expelling foreigners who are seen as a threat to U.S. foreign policy and national security, which the petition also challenges.

Last week, a federal judge in Louisiana ordered that Khalil can be deported, determining such arguments are sufficient grounds for his removal, in a decision that is expected to face further challenges.

A federal judge in Vermont ruled on Monday that Mahdawi must be held in the state and cannot be removed from the country for now. 

Mahdawi’s legal team did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.    

Mahdawi had been a key organizer of anti-Israel protests at Columbia that roiled the campus after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. He helped to found Columbia University Apartheid Divest and was a member of the university’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, which has expressed pro-Hamas rhetoric, among other student anti-Israel groups. 

For his part, Mahdawi, who moved to the U.S. from a refugee camp in the West Bank in 2014, called Hamas a “product of the Israeli occupation” shortly after the attacks and reportedly helped to write a statement released by Columbia student groups on Oct. 14, 2023, claiming that the “Palestinian struggle for freedom is rooted in international law, under which occupied peoples have the right to resist the occupation of their land.”

He also appeared at a rally a month after the attack alongside Nerdeen Kiswani of Within Our Lifetime, a radical group that advocates for armed resistance against Israel. 

In an interview on “60 Minutes” in December 2023, Mahdawi voiced sympathy for Hamas’ terror attacks.

“I did not say that I justify what Hamas has done. I said I can empathize,” he said. “To empathize is to understand the root cause and to not look at any event or situation in a vacuum. This is for me that path moving forward.”

On his Instagram page in August, meanwhile, Mahdawi posted photos commemorating what he called the “martyrdom” of his “cousin,” Maysara Masharqa, a field commander in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the armed wing of Fatah, describing him as a “fierce resistance fighter,” according to The Washington Free Beacon. 

“Here is Mesra who offers his soul as a sacrifice for the homeland and for the blood of the martyrs as a gift for the victory of Gaza and in defense of the dignity of his homeland and his people against the vicious Israeli occupation in the West Bank,” Mahdawi wrote.

While the petition filed by his legal team notes that he stepped back from such activism in March 2024, Mahdawi’s public statements drew intense scrutiny from several antisemitism watchdog groups that are pushing the Trump administration to target campus protest leaders.

Mahdawi, who was an undergraduate at Columbia University, was planning to pursue a master’s degree in the fall, according to the petition.

His arrest drew criticism on Monday from Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Peter Welch (D-VT) and Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT), who said in a statement that “he must be afforded due process under the law and immediately released from detention.” 

After Columbia interim President Katrina Armstrong’s abrupt resignation on Friday, several of the university’s congressional antagonists quickly jumped in to criticize Armstrong’s successor, former ABC News journalist Claire Shipman, the co-chair of Columbia’s board. 

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), the former chair of the House Education Committee, said that Shipman’s tenure as interim president would be “short-lived.” Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), freshly returned to Capitol Hill after President Donald Trump withdrew her nomination to be U.N. ambassador, called the choice of Shipman “untenable.” 

But a different reaction came from the White House: subtle praise. The Trump administration’s antisemitism task force called Columbia’s Friday night actions an “important step,” which an administration official confirmed to Jewish Insider was in reaction to Shipman’s appointment. News reports last week indicated that days before her resignation, Armstrong had promised the Trump administration she would enforce a mask ban on campus while telling faculty privately that she would not. 

On Columbia’s campus, the news of Shipman’s hiring was met with cautious optimism from pro-Israel student leaders.

“We’re in desperate need of strong leadership willing to make the deep-seated reforms necessary to save the university at this pivotal moment,” said Eden Yadegar, a senior studying Middle East studies and modern Jewish studies who last year testified before Congress about the antisemitism she has faced on Columbia’s campus. Yadegar declined to elaborate on whether she believes Shipman will bring about those reforms. 

Lishi Baker, a junior studying Middle East history and co-chair of the campus Israel advocacy group Aryeh, also said he would take a wait-and-see approach to Shipman. Baker expects university leadership to bring “deep structural and cultural changes at Columbia [that] are necessary to restore our campus to its primary mission of teaching, learning, and research,” he said. 

“Some of these changes can happen immediately and some will take longer,” Baker told JI. 

The university’s Hillel director, Brian Cohen, praised Shipman in a statement to JI, saying that she “is deeply committed to Columbia University and has consistently demonstrated concern for the well-being and needs of its Jewish community.”

“I look forward to working with her in this new role,” Cohen said.    

Major Jewish organizations have largely avoided weighing in on Shipman’s appointment. The Anti-Defamation League told JI that it was “too early.” 

Shipman, a veteran reporter and author with no academic leadership experience, has publicly stood by the university’s leadership as co-chair of Columbia’s board of trustees in response to the antisemitism that exploded on campus after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks and ensuing war in Gaza. 

From the beginning of her tenure, Shipman will be contending with a complex campus landscape: Many liberal faculty and students are angry about the university’s decision to acquiesce to Trump’s demands as a way to regain access to $400 million in federal funding that his administration pulled in March, citing Columbia’s failure to properly address antisemitism. 

She will also face a tough negotiating partner in Washington, and pressure from Jewish students and alumni to take a stronger stance against a campus culture in which anti-Israel protests have thrived, with little consequences for rule-breaking activists until recently.

“In an existential crisis, they need to collaborate and to be candid in the exchanges with the Trump administration and what they’ll do, and they need to stick with that,” Mark Yudof, former president of the University of California, offered as advice for Shipman. “You need good faith implementation of what you agree with with the administration, that you’re not looking for loopholes.”

In a message sent to the Columbia community on Monday, Shipman expressed a desire to meet with people across Columbia’s campus as she navigates this “precarious moment” for the university. She did not reference the circumstances of her appointment, nor did she discuss antisemitism on campus, although she hinted at the seriousness of the task before her. 

“My request, right now, is that we all — students, faculty, staff and everyone in this remarkable place — come together and work to protect and support this invaluable repository of knowledge, this home to the next generation of intellectual explorers, and this place of great and continuing promise,” Shipman wrote. 

Last April, Shipman testified at a congressional hearing about antisemitism at Columbia alongside then-Columbia President Minouche Shafik, who resigned from her role in August, and board Co-Chair David Greenwald. Shipman told members of the House Committee on Education and Workforce that she knows Columbia has “significant and important work to do to address antisemitism and to ensure that our Jewish community is safe and welcome.” 

The hearing generally avoided the splashy headlines that followed testimony from the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania in December 2023. (Shipman reportedly described that hearing as “capital [sic] hill nonsense,” according to a congressional report published in October.) 

But her Capitol Hill appearance with Shafik and Greenwald was followed by the erecting of Columbia’s anti-Israel encampment — the first such protest in the country, which touched off dozens of others. Columbia’s response to the encampment earned criticism from bipartisan lawmakers, even as Shipman and her fellow board members stood by Shafik’s handling of the protests, which turned violent when students occupied a campus building. 

Choosing a university president from outside of academia is an unusual choice, even for an interim position. Shipman, who grew up in Columbus, Ohio, graduated from Columbia College in 1986 and returned to earn a master’s degree from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs in 1994. She reported from Moscow for CNN, covered the Clinton administration at NBC News and spent 15 years covering politics and international affairs at ABC News. 

Shipman, notably, also spent time earlier in her career covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on assignment in the Middle East. 

The Instagram page of the anti-Israel coalition Columbia University Apartheid Divest was disabled on Monday for the second time since the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks, a spokesperson for Meta confirmed to Jewish Insider. 

The account belonging to CUAD, a coalition of at least 80 Columbia student groups that was formed in 2016 and has gained renewed support since Hamas’ attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, was initially suspended in December 2024. 

Columbia’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, a member of the coalition, was banned from Meta in August 2024. At the time, a spokesperson for Meta, the company that owns Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, told JI that the account was disabled for repeated violations of Meta’s dangerous organizations and individuals policies. 

According to Meta’s policies, the company does “not allow organizations or individuals that proclaim a violent mission or are engaged in violence to have a presence on our platforms.”

The coalition has ramped up its anti-Israel demonstrations, as the university entered into ongoing negotiations with the Trump administration over its handling of antisemitism on campus. The White House cut $400 million from Columbia’s federal funding earlier this month over its failure to address campus antisemitism. 

Meta declined to comment on its latest decision to remove CUAD from the platform on Monday. CUAD remains active on several other social media platforms, including X and Telegram. 

“This comes after a long and concerted effort from corporations and imperial powers to erase the Palestinian people,” CUAD wrote on X, claiming that this time around Meta is giving “no option for appeal.” 

Pro-Israel students returned to Columbia University from spring break on Monday cautiously optimistic that ongoing negotiations between university leaders and the Trump administration would herald an end to the anti-Israel demonstrations that have roiled the campus since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks and the ensuing war in Gaza. 

Instead, students were greeted with familiar protests and disruptions. Dozens of masked demonstrators overtook campus, hanging a large “Free Palestine” sign from a building and chanting so loudly it could be heard from inside classrooms. 

The negotiations, which were announced on Friday and include rules around the wearing of masks on campus as well as oversight of the school’s Middle Eastern studies department, are a first step toward restoring $400 million in federal funding, according to both the university and the White House. 

The reforms agreed upon between Columbia and the federal government include a policy that administration can ask those covering their faces with masks on campus to present identification; clarification of time, place and manner restrictions to clearly state that protests in academic buildings are prohibited; the hiring of 36 “special officers who will have the ability to remove individuals from campus and/or arrest them”; advancing Columbia’s Tel Aviv Center; and putting the Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies department and the Center for Palestine Studies under the purview of a senior vice provost, who will be appointed by the university and will supervise course material and non-tenure faculty hiring. 

On Sunday, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon told CNN that Columbia is “on the right track” to restore the $400 million that the federal government cut from the university on March 7, but she declined to confirm that the canceled grants and contracts would be reinstated. 

Jewish leaders, both on and off Columbia’s campus, remain skeptical over whether the concessions will bring a new normal to campus — noting that any changes will come down to the implementation of the agreed upon terms. 

Eden Yadegar, a senior studying Middle East studies and modern Jewish studies who has testified before Congress about the antisemitism she has faced on Columbia’s campus, called the government’s list of reforms “not only constructive but necessary.” 

“Until Columbia effectively implements these reforms, though, there is no judgement to be made. Contrary to much reporting, Columbia has not implemented the vast majority of these reforms — such as banning masks when used to intimidate or conceal identity, or instituting common time, place and manner protest guidelines,” Yadegar told Jewish Insider. “This is not a value judgement but rather a fact — despite talks with the federal government, Columbia has yet to take meaningful action in comprehensively implementing their list of reforms.” 

Eliana Goldin, a fourth-year political science major and co-chair of the campus pro-Israel group Aryeh, argued that this is “definitely not” a moment of reform for the university. 

Goldin expressed that she believes that Columbia was “intentionally vague” in its document provided to the federal government on updates to its priorities. “It’s not a done deal,” she said. 

“It is promising that Columbia has articulated a plan to address antisemitism,” Brian Cohen, executive director of Columbia Hillel, told JI. Cohen said that the plan could “move us in the right direction,” noting that “there is a lot of work to be done to change the culture of Columbia.” 

Next steps between the university and the government remain unclear, Cohen said.

“The effectiveness of these changes will depend entirely on their implementation and enforcement,” the Anti-Defamation League said in a statement. “Columbia must be held accountable for putting these commitments into action. Such practices must protect free speech and academic freedom but not extend to rule breaking actions.” 

On Monday, the Trump administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism said in a statement that Columbia’s “compliance with the Task Force’s preconditions is only the first step in rehabilitating its relationship with the government, and more importantly, its students and faculty.” 

The task force added that “the decisive steps” should “serve as a roadmap for universities with similar problems across the country.” 

“Columbia’s early steps are a positive sign, but they must continue to show that they are serious in their resolve to end anti-Semitism and protect all students and faculty on their campus through permanent and structural reform,” Federal Acquisition Service Commissioner and Task Force member Josh Gruenbaum said in a statement. “Other universities that are being investigated by the Task Force should expect the same level of scrutiny and swiftness of action if they don’t act to protect their students and stop anti-Semitic behavior on campus.”

Representing one of the most heavily Jewish congressional districts in America — California’s 30th, which encompasses Hollywood, Burbank and Glendale — freshman House Democrat Laura Friedman has made the issue of antisemitism a priority in her political life. 

As a legislator in the California Statehouse, she and her fellow Jewish caucus members had supported establishing an ethnic studies program, and later fought back against efforts to include antisemitic material in it, working with other identity caucuses in the state Legislature. And she authored a bill, which passed, requiring Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs to include education on antisemitism and the Jewish experience.

Now, as Friedman confronts the issue from Washington, as a member of the minority party, she is taking a nuanced view. Noting the gravity of the issue, she told Jewish Insider in an interview last week, “I don’t think we can take the threats of rising antisemitism too seriously.” But while saying that the seriousness of the antisemitism problem in the United States can’t be overstated, she also argued that some of the Trump administration’s high-profile moves responding to campus antisemitism, especially at Columbia University, are not the right approach.

Friedman, who is Jewish, told JI that the Trump administration’s move to revoke hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of grant funding from Columbia University in response to its failure to address campus antisemitism is “the absolute wrong approach.”

“It’s not going to make antisemitism any better on campuses,” Friedman said. “In fact, it’s going to make Jews responsible for the defunding of programs to deal with cancer research, with science, [which] has nothing to do with antisemitism. I don’t believe that this is a serious attempt to combat antisemitism. I think it’s a way to punish schools that this administration thinks ideologically are not in lockstep with MAGA.”

Friedman said that if there are specific programs at issue, those could and should be evaluated, “but don’t take away money from medical researchers. Don’t take money away from scholarships to students that might be going to Jewish students. … That is counterproductive and it’s not going to help.”

In the immediate aftermath of the arrest of former Columbia student and green card holder Mahmoud Khalil over his involvement in anti-Israel and alleged pro-Hamas activities on Columbia’s campus — before the details of his arrest became clear — Friedman said that he deserves due process and that the high legal standards for revoking his residency must be met, adding that she was concerned about the way the arrest was conducted.

She said that expressing sympathy or support for Palestinians in Gaza is not sufficient ground to merit deportation.

As a general matter, Friedman said that laws around immigration and green cards should be applied fairly and consistently, and that it would set a “dangerous precedent” to specifically target students involved in certain types of activities if others violating similar laws under circumstances unrelated to anti-Israel protests aren’t also facing deportation.

“We need to be consistent across the board. We can’t cherry-pick certain types of protest that we don’t like,” Friedman said. “And believe me: I’m not on the side of the protesters in many of these cases, but we need to make sure that we’re applying whatever law it is around deportations equally.”

She said that attention must also be focused on the ways that antisemitism has emerged from conspiracy theories and extremist rhetoric, particularly on the political right.

“We’re seeing this, I believe, from this administration. And I don’t even believe that the motions they make toward Israel — it doesn’t mean that there’s not antisemitism there as well,” Friedman said. “I just don’t see a good-faith effort to really combat antisemitism.”

To her, a good-faith effort “means to stop using the Jews as the scapegoats,” Friedman said, to stop indulging conspiracy theories, to not platform or bring into the administration individuals who express antisemitic views and to publicly condemn antisemitic conspiracy theories.

“If you’re not outwardly saying that this is antisemitic and it’s wrong and it’s a conspiracy theory that has no basis in fact, then you’re tacitly encouraging it,” Friedman said, addressing the hiring of antisemitic commentator Kinglsey Wilson at the Pentagon and the platforming of Holocaust deniers and other antisemites in right-wing media spaces like the Joe Rogan podcast.

Asked about specific policy approaches for the federal government, Friedman highlighted the DEI legislation she passed in California requiring such programs to include education on antisemitism and the Jewish experience, which she said would make academics better aware of the issues and of what antisemitism is.

She also highlighted legislation that passed in California requiring students entering universities to sign a code of conduct affirming that they are aware of their schools’ rules and the punishments for violating them, so that they cannot later plead ignorance if they break them.

Friedman additionally emphasized the importance of educating people about the Holocaust, the founding of Israel and antisemitic tropes, so that they can identify when criticism of Israel crosses the line into antisemitism and understand the history of Jewish connections to Israel.

Looking toward the Middle East, before Israel had resumed military operations in Gaza, Friedman said that freeing as many hostages as possible must be the “paramount consideration” for Israel and the United States.

In the longer term, she said the U.S. and Israel should work with Arab partners to help stabilize Gaza and the region as a whole.

“I’m not an expert. I don’t live in Israel. I don’t want to be the American to tell Israel what to do and how to keep itself safe, but Israel has to think about its long-term stability and having normalized relationships with as many countries as possible, as it seemed like was happening,” Friedman said. 

She noted that Hamas was likely seeking to foil those peace efforts through its Oct. 7 attacks, and that further normalization and stabilization must be a central goal going forward “so that Israel doesn’t have this kind of situation happen over and over again.”

Friedman said that Hamas must be removed from power in Gaza and that a “regional solution” is likely going to be necessary to accomplish that goal and achieve further peace. “I don’t know that Israel can do this alone as much as I’d like for them to be able to.”

The path to peace, Friedman continued, will likely need to go beyond just a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, and will now require a “regional solution” where Israel commits to allowing self-governance for the Palestinians, and the Palestinians and other countries in the region also agree to support and guarantee Israeli security.

She added that she wants to avoid war with Iran, but “we need to keep Iran from having nuclear weapons,” calling it unquestionably “the most destabilizing and the most threatening outcome for the whole region, not just for Israel.”

The emergence of a new regime in Syria and the U.S.’ efforts to influence that government, Friedman argued, highlight why the Trump administration was wrong to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development. 

She said that USAID and other diplomatic tools provide the U.S. with powerful ways to incentivize other governments to have positive relationships with the U.S. and ensure outcomes friendly to it and its allies, like Israel.

Friedman emphasized that she’s been deeply involved in Jewish advocacy issues since the beginning of her political career, having been one of the first candidates endorsed by the then-nascent California Legislative Jewish Caucus. She said that, in office, she came to work closely with Jewish groups in California.

One particular issue of focus for her in California was the state’s controversial ethnic studies curriculum. She said the Jewish caucus had advocated for establishing an ethnic studies program, and later fought back against efforts to include antisemitic material in it, working with other identity caucuses in the state Legislature.

Friedman is now a member of the newly formed Congressional Jewish Caucus. From her experience in California, she said she envisions the group can be helping to provide a resource and advocacy for Jewish communities around the country that do not feel that they have a representative who is looking out for their needs or standing up against antisemitism.

She said that the group can also play an important role by being “very clear when things are being done by this administration in our name that don’t align with our values.” 

And she said the Jewish caucus can build relationships with other identity based caucuses to support shared issues as well as educate other groups about Jewish issues and values, so that they can call upon them to help fight antisemitism — such as when the Jewish Caucus in California enlisted the support of other ethnic caucuses to combat problematic material in the ethnic studies program.

The field of modern Middle Eastern studies was born at Columbia University in the 1970s under the influence of Edward Said, the prominent Palestinian-American literature scholar and political activist. 

Now, the discipline as it currently exists may die there, too, as President Donald Trump seeks to rein in a field that has come under immense scrutiny following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks — an event that some ideologues in Middle Eastern studies departments at Columbia and other elite institutions praised as “resistance” against the “settler-colonial” Israeli state. Critics of the field have long alleged that it teaches students a one-sided history of the Middle East, flattening the region’s complexities into an overly simplistic story in which Israel is the perpetual villain. 

In a letter to Columbia’s president and trustees last week, the Trump administration issued a set of demands that it described as a pre-condition for beginning talks about Columbia’s “continued financial relationship with the United States government,” after $400 million in federal grants and contracts were pulled in response to Columbia’s alleged inaction against antisemitism. 

The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that Columbia was close to agreeing to meet Trump’s demands, which include banning masks, creating stronger campus disciplinary procedures, giving campus police more power and — most controversially, at least according to academics — putting the school’s Middle East, South Asian and African Studies department under something the Trump administration described as an “academic receivership.” 

Doing so would be an unusual step, with management of the department transferred from its faculty to an external figure. Receiverships are already extraordinarily rare within academia; to have one mandated by the federal government is unprecedented.

Whether that person would come from inside Columbia, from another academic institution or from the government is not clear; spokespeople for Columbia, the White House and the Education Department declined to comment on Wednesday. 

The push to put the department under receivership has lit a fuse under academics, many of whom — including some who are deeply critical of the increasingly radical tilt of the Middle Eastern studies field — worry that the move reeks of government censorship. One prominent Jewish studies professor at an East Coast university said it rivaled Joseph Stalin’s rewriting of Russian history. 

“I don’t think this is a great solution because it creates this adversarial situation,” said the writer Dara Horn, who has a doctorate from Harvard and served on Harvard’s antisemitism task force in late 2023. “I would like these institutions to change without outside pressure. But I don’t see that happening.”

“When a government steps in to say what an institution of higher education can be teaching, that is, to me, a signal of authoritarianism and fascism, actually not only on the right, but also this is exactly what the communists did in terms of the Soviet Union,” said the professor, who requested anonymity for fear of professional repercussions. 

But after a year and a half of prestigious institutions like Columbia failing to take the concerns of Jewish students and faculty members seriously, even some skeptics of Trump’s meddling in higher education acknowledge that it might take unprecedented action to jolt universities leaders into action. 

“I don’t think this is a great solution because it creates this adversarial situation,” said the writer Dara Horn, who has a doctorate from Harvard and served on Harvard’s antisemitism task force in late 2023. “I would like these institutions to change without outside pressure. But I don’t see that happening.” A 2024 report from the Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance took aim at the school’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies and other academic departments for taking the view that “the Palestinian people are innocent victims of Jewish (white) oppression and that known terrorist groups are simply ‘political movements.’”

Miriam Elman, a former political science professor at Syracuse, expressed concern that last week’s letter from the Trump administration made the receivership sound like “a hostile takeover.”

But that may be the price Columbia must pay for its handling of campus events since Oct. 7, Elman conceded. “I always come back to this — that if the universities don’t get their house in order, internally on their own, the outside will come for them,” said Elman, who is now the executive director of the Academic Engagement Network, which organizes faculty to oppose anti-Israel trends on their campuses. 

Asaf Romirowsky, a Middle East historian who is a longtime critic of the broader Middle Eastern studies field, said, “This is not a violation, to my mind, of free speech. It’s a matter of looking at national security matters that are taking place here, given how these departments and how these institutions have allowed terrorism to thrive in lieu of scholarship and legitimate education.”

The Trump administration’s letter to Columbia last week made the argument that government scrutiny is necessary because “taxpayers invest enormously” in American colleges, so federal officials have a duty to make sure the money is spent responsibly. 

Given the way some Columbia faculty members have described the Hamas attacks — such as Professor Joseph Massad, who called the scenes of violence on Oct. 7 “awesome” — Asaf Romirowsky, a Middle East historian who is a longtime critic of the broader Middle Eastern studies field, described the receivership as a necessary course corrective, taken with national security concerns in mind. 

“I see no problem at all,” said Romirowsky, executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East and the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa. “This is not a violation, to my mind, of free speech. It’s a matter of looking at national security matters that are taking place here, given how these departments and how these institutions have allowed terrorism to thrive in lieu of scholarship and legitimate education.”

David Myers, the chair of Jewish history at the University of California, Los Angeles, conceded that the field of Middle Eastern studies is “highly politicized” and that it should be “more open to diversity of perspectives.” But he doesn’t think Trump’s proposal is the way to fix that. 

“Is our assumption that money is so fungible that to the extent to which I’m at all financially supported by the federal government, then Uncle Sam owns that much piece of whatever I’m doing across the board? That seems to be the implicit argument here,” said a Zionist Middle Eastern studies professor at a New England university. “For an administration that touts the virtues of the free market, it’s a little totalitarian.”

“Does the malady merit this proposed remedy? I really don’t think so,” Myers said. “It’s really saying, ‘We the government can and should have control over not only your teaching agenda, but really about how you conduct research.’”

The impact of what will happen next with Columbia’s Middle Eastern studies department will extend far beyond the Morningside Heights campus and the confines of a single academic discipline. Those watching closely include not just other academics in the field of Middle East studies, but professors and researchers across all disciplines, wary that their funding may come under threat, or that their writings and syllabi may be subjected to an additional, unexpected degree of scrutiny from government officials. 

“Is our assumption that money is so fungible that to the extent to which I’m at all financially supported by the federal government, then Uncle Sam owns that much piece of whatever I’m doing across the board? That seems to be the implicit argument here,” said a Zionist Middle Eastern studies professor at a New England university. “For an administration that touts the virtues of the free market, it’s a little totalitarian.”

The intense scrutiny that the Trump administration has placed on Columbia University for failing to address rising campus antisemitism escalated last week in several incidents that culminated in Department of Homeland Security agents raiding two dorm rooms on Thursday night and arresting one student, and another student having their visa revoked by the State Department. 

Leqaa Korda, a Palestinian from the West Bank who has been active in anti-Israel protests on campus, was arrested for allegedly overstaying her expired visa, which terminated in January 2022. Korda had previously been arrested for her involvement in the protests last year, according to DHS. 

A second student, Ranjani Srinivasan, a Ph.D. candidate from India, had her student visa revoked on March 5 for “advocating for violence and terrorism,” DHS said in a statement Friday. Srinivasan has already “self-deported” to Canada.

Katrina Armstrong, Columbia’s interim president, said in a statement that she was “heartbroken” by the raid, adding that “no one was arrested or detained,” which DHS contradicted with its statement. DHS agents served Columbia with two warrants to access the dorms, where Armstrong said “no items were removed, and no further action was taken.”

The search came as Columbia University faces mounting pressure from the Trump administration to address the antisemitic demonstrations that have roiled the campus since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks. The university became the focal point of a national debate on free speech last week when immigration officers arrested and threatened to deport recent graduate Mahmoud Khalil over his role in anti-Israel activism on campus.

Earlier this month, the White House cut $400 million from Columbia’s federal funding over its failure to crack down on antisemitism. The Wall Street Journal reported the decision is under a 30-day review period. 

The Trump administration followed up last week with a series of preconditions and policy changes that Columbia must implement in order to restore the federal funding. Demands from the federal government — which the university must agree to by March 20 — include the termination of the University Judicial Board, the implementation of a mask ban and the granting of “full law enforcement authority, including arrest and removal of agitators” to public safety officers. The letter stated that Columbia has “fundamentally failed to protect American students and faculty from antisemitic violence and harassment in addition to other alleged violations of Title VI and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”

Also on Thursday, the university issued expulsions, multiyear suspensions and degree revocation for students who participated in the anti-Israel encampment and occupation of the university’s Hamilton Hall last spring, after the University Judicial Board found that the participants violated university policy. 

A university official told Jewish Insider that Columbia began the disciplinary process against these students immediately following the takeover of the campus building last April — which initially included interim suspensions of several participants. 

The official added that new revisions — including a designated rules administrator and the development of an Office of Rules Administration — will “allow the Rules process to operate more expeditiously” going forward. The university declined to provide the number of students impacted by these latest actions.

Brian Cohen, executive director of Columbia Hillel, called the disciplinary action “an important first step in righting the wrongs of the past year and a half.”

“I am grateful to the Rules Administrator and other members of the Administration for their roles in ensuring these cases were resolved,” Cohen wrote on X. 

As questions swirl about the Trump administration’s legal authority to revoke the green card of Columbia University protest leader Mahmoud Khalil, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt offered an answer on Tuesday — a federal statute that permits removing anyone with a U.S. visa or green card whose actions are “adversarial to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States of America.”

Leavitt was referring to a passage in the Immigration and Nationality Act, the 1952 law that governs immigration, which says that if the secretary of state has “reasonable grounds” to believe that a migrant poses “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” to the United States, that person is able to be deported. When asked if a green card holder must be charged with a crime in order to be eligible for deportation, Leavitt — in stating plainly that Secretary of State Marco Rubio already retains the power to deport individuals — suggested the answer is no.

“Secretary Rubio exercised that authority, and we fully believe that we are going to move forward with more arrests,” Leavitt said. A White House official told The Free Press that Khalil is not currently being charged with a crime: “The allegation here is not that he was breaking the law,” the official said.

Khalil, a 30-year-old of Palestinian descent who grew up in Syria, was detained by immigration authorities on Saturday in Manhattan. He had been a leader of the anti-Israel encampment protesting the war in Gaza on Columbia’s campus last spring, and served as its lead negotiator with university administrators. 

“This is an individual who organized group protests that not only disrupted college campus classes and harassed Jewish American students and made them feel unsafe on their own college campus, but also distributed pro-Hamas propaganda flyers with the logo of Hamas,” said Leavitt.

Many on the left, including the leadership of the Senate Judiciary Committee, have rallied around Khalil as a symbol of overreach by President Donald Trump. But Khalil’s arrest has also drawn scrutiny from some legal experts who see it as an attempt to bypass due process protections and target anti-Israel speech. Some have cheered the move, saying that Khalil’s leadership in the encampment movement is evidence enough of his involvement in criminal acts. 

Trump administration officials have made clear that Khalil is just the first foreign student activist likely to face immigration consequences. The White House and the Department of Homeland Security have been working together since Trump signed an executive order on antisemitism in January to identify other people to deport.

“They have been using intelligence to identify individuals on our nation’s colleges and universities, on our college campuses, who have engaged in such behavior and activity, and especially illegal activity,” Leavitt said. She stated that Columbia has received the names of other “pro-Hamas” students that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement wants to deport, but Columbia is not cooperating with them. 

A Columbia spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Katrina Armstrong, Columbia’s interim president, sent an email on Monday to university affiliates that said she “understand[s] the distress” around ICE officers on campus but didn’t mention Khalil.

“SHALOM, MAHMOUD.” That’s how the White House announced the detention and planned deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia University graduate who was an organizer of last year’s anti-Israel encampment on campus. 

President Donald Trump called Khalil, who grew up in Syria but is of Palestinian descent, “a radical foreign pro-Hamas student,” and said the former graduate student’s arrest was the “first arrest of many to come” as his administration began to target “terrorist sympathizers.” The move escalated Trump’s long-standing commitment to deport foreign students who support terrorism, which he made a priority in a January executive order on combating antisemitism. 

While Khalil, who is 30, first came to the U.S. on a student visa, he later received a green card. As a lawful permanent resident, Khalil has a stronger claim to due process protections than he would as a foreign national in the U.S. on a time-bound student visa — which has raised questions for some legal experts about the legality of Trump’s move to arrest and deport Khalil. On Monday, a federal judge in New York blocked his deportation pending further proceedings. 

“I consider myself on the right, and I wouldn’t have any objection to student visa action,” said Paul Rosenzweig, a former Republican Department of Homeland Security official and a national security lawyer. “Maybe this guy shouldn’t have gotten a green card in the first instance. But he’s got one now, and that means he has rights.” 

Central to the issue is a debate over whether Khalil’s activism — as one of the encampment’s lead negotiators and an advocate for divestment from Israel — should be considered free speech, protected by the First Amendment, or whether it should be viewed as support for terrorism. 

“There is some obvious ambiguity about what counts as expressing support for terrorism. You could define that narrowly or broadly,” said Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University. “When we talk about pro-terrorist speech or other kinds of categories of objectionable speech, a lot of them have a high degree of fuzziness about their meaning.” 

A DHS spokesperson said on Sunday that Khalil “led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.” The Trump administration had not yet outlined the details of their allegations, such as whether Khalil himself made any concerning comments or if he participated in unlawful activity, like the violent occupation of a campus building last April. Khalil also hadn’t been charged with a crime. Spokespeople at the State Department and DHS did not respond to requests for comment on Monday.

Federal immigration law states that a foreigner is “inadmissible” if they have endorsed or espoused “terrorist activity” or persuaded others to do so, or if they “support a terrorist organization.” They are also deemed ineligible to be in the U.S. if officials have “reasonable ground to believe” someone “is a representative of a terrorist organization or a political, social or other group that endorses or espouses terrorist activity.” But what is considered support for terrorism is a difficult legal question, particularly as it relates to immigrants and visa holders.  

“They’ll try to say, ‘Oh, this remark or that remark is espousing terrorism and encouraging other people to do so,’” said Elizabeth Keyes, a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law. She argued that the terrorism argument may be a way for Trump to target anti-Israel speech. 

“What they’re really doing is trying to make sure people are afraid to express their political viewpoints, and that’s a First Amendment problem,” Keyes continued. “Even though this will be litigated in some way, shape or form in immigration court, there’s also going to be First Amendment challenges.” 

The key question, according to Will Creeley, a First Amendment attorney and the legal director of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, is whether Khalil engaged in unlawful conduct in the course of his participation in last year’s encampment. The Trump administration has not provided answers on that front.

“The way I’ve been thinking about it today is that, just as the First Amendment protects your right to wear, for example, the KKK’s white sheets or fly the communist flag, so, too, does it protect your right to distribute pamphlets about Hamas,” Creeley told Jewish Insider. “You don’t have the right to break into a library. You don’t have the right to prevent access and egress to a campus and so forth. But without that information, we just can’t tell what’s at issue here.” 

Some have argued that simply participating in the encampment rises to the level of criminal activity. Khalil was under investigation by Columbia University for alleged misconduct last year, but he was ultimately cleared and allowed to graduate in December.

“This was not mere protest activity, but involved some degree of criminality,” said Ken Marcus, founder and chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which litigates civil rights cases alleging antisemitism at U.S. universities. “The federal government is not prosecuting people for engaging in political speech. The federal government is addressing criminality, violation of school rules and violation of the terms of either green cards or student visas.” 

Revoking student visas is a much less onerous process than doing so for a green card. Revocation of a green card requires the holder to appear before an immigration judge — unlike the arrest and deportation of undocumented immigrants, another priority of the Trump administration, which has dispatched Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents to major cities to deport immigrants who lack legal status. 

“Sometimes courts are reluctant to infringe upon the liberties of green card holders in a way that they’re not reluctant if it’s somebody who’s here temporarily or somebody who’s here without status at all,” said Keyes. That is not to say that a person with a green card must be convicted of, or even charged with, a crime to have their legal status revoked. 

“Many of the grounds don’t require convictions. It’s just the administration saying this person is trying to get other people to support a terrorist organization, and they have enormous latitude to determine who’s a terrorist organization,” added Keyes. 

A petition filed by Khalil’s lawyer alleges that the four DHS agents who arrested him at his home on Saturday night told him they were there to revoke his student visa, suggesting they were not aware that he now holds a green card. When he showed them documents proving he has a green card, they said they were revoking that, too. 

“It’s much easier to revoke those visas than to revoke green cards. And it may be that they initially thought that he only had a student visa, when, in reality, he had a green card,” said Somin. “Green cards can only be revoked for a relatively narrow set of specified reasons. Whether providing support to terrorism or expressing such support can qualify as such a reason is a question that perhaps will now be litigated.”

Left-wing lawmakers condemned the Trump administration’s decision to detain Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University student who was a leader in anti-Israel campus protests, while several pro-Israel Democrats were taking a wait-and-see approach, underscoring the scourge of campus antisemitism while also acknowledging the need for due process. 

The administration accused Syrian-born Khalil, a green card holder, of organizing pro-Hamas protests, although the precise legal justification for his detention and potential deportation remained unclear. A federal judge temporarily halted Khalil’s deportation pending a legal challenge.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, repeatedly defended Khalil, posting “Free Mahmoud Khalil” and accusing the administration of arresting Khalil because administration officials “didn’t agree with what he said” in his legitimate exercise of free speech rights.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) characterized the arrest and detention as a potential overreach, stating that the university disciplinary process should handle any violations of Jewish students’ rights.

“In the context of the arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil, DHS must produce facts and evidence of criminal activity. Absent evidence of a crime, such as providing material support for a terrorist organization, the actions undertaken by the Trump administration are wildly inconsistent with the United States Constitution,” Jeffries said in a statement. “A judge has blocked this egregious removal pending further action and, along with [New York] Attorney General Letitia James, we will continue monitoring this developing situation closely.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) posted, “If the federal government can disappear a legal US permanent resident without reason or warrant, then they can disappear US citizens too.” Other progressive lawmakers also suggested that U.S. citizens could be targeted next.

According to ICE, Khalil was transferred to a Louisiana facility; his whereabouts had been unclear earlier on Monday.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) collected signatures from fellow lawmakers on a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, which she planned to send on Tuesday morning, a source familiar with the situation told Jewish Insider.

A draft version of the letter obtained by JI accuses the administration of having “effectively disappeared” Khalil and demands his immediate release and a halt to any further similar detentions. It also characterizes him as a “political prisoner” and victim of “anti-Palestinian racism.” Khalil is of Palestinian descent.

“Khalil has not been charged or convicted of any crime,” the letter reads. “As the Trump administration proudly admits, he was targeted solely for his activism and organizing as a student leader and negotiator for the Gaza Solidarity Encampment on Columbia University campus, protesting the Israeli government’s brutal assault on the Palestinian people in Gaza and his university’s complicity in this oppression.”

The Tlaib letter further states that “if unchecked, this authoritarian playbook will be applied to any and all opposition to his undemocratic agenda” and that the arrest is a threat to all Americans. It also calls on universities to “protect their students from this vile assault on free thought and expression.”

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) expressed concern about the situation but said he needed to be briefed on the details. “I’m alarmed. I don’t know the facts, but I’m alarmed,” Schatz told JI. 

“It was never about free speech, it was about controlling the kind of speech they like,” Schatz said when asked about the move coming from the Trump administration, which campaigned on protecting free speech. “Last I checked, it’s still legal to have unpopular or even offensive political opinions and so I’d like to understand the facts a little bit, but this seems like a pretty big screw up.”

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), a co-chair of the House Jewish Caucus, said he’s monitoring the situation but added that “the warrantless arrest of any legal permanent resident seemingly solely over their speech is a chilling, McCarthyesque action in response to the exercise of First Amendment rights to free speech” and an illegal move that will not protect Jewish students.

Some pro-Israel moderate Democrats told JI they didn’t know enough about the situation to weigh in, while others sounded cautiously supportive of the policy in general terms.

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) told JI that more details on the case are necessary and that everyone should receive due process.

As a general matter, he continued, “If you’re here as a foreign student … and you’re attending Hamas rallies, then yes, your tourism visa or your student visa should be looked at. I don’t know the particulars of this case, but he should be getting due process.”

“We need the details,” Moskowitz reiterated. “If he turns out that he’s organizing Hamas rallies, then it’s something that needs to be looked at.”

Rep. Laura Gillen (D-NY) told JI she was “very concerned about violence on college campuses … I think that we have to treat people who behave that way with the seriousness it requires.”

House Republicans largely backed the move.

“We’ve all seen the appalling groups of masked pro-Hamas protestors terrorizing college campuses and intimidating American students. I do not think the State Department is out of bounds by revoking the visas of individuals that are breaking the law,” Rep. Craig Goldman (R-TX), a Jewish House Republican, told JI. “It is a privilege to come into the United States and participate in our higher education system — this does not give a foreign individual the right to commit crimes, support terrorism, promote antisemitism, and intimidate American students.”

Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, described Khalil as a terrorist sympathizer and an enemy of the United States.

“If Mahmoud Khalil told customs officers when he entered the U.S. that he was coming here to intimidate and harass American Jews, shout death to America, promote Hamas, and occupy campus buildings they would have not let him in,” Mast said in a statement.

“We only have one nation and if we don’t defend it from all enemies foreign and domestic — nobody else will,” he continued. “I applaud President Trump and Secretary Rubio for leading with common sense and kicking terrorist sympathizers out of our country. It’s time for them all to leave.”

Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) said that the deportation is “long overdue.”

“Being a foreign student or having a green card is a privilege, not a right,” Lawler said. “If you are going to engage in antisemitic protest and violate the rights and freedoms of other students, your visa and/or green card can and should be revoked.”

Some Senate Republicans are taking a more cautious stance, saying they’re waiting for the details of the case to play out.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), who spoke at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last week in favor of deporting visa holders involved in pro-Hamas activity, said he didn’t know the details of the case or whether Khalil had committed illegal activity or violated the terms of his green card.

“The question would be, did he violate the terms of his status? I just don’t know the answer,” Hawley said, asked if the case raises First Amendment concerns. “I’d have to go look, as a legal matter … It depends on what the terms are that you agree to come into this country.”

More broadly, Hawley continued, he is “all for revoking visas of students who commit unlawful activity” such as vandalism, assault and trespassing. “If they are protesting peacefully, that’s fine. I don’t like what they’re saying in these cases, but that’s the First Amendment.”

Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) said in a CNN interview that Khalil would receive due process and that non-citizens who support terrorist groups were subject to deportation, but acknowledged that Khalil said he does not support Hamas and had denied involvement in illegal or discriminatory behavior on Columbia’s campus.

“We’ll find out who’s right,” Kennedy said. “The Immigration and Naturalization Act, though, is fairly broad. And if the administration can show acts directly and probably indirectly supporting Hamas, they’ll deport him, and he should be deported, if that’s what’s shown in court.”

Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is so far staying silent with regard to the arrest by federal agents on Sunday of a Palestinian student activist who played a leading role in anti-Israel protests at Columbia University last year — as several primary rivals for New York City mayor condemn the move.

A spokesperson for Cuomo, a Democrat who announced his mayoral bid a week ago, did not return requests for comment from Jewish Insider on Monday. He has otherwise declined to publicly address the matter.

His hesitation to weigh in on the politically charged issue suggests that Cuomo — who has been courting Jewish and pro-Israel voters — is taking a cautious approach to the Trump administration’s polarizing crackdown on campus protests even as he indicates that combating rising antisemitism is among his top priorities.

“The law must be aggressively enforced and our New York should go even further and be at the forefront, leading the fight against the global rise of antisemitism,” Cuomo said in a 17-minute kickoff video, which featured an image of an anti-Israel demonstration outside of Fordham University.

The former governor has also pledged to stand up to President Donald Trump, characterizing him as “the bully in the schoolyard” who “puts his finger in your chest.”

Cuomo’s opponents in the June primary election, meanwhile, have almost unanimously denounced the arrest as a violation of due process and called for the release of Mahmoud Khalil — a green card holder who was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents days after the Trump administration said it would slash $400 million in federal funding from Columbia over the university’s handling of alleged antisemitic protests.

Brad Lander, the progressive-minded city comptroller and a Jewish Democrat, called the arrest “an unconstitutional and egregious violation of the First Amendment, and a frightening weaponization of immigration law.”

“I disagree strongly with things that were said in the protests he reportedly led,” Lander said on Sunday. “But it will not make Jews — or any of us — safer for the federal government to deport people for saying things we may find hateful.”

In a statement to JI on Monday, Scott Stringer, the former comptroller and a Jewish Democrat, said it is “absolutely absurd for the government to arrest people they don’t agree with.”

“While I disagree with many of the tactics and rhetoric of the protests at Columbia, the Trump administration detaining a green card holder for engaging in speech they don’t like is a clear violation of First Amendment rights,” Stringer added.

Zohran Mamdani, a state assemblyman from Queens and the most outspoken critic of Israel in the mayoral race, also denounced the arrest as “a blatant assault on the First Amendment and a sign of advancing authoritarianism under Trump,” he wrote on social media. “He must be released now.”

Mamdani added in a separate post that Cuomo’s continued avoidance of the issue shows he is “not prepared to stand up to Donald Trump.”

“This chilling action by the Trump administration crosses another line towards authoritarianism,” said Zellnor Myrie, a Brooklyn state senator who is one of several progressives in the race. “ICE has no right to detain a green card holder who has not been convicted of, or even charged with, any crime. This is profoundly un-American, and Khalil must be released.”

Adrienne Adams, the City Council speaker who officially launched her mayoral bid on Saturday, likewise characterized Khalil’s arrest as an act of “blatant authoritarianism.”

“This is a civil rights issue and an astounding overreach that disregards the U.S. Constitution,” she said on Monday. “It should concern every American and cannot be allowed to stand.”

In a statement shared with JI on Monday, Jessica Ramos, a state senator from Queens, said that the Trump administration had “offered no serious legal justification for Khalil’s detention, instead citing a Trump executive order.”

“We know from history that abuse of detention powers are a hallmark of authoritarian regimes,” Ramos added. “Contrary to his own belief, Trump is not a king. His actions are a threat to all of us, even those who disagree with Khalil’s speech. I demand the immediate release of Mahmoud Khalil.”

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement on Sunday that Khalil had been arrested “in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism,” claiming the former Columbia graduate student “led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.”

“ICE and the Department of State are committed to enforcing President Trump’s executive orders and to protecting U.S. national security,” the statement added. 

Khalil, who has not been formally charged with a crime, is being held in an immigration detention facility in Louisiana, according to an online ICE database. His attorney has vowed to challenge the arrest in court.

Trump, in comments posted to social media on Monday, said that Khalil’s detention “is the first arrest of many to come.”

“We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it,” he wrote. “Many are not students, they are paid agitators. We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again.”

A spokesperson for New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who had aggressively targeted Columbia protestors last year, declined to comment on the arrest. “We don’t have a lot of information on this beyond what has been reported,” the spokesperson told JI, adding that Adams’ team “doesn’t work with ICE on civil immigration enforcement.”

The mayor has in recent weeks faced widespread calls to resign over accusations, which he denies, that he negotiated a deal with the Department of Justice to dismiss his federal corruption charges in exchange for enforcing the Trump administration’s immigration agenda.

Jim Walden, a former federal prosecutor who is running as an independent, shared a more skeptical view of Khalil on Monday, even as he called for due process in handling his arrest. “I cannot lend my voice to someone who strikes me as an antisemitic terrorist sympathizer,” he told JI in a statement. “He deserves due process of law in the United States — unlike the repressive regimes he supports.”

“Offering support to terrorists, attacking Jewish students, and engaging in hate speech seem like valid reasons for authorities to take a closer look at pro-Hamas organizers,” Walden said.

The Trump administration announced on Friday it will cut $400 million from Columbia University’s federal funding due to antisemitic demonstrations that have roiled the campus since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks.

The announcement comes in the wake of the Trump administration saying it would conduct “a comprehensive review of the more than $5 billion in federal grant commitments to Columbia University to ensure the university is in compliance with federal regulations, including its civil rights responsibilities.” The review included a multiagency assessment of the federal government’s $51.4 million in contracts with Columbia University, citing the academic institution’s “ongoing inaction in the face of relentless harassment of Jewish students.”

The cut announced on Friday, first reported by The Free Press, comes days after Trump posted on social media that “all Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests.” 

A Columbia University spokesperson told Jewish Insider that the university is “reviewing the announcement from the federal agencies and pledge[s] to work with the federal government to restore Columbia’s federal funding.”

“We take Columbia’s legal obligations seriously and understand how serious this announcement is and are committed to combatting antisemitism and ensuring the safety and wellbeing of our students, faculty, and staff,” the university said. 

Leo Terrell, the head of the Department of Justice’s newly formed antisemitism task force, said in a statement that the funding cuts are “only the beginning.” 

“Universities must comply with all federal antidiscrimination laws if they are going to receive federal funding,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who was sworn into her new role on Monday, said in a statement. “For too long, Columbia has abandoned that obligation to Jewish students studying on its campus.”

Columbia has recently been rocked by several high-profile antisemitic incidents, including a sit-in last week at its affiliate Barnard College where a staff member was assaulted. 

The cut on Friday marks the first time a university has faced a cutoff of federal funds since the Title VI of Civil Rights Act of 1964 was implemented over six decades ago. 

The Trump administration announced on Monday a multi-agency review of the federal government’s $51.4 million in contracts with Columbia University, citing the academic institution’s “ongoing inaction in the face of relentless harassment of Jewish students.”

As part of a federal task force combating antisemitism created by President Donald Trump, the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services and the General Services Administration will consider whether to end the contracts “in light of ongoing investigations for potential violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act” facing the school.

A press release on the review stated that the agencies “will also conduct a comprehensive review of the more than $5 billion in federal grant commitments to Columbia University to ensure the university is in compliance with federal regulations, including its civil rights responsibilities.”

The announcement came shortly after Education Secretary Linda McMahon was sworn in to her new role, having been confirmed by the Senate on Monday evening.

“Americans have watched in horror for more than a year now, as Jewish students have been assaulted and harassed on elite university campuses. Unlawful encampments and demonstrations have completely paralyzed day-to-day campus operations, depriving Jewish students of learning opportunities to which they are entitled,” McMahon said in a statement on the review. 

“Institutions that receive federal funds have a responsibility to protect all students from discrimination,” she continued. “Columbia’s apparent failure to uphold their end of this basic agreement raises very serious questions about the institution’s fitness to continue doing business with the United States government.”

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a statement that, “Anti-Semitism – like racism – is a spiritual and moral malady that sickens societies and kills people with lethalities comparable to history’s most deadly plagues. In recent years, the censorship and false narratives of woke cancel culture have transformed our great universities into greenhouses for this deadly and virulent pestilence.”

“Making America healthy means building communities of trust and mutual respect, based on speech freedom and open debate,” he added.

Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI), chairman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, praised the Trump administration and the task force for launching the review.

“For more than a year, Columbia’s leaders have made public and private promises to Jewish students, faculty, and Members of Congress that the university would take the steps necessary to combat the rampant antisemitism on Columbia’s campus. Columbia has failed to uphold its commitments, and this is unacceptable,” Walberg said in a statement.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will teach a course at Columbia University this spring on diplomacy, decision-making and organizational leadership at the school’s Institute of Global Politics, a prominent conservative hire for the embattled Ivy League school.

“The Academy cannot be an ivory tower,” Keren Yarhi-Milo, the dean of the School of International and Public Affairs, told The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the appointment. “We should engage with the world because we learn a lot from engaging with practitioners with differing positions and ideologies who also ultimately can learn from us.”

The announcement comes as Columbia faces ongoing scrutiny from the administration and Congress over antisemitic activity on campus since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and ensuing war between Israel and Hamas, and amid long-running accusations from some conservatives that elite institutions are silencing and sidelining conservative voices.

“I suspect that [Columbia’s] outreach was intentional in the sense that they were seeking to bring onto campus … someone with a view that is very different than most of the faculty on their staff,” Pompeo told the Journal.

Pompeo said that he seeks to “teach the next generation about the greatness of our nation” and that he wants to hold “fair, reasoned and fact-based discourse.”

Prior to serving as President Donald Trump’s second secretary of state, Pompeo led the Central Intelligence Agency and served as a member of Congress. He took a hard-nosed approach to the Iranian regime as secretary of state and was a vocal supporter of the U.S.-Israel relationship.

Pompeo fell out of favor with Trump after he didn’t endorse the president’s false claims that the 2020 election was rigged and condemned the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Last month, Trump revoked Pompeo’s security detail that had been put in place to protect him from assassination attempts by the Iranian government. 

Members of Bowdoin University Students for Justice in Palestine who set up an anti-Israel encampment last week inside the college’s student union building are now facing disciplinary action from the school — including prohibition from attending classes pending permission from the dean’s office.

At Columbia University last month, administrators launched an investigation — together with law enforcement — just hours after anti-Israel demonstrators used cement to clog the sewage system in the School of International and Public Affairs building and sprayed the business school with red paint. 

Days before that, Columbia suspended a student who participated in a masked demonstration in which four people barged into a History of Modern Israel class, banged on drums, chanted “free Palestine” and distributed posters to students that read “CRUSH ZIONISM” with a boot over the Star of David.  

The University of Michigan announced last week that Students Allied for Freedom and Equality, the campus’ SJP chapter, would be suspended for up to two years. Weeks earlier, George Mason University barred the leaders of its SJP chapter from campus for four years after they were caught vandalizing a university building.  

The recent crackdowns on SJP and its affiliated groups — along with other episodes of anti-Israel extremism on campus — are the latest indication that university administrators are approaching antisemitic incidents with a new seriousness since the Trump administration issued executive orders aimed at deterring campus antisemitism.   

Several campus leaders welcomed the shift. For too long “there were no consequences,” said Mark Yudof, chair of the Academic Engagement Network and the former president of the University of California system. “The new Trump administration is very serious and I’ve told [certain universities] they are in jeopardy.” 

“Many of these campuses are at risk,” Yudof told Jewish Insider. In response, “they are saying SJP can have chapters, but they’re violating rules by preventing people from crossing campus or doing overnight encampments or occupying the library.”

Yudof called the Title VI settlements that came in the final days of the Biden administration “relatively weak” and noted that university requirements could “become much stricter in terms of what they need to do by way of enforcement” if the remaining complaints are settled. 

Even with the recent investigation and suspension at Columbia, the university’s Hillel director, Brian Cohen, noted that other university investigations remain open, such as ones against students involved with the encampments and the takeover of Hamilton Hall last April. “These cases should have been resolved months ago, and many of the students involved in those cases remain on campus and continue to break university rules,” Cohen said. “Complicating this all is that despite the best efforts of Columbia’s Public Safety Department to identify students who violate university rules and policies, they are hamstrung by university policies that allow students to conceal their identities.” 

Trump claimed during his 2024 campaign that, if reelected, U.S. universities that failed to address antisemitism would lose accreditation and federal support. In the weeks leading up to Trump’s return to the White House, a number of universities rushed to settle antisemitism complaints with the Biden administration’s DOE in its final days. 

Weeks after Inauguration Day, Trump issued an executive order calling on every federal agency and department to review and report on civil and criminal actions available within their jurisdiction to fight antisemitism. 

Under the executive order, the Department of Justice is directed to review existing antisemitism cases and prepare to more actively bring legal action against those who commit acts of antisemitism in violation of federal civil rights laws. The Department of Education is directed to conduct a thorough review of pending Title VI complaints and investigations. The order also “demands the removal of resident aliens who violate our laws,” according to a White House fact sheet. 

Days later, the DOJ announced a new multi-agency task force whose “first priority” will be to “root out anti-Semitic harassment in schools and on college campuses,” according to an announcement by the department. The DOE also took its first major action under the new administration to combat antisemitism by launching investigations into alleged antisemitic discrimination at five universities — Columbia University; the University of California, Berkeley; Portland State University; Northwestern University and University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. 

“Any student group that openly and continually violates campus rules and/or the law must be held accountable,” Sara Coodin, American Jewish Committee’s director of academic affairs, told JI. “We are glad to see administrators taking steps to enforce their rules and regulations that are meant to foster campus environments welcoming to all students.” 

A spokesperson for the Anti-Defamation League echoed that the group is “pleased that many universities are now holding student organizations accountable for violations.” 

“We have been calling for the last 16 months for universities to enforce their policies and codes that govern conduct of students, faculty and student organizations,” the ADL said in a statement to JI, noting that because these types of disciplinary cases often take some time to move through the processes, “it is difficult to attribute recent action to the new administration.”

“But as we have said, fighting antisemitism requires a whole-of-society approach and we welcome the focus and actions from the Trump administration to combat antisemitism on campus,” the statement said. 

Cary Nelson, former president of the American Association of University Professors, emphasized that cracking down on SJP activity does not suppress political speech. “An SJP chapter that has its campus recognition withdrawn can still post messages on Instagram or X, so its group speech rights remain intact,” Nelson told JI. “Students and faculty remain free to endorse SJP messages.” 

“Moreover, some banned SJP chapters continue to organize campus events,” Nelson said. “But the bans cancel campus funding and send the message that violating laws or campus regulations have consequences, including public condemnation.” Nelson also pointed out that even with the new rules, on many campuses, SJP’s faculty partners, Faculty for Justice in Palestine, retain recognition and can function as SJP surrogates.

The Department of Education is taking its first major action under the new administration to combat antisemitism, launching investigations into alleged antisemitic discrimination at Columbia University; the University of California, Berkeley; Portland State University; Northwestern University and University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

The Department of Education under the Biden administration pursued antisemitism cases after complaints had been filed by students and organizations representing them. These new cases, however, are being launched proactively, giving the Department of Education broader investigative latitude.

“Too many universities have tolerated widespread antisemitic harassment and the illegal encampments that paralyzed campus life last year, driving Jewish life and religious expression underground,” Craig Trainor, the acting assistant secretary of education for civil rights, said in a statement. “The Biden Administration’s toothless resolution agreements did shamefully little to hold those institutions accountable.”

Trainor said the announcements serve to put “universities, colleges, and K-12 schools on notice: this administration will not tolerate continued institutional indifference to the wellbeing of Jewish students on American campuses, nor will it stand by idly if universities fail to combat Jew hatred and the unlawful harassment and violence it animates.”

In a press release, the Department of Education described the new investigations as a response to the Trump administration’s executive order last week on combating antisemitism, and said they would “build upon the foundational work” done by the House Education and the Workforce Committee since the Oct. 7 attack.

In a letter to the interim president of Columbia University obtained by Jewish Insider, Trainor noted that the university has been accused of a “longstanding pattern of tolerating antisemitic harassment, intimidation, and acts of violence” and of failing to implement disciplinary policies. He noted that Columbia faculty allegedly had “extensive” involvement in campus encampments and the break-in at the school’s Hamilton Hall.

A Columbia spokesperson said in a statement that the school is reviewing the letter and that the school “strongly condemns antisemitism and all forms of discrimination,” adding that “calling for, promoting, or glorifying violence or terror has no place at our University.”

“Since assuming her role in August, Interim President Armstrong and her leadership team have taken decisive actions to address issues of antisemitism, including by strengthening and clarifying our disciplinary processes,” the spokesperson said. “Under the University’s new leadership, we have established a centralized Office of Institutional Equity to address all reports of discrimination and harassment, appointed a new Rules Administrator, and strengthened the capabilities of our Public Safety Office. We look forward to ongoing work with the new federal administration to combat antisemitism and ensure the safety and wellbeing of our students, faculty, and staff.”

Kenneth Marcus, the founder of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and a former assistant secretary of education for civil rights in the first Trump administration, told JI that the investigations are “a big deal … every bit as important as the executive orders.”

He said he repeatedly pressured the Department of Education under the Biden administration to open such proactive cases, to no avail.

“There’s a world of difference between simply waiting for complaints to pile up versus proactively announcing initiatives,” Marcus explained. “They’re viewed very differently within the higher education community and also among OCR investigators. When the secretary of education decides to highlight an issue by developing a proactive initiative, it sends a clear message that the department is prioritizing the matter.”

He said that opening a proactive investigation also gives the department more latitude to pursue its case “in any way that it thinks is appropriate,” instead of relying on the sometimes-incomplete information presented by individual complainants.

He added that administration’s choice of schools to investigate signals it will be scrutinizing both elite institutions with highly publicized antisemitism issues and less prominent ones such as Portland State and the University of Minnesota.

“This is a way of making sure that every university president realizes that if they don’t clean up their act, they could be next,” Marcus said.

Prior to the announcement, the Department of Education had open investigations into alleged antisemitism at the University of Minnesota, as well as alleged anti-Palestinian discrimination at Columbia, Portland State and Northwestern. It previously dismissed an antisemitism case at Berkeley, deferring to pending litigation on the subject in federal court.

Marcus said he anticipates the administration will open more proactive investigations, as well as potentially seek to renegotiate some of the “controversial” settlement agreements the Biden administration inked to close antisemitism cases before the end of its term.

The announcements of new investigations come even as Trump administration officials are reportedly considering pathways to shrink or eliminate the Department of Education entirely.

He said the Department of Justice may also get more involved in campus antisemitism — it has the ability to join pending lawsuits against schools, can file its own complaints against schools, can go to court to enforce existing settlements with schools and can get more involved in a law enforcement capacity on campuses.

In a possible sign that the Department of Justice does plan to be more aggressive, the Department of Justice announced on Monday that it was launching an interagency task force, to include the Department of Education, which would focus on campus antisemitism.

Columbia University’s administration has launched an investigation — together with law enforcement — to identify the perpetrators of an act of vandalism on Wednesday in which anti-Israel demonstrators clogged the sewage system in the School of International and Public Affairs building with cement and sprayed the business school with red paint.

Columbia defined the spray-painting as an “act of vandalism” in a Wednesday statement, adding that the graffiti “included disturbing, personal attacks.” It said it was “acting swiftly to address this misconduct” and “to identify the individual perpetrators and address their actions.” 

“The university has done a better job [responding to antisemitic incidents] compared to in the past year, but at the same time, the actions of these perpetrators has gotten a lot worse,” a second-year graduate student in SIPA who requested to remain anonymous told Jewish Insider. “This went from antisemitic vitriol to cementing toilets and causing staff to be there overnight scrubbing fecal matter out of the toilets.” 

In a Wednesday night email to SIPA students, the school’s dean, Keren Yarhi-Milo, wrote that the women’s restrooms on four floors of the building were “vandalized with a cement-like substance causing the toilets to clog.” The walls of the 15th floor restroom were also spray-painted, as was the business school’s Kravis Hall, according to the email.

The Columbia Spectator reported that the graffiti included the phrase “Keren eat Weiner,” a reference to Yarhi-Milo and Rebecca Weiner, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism, as well as “5.3.2018-1.29.2024 Hind called we must answer” and “Im scared please help – HIND AGE 6,” a reference to Hind Rajab, a Palestinian girl killed during the war in Gaza.

In April of last year, at the start of the illegal anti-Israel encampment movement, protesters occupied Hamilton Hall and unfurled a banner that read “Hind’s Hall,” announcing that they had renamed the building in her honor. New York City Resists with Gaza, Columbia University Apartheid Divest and Students for Justice in Palestine claimed responsibility for the vandalism in a social media post. 

Columbia’s response comes as the university has reacted more quickly to  antisemitism in recent weeks — a sharp contrast compared to what lawmakers and Jewish students and faculty have called a slow, or nonexistent, response to the frequent antisemitism occurring on campus since the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel. Last week, the university suspended a university affiliate for participation in a masked demonstration in which four people barged into a History of Modern Israel class, banged on drums, chanted “free Palestine” and distributed posters to students that read “CRUSH ZIONISM” with a boot over the Star of David.  

Columbia’s Office of Student Affairs also mandated on Wednesday that a SIPA group chat, intended to distribute campus-related information to students, be restricted to “administrator-only” mode after several incidents of students espousing antisemitic rhetoric in conversations, a student familiar with the situation told JI. 

“We have been monitoring the chats closely and while the discussions are warranted, we have been mandated by the OSA to pause all cohort group chats temporarily till we convene to find a resolution to the ongoing discussions. … I would urge everyone to reflect on how we can reinforce civility in our discourse as we navigate this,” an administrator wrote in one cohort chat, according to messages obtained by JI.

The SIPA graduate student described antisemitic rhetoric in the students’ chat to JI as “a constant stream of pretty outrageous messages.” 

“It quickly devolved into the same two or three students from our cohort invoking the Holocaust,” he said. “OSA is getting the handcuffs on these [perpetrators] more quickly than they were last year.” 

Asked whether the perpetrators of Wednesday’s vandalism would be suspended or expelled once identified, a spokesperson for Columbia told JI that the university won’t comment further.

Columbia University students learning about the history of Israel found their first day of class thrown into chaos Tuesday after four masked demonstrators barged into the classroom, banged on drums, chanted “free Palestine” and distributed posters to students that read “CRUSH ZIONISM” with a boot over the Star of David.  

The masked demonstrators also held up, and tried to plaster the walls of the classroom, a sign featuring an illustration of Hamas terrorists pointing guns titled “THE ENEMY WILL NOT SEE TOMORROW.”

“They started throwing fliers at us all and talking about how terrible it is that this class is even happening and that we have an Israeli professor,” Lishi Baker, a junior studying Middle East history and a student in the History of Modern Israel course, told Jewish Insider. Baker praised the professor, Avi Shilon, a visiting professor from Israel, for responding “calmly.” 

“He said to them we’re here to learn [and] offered for them to learn, [otherwise] if they don’t want to learn, they should leave,” Baker recalled. “They did not listen, they kept banging their drums and [trying to] put up their posters. It was clearly a performative disruption meant to intimidate and disrupt. After they were finished with that, they marched out, yelled ‘Free Palestine’ and went to join up with larger demonstrations outside and inside [of the Columbia entrance] gates.”

Dozens of protesters, with their faces covered by keffiyehs and masks, also took to Columbia’s main quad, as well as the entrance of the Morningside Heights campus, on Tuesday afternoon to chant for an “intifada revolution” and other antisemitic slogans. 

The classroom demonstrators were presumably students or other university affiliates. At the start of this academic year — in an effort to crackdown on protests — Columbia locked down its gates, which had been long open to the public. The tall iron entrance gates are now guarded 24/7, with security officers only allowing Columbia affiliates with a valid school ID and their pre-approved guests inside.  

The disruption was immediately condemned by Columbia University Interim President Katrina Armstrong, as well as Columbia Hillel’s executive director, Brian Cohen. 

“Today a History of Modern Israel class was disrupted by protesters who handed out fliers. We strongly condemn this disruption, as well as the fliers that included violent imagery that is unacceptable on our campus and in our community,” Armstrong said in a statement.

“No group of students has a right to disrupt another group of students in a Columbia classroom. Disrupting academic activities constitutes a violation of the Rules of University conduct and the nature of the disruption may constitute violations of other University policies.”

Armstrong said that Columbia will “move quickly to investigate and address this act. We want to be absolutely clear that any act of antisemitism, or other form of discrimination, harassment, or intimidation against members of our community is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.” 

Cohen noted on X that the demonstration not only violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 but is also “a clear violation of University rules.” 

He called for the university to “act quickly and strongly to hold these individuals accountable.” 

The incident comes two days after the implementation of a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, which campus anti-Israel demonstrators have demanded since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks and ensuing war began.  

“This was never about ceasefire and it was never about the war in Gaza,” Baker said. “It was always about a broader existential mission to eradicate the state of Israel. If that wasn’t clear before, it better be clear now.” 

“One of the main talking points of the [anti-Israel campus] movement has been a defense of the things that they say on the grounds of academic freedom,” Baker continued. “Well, so much for academic freedom when you barge into a classroom and interrupt it and intimidate the students and the professor.”  

A Columbia University adjunct professor announced his resignation on Monday, citing the university’s decision to allow a longtime professor who described the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel as “astounding,” “awesome” and “incredible” to continue teaching a course on Zionism.

In his resignation letter, Lawrence “Muzzy” Rosenblatt, an adjunct professor of international and public affairs, wrote that having Joseph Massad, a professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history, teach a course on Zionism was “akin to having a White nationalist teach about the US Civil Rights movement and the struggle for Black equality.” 

“Columbia has lost not only its moral compass, but its intellectual one,” Rosenblatt wrote.

As antisemitism roiled Columbia’s campus over the past 14 months, including the burning of Israeli flags and physical assaults of Jewish students, Rosenblatt said that he felt it was important to stay to teach. “I believe the Institution was not aligned with the hateful and destructive values of some who teach and study here, and that by staying I would not be ceding the Academy to those who spew evil, but instead be a model for thoughtful, responsible and professional learning,” he wrote. 

But that changed with the continuation of Massad’s class in light of his comments about Oct. 7, according to Rosenblatt. 

Massad is scheduled to teach the undergraduate course “History of the Jewish Enlightenment in 19th century Europe and the development of Zionism,” as he has done every spring since 2016. The class typically fills up, drawing between 30-60 students each semester. The class is limited to 60 students and is not a required course, but rather one of three courses Columbia students can elect to take next semester on the subject of Zionism and the history of Israel, two of which are offered through Columbia’s Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies. 

One day after Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack, Massad wrote, “Perhaps the major achievement of the resistance in the temporary takeover of these settler-colonies is the death blow to any confidence that Israeli colonists had in their military and its ability to protect them.” 

He went on: “The sight of the Palestinian resistance fighters storming Israeli checkpoints separating Gaza from Israel was astounding, not only to the Israelis but especially to the Palestinian and Arab peoples who came out across the region to march in support of the Palestinians in their battle against their cruel colonizers,” Massad wrote of the Oct. 7 massacre. “No less awesome were the scenes witnessed by millions of jubilant Arabs who spent the day watching the news, of Palestinian fighters from Gaza breaking through Israel’s prison fence or gliding over it by air.”

He went on to say that Oct. 7 has “both shaken Israeli society and struck Palestinians and Arabs as incredible.” 

Massad’s anti-Israel activism on Columbia’s campus dates as far back as 2004, during the Second Intifada, when an Israeli student who served in the IDF said that Massad demanded to know how many Palestinians he’d killed. He has promoted the boycott Israel movement on campus since 2016. 

During April’s congressional hearing about antisemitism at Columbia University, the university’s then-president_, Manouche Shafik, said Massad was “under investigation” after his outspoken support for the Oct. 7 attacks. Massad later claimed he was never reprimanded.

Neither Rosenblatt nor Massad responded to requests for comment from Jewish Insider. 

In a statement to JI, a Columbia spokesperson acknowledged that Massad’s statements following Oct. 7 “created pain for many in our community and contributed to the deep controversy on our campus.”

“We remain committed to principles of free expression and the open exchange of viewpoints and perspectives through opportunities for constructive dialogue and understanding throughout our campus community, and we seek to provide a learning environment and classrooms that promote intellectual inquiry and analytical thinking along with civility, tolerance and respect,” the spokesperson said. 

Clifford Stein, a professor of industrial engineering and computer science at Columbia, said he applauds Rosenblatt’s “courage.” 

“I fully support allowing a diverse set of viewpoints, but having Professor Massad, who has called for the destruction of the state of Israel and who publicly celebrated the Oct. 7 attacks, teach the history of Zionism is insulting,” Stein told JI. “Professor Massad has a documented history of intimidating students with pro-Israel viewpoints. He does not support an objective evaluation of the material. Why have someone like that teach a course on the history of Zionism?” 

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, wrote on X that allowing Massad to teach a course on Zionism “would be offensive at any time, but after his post-10/7 comments, it’s incomprehensible & indefensible.”  

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) also condemned Columbia’s decision to allow Massad to teach the course, writing on X, “why should U.S. taxpayers subsidize ideological indoctrination that glorifies the mass murder, maiming, mutilation, rape, and abduction of Jews and Israelis?” 

 “What’s next at Columbia? David Duke teaching a course on antiracism,” Torres wrote on X. 

On Friday morning, the National Republican Campaign Committee shared an audio clip on X that appeared to depict Sue Altman, the Democratic candidate challenging Rep. Tom Kean (R-NJ) in New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District, endorsing antisemitic campus protests at Columbia University.

But the full clip tells a very different story, in which Altman clearly condemned the protests as antisemitic and unacceptable.

The post is the latest of Republicans’ efforts to portray Altman, a longtime progressive activist who led the Working Families Party in New Jersey, as too radical to represent the New Jersey swing district — a line of attack that has sometimes focused on questions about Altman’s record on Israel.

Based on a clip of the exchange obtained by Jewish Insider, Altman was asked at an event by a Jewish high schooler about how she would address antisemitism on college campuses and keep the Jewish community safe.

“I am extremely concerned and worried about the rise in antisemitism,” Altman said. She mentioned that she’d read a recent report by Columbia University’s antisemitism task force, which she described as “truly appalling. No student, Jewish or anything, should have to ever experience antisemitism or any kind of bias against them.”

Altman, a Columbia alumna, highlighted a Sept. 3 tweet she sent in response to that report, in which she said that “glorifying despicable acts of terror and subjecting Jewish students to harassment or intimidation does absolutely nothing to advance the interests of innocent Palestinians — nor does it advance the broader mission to secure peace.”

Altman, in the excerpt from the event posted by the NRCC said, in general terms, that “an anti-war movement is something that is honorable and part of Columbia’s history, and I’ve always respected good old protests.”

But she went on to say that at Columbia and many other schools, “what should have been an anti-war movement and a movement for [a] peace that is sustainable, which would have included returning the hostages, not just a one-sided unilateral peace had, in my opinion bled over into antisemitism.”

She said that she’s been “very disappointed and appalled” at the activity of the protesters at Columbia, describing their push to relitigate the founding of Israel and question the Jewish people’s right to a state as “a nonstarter for me.”

Altman’s campaign had, in its early days, drawn questions about her positions on Israel, given that the national Working Families Party has been a long-standing critic of the Jewish state.

Altman said at the event that she had publicly broken with the group on Israel “because I do feel as though the Israeli people have a right to defend themselves,” noting that Israel continues to face attacks by its neighbors.

The congressional candidate said she’s had conversations with local Jewish leaders about the fear that they are feeling, adding that she feels that antisemitism has long been “left unchecked and left unexamined,” going back to the time of the Holocaust and before.

She said that many in the U.S. have forgotten or glossed over the fact that the U.S. turned away Jewish refugees and turned a blind eye to the atrocities the Nazis were committing in the Holocaust, or in some cases attended pro-Nazi rallies.

“The conversation around antisemitism in our country has a long way to go, in scholarship, in popular culture, in the way we talk about the ways antisemitism affects regular people,” Altman said, arguing the U.S. hasn’t had a proper reconging with antisemitism in the way it has in recent years with racism and sexism.

“I would encourage us all, whether Republican or Democrat … or unaffiliated, to look very closely at the ways in which antisemitism exists in this country, alongside the other ills that we are more conversant around — gender and race,” Altman said.

Asked about its characterization and presentation of Altman’s remarks, the NRCC accused her of trying to disguise her record.

“Sue Altman has been trying to hide her radical past from voters this entire election cycle — from deleting tweets to a full on attempted rebrand that even leftists acknowledge,” NRCC spokesperson Savannah Viar said. “She has spent her career associating with anti-Israel activists and no number of rambling answers will cover that up.”

The NRCC has gone after Altman in the past for her ties to the WFP, for her support for former Ohio congressional candidate Nina Turner, a critic of Israel, and for taking endorsements from progressive Israel critics in Congress. Conservatives have also accused her of being slow to speak out in support of Israel and against the chaos at Columbia.

More broadly, Kean and the NRCC say Altman is trying to walk back her progressive record to win election in a swing district.

Altman fired back, “instead of recognizing an opportunity for Democrats and Republicans to affirm our support for the Jewish people” at a time of heightened fear and antisemitism, “Kean and the NRCC have deceptively manipulated a recording of me to lie to voters — because their only goal is to win an election at any cost.”

Kean’s campaign reposted the NRCC video on its X account. It declined to comment.

“The insinuation that I have anything less than absolute contempt for antisemitism and hate in all its forms is disgusting,” Altman continued. “As my record clearly shows, I have and always will stand with the Jewish community — and unlike Tom Kean Jr., I’m not looking to score cheap political points by spreading dangerous and false lies.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) called on Columbia University and other elite academic institutions to tackle the “great deal of work to do to earn back the trust of students, parents and alumni, alike” over the handling of last year’s anti-Israel campus protests. 

Speaking on the Senate floor on Tuesday, McConnell urged university faculty and administrators not to tolerate “the tantrums of campus radicals” this fall that “made some elite schools so inhospitable to learning – particularly for Jewish students.” The top Senate Republican said that “[a]s students head back to school, college campuses across the country are hoping this academic year begins more calmly than the last one ended.”

“Unfortunately, what used to be a reliable path to the middle class appears to have turned into breeding ground for childish radicalism,” McConnell said.

McConnell said he welcomes the resignations last month of Columbia University President Minouche Shafik and three deans who were placed on leave after exchanging antisemitic text messages, describing them as “steps in the right direction for an Ivy League institution that professes a commitment to thoughtful, rigorous debate and a campus culture free of bigotry, intimidation, and harassment.”

Still, McConnell expressed concern that Columbia was taking counterproductive measures, citing the school’s decision to allow a Marxist doctoral student to teach contemporary Western civilization to undergraduates despite her role in occupying Hamilton Hall alongside violent anti-Israel protesters. 

“The decline in the Ivy League’s academic rigor is well-documented,” McConnell said of Columbia doctoral student Johannah King-Slutzky. “But it would seem that at a bare minimum, its instructors ought to be able to distinguish between civilization and barbarism, and to act accordingly.”

He also pointed to a Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression survey conducted over the summer that found a rise in support from students for establishing encampments and defacing school property. 

“I have to wonder whether a survey of the parents of college students, or for that matter, the campus staff who clean up after their misbehavior, wouldn’t paint a different picture,” McConnell mused. 

More than 1,000 new students kicked off their freshman year at Columbia University this week. But even with all the institutional changes that took place over the summer, including the naming of a new president, several aspects at the prestigious New York school are already reminiscent of the chaos last academic year — one that was marred by occasional violent anti-Israel disruptions, amid scrutiny of university leaders for not enforcing rules that would keep Jewish students safe. 

Brian Cohen, executive director of Columbia Barnard Hillel, told Jewish Insider that he expects to see “plenty of activism again on campus, at least some of which will be highly disruptive.” 

The disruptions have already started, with a week left before classes begin. At a convocation event to welcome incoming freshmen on Sunday, about 50 members of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, wearing masks and keffiyehs and holding megaphones and drums, disrupted the event from just outside of the campus gates with chants of “Free Palestine.” 

The group, which labels itself a “student intifada,” distributed fliers around the convocation that told students they were sitting “through propaganda being delivered to you by war criminals of an administration.” A Columbia University spokesperson told JI that the NYPD was present at the protest in case it was needed. The spokesperson did not respond to a follow up question about how the university is preparing to handle larger demonstrations this year. 

CUAD, a coalition formed in 2016 that has gained renewed support since the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks, with at least 80 student groups at Columbia joining the coalition, also published an op-ed in the Columbia Spectator on Sunday, attempting to rally freshmen to join in on the demonstrations. CUAD “will not sit quietly and watch our campus turn into a microcosm of the settler-colonial state we are protesting, and we need your help to prevent that,” the group wrote.  

CUAD wrote that it is “working toward achieving a liberated Palestine and the end of Israeli apartheid and genocide by urging Columbia to divest all economic and academic stakes in ‘Israel.’” 

Amid an “overall spirit of excitement for the coming school year,” the demonstration was “noisy and loud,” Julia Zborovsky-Fenster, whose son is a freshman at Columbia and daughter graduated from Barnard in the spring, told JI. Zborovsky-Fenster, who was walking on campus during the demonstration, said that she has “not seen anything that has given me a very clear message as to what we can expect” from university leadership this year.

“If I was to look at move-in day and the convocation, and base my judgment only on what happened on that one day, I would say I am optimistic,” she said, noting that law enforcement was abundant on campus and the protest remained relatively small, without turning violent.  

During summer break, Columbia made leadership changes and set new guidelines that some are optimistic will protect Jewish students. 

Columbia University President Minouche Shafik announced her resignation on Aug. 14, months after she testified before Congress about antisemitism and her handling of the disorderly fallout of the first anti-Israel encampment in the nation. 

Days before Shafik’s resignation, in an attempt to prevent activists from occupying buildings, destroying property and engaging in the kind of physical violence that overtook Columbia’s campus last year, the school’s COO, Cas Holloway, said that campus access will now be restricted to affiliates with a valid campus ID. Holloway said that this move would “keep our community safe given reports of potential disruptions at Columbia.”

Zborovsky-Fenster said the changes could lead to an “ushering in not only of a new year but a new era with this new leadership that would show we have learned lessons from a very challenging, divisive period last year.” 

But she added that parents and students deserve more transparency than they received last year. “I would love to see specific messaging as to what the policies are, specifically how they are going to be enforced, by whom, in what timeframe and how that is going to be communicated to the student body,” she said. 

As questions remain around whether the Columbia administration will crack down on disruptions from anti-Israel groups this year, outside organizations have already started doing so. On Monday, Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine announced that its Instagram page had been permanently deleted.

A spokesperson for Meta, the company that owns Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, told JI that the account was disabled for repeated violations of Meta’s dangerous organizations and individuals policies. According to Meta’s policies, it does “not allow organizations or individuals that proclaim a violent mission or are engaged in violence to have a presence on our platforms.” 

The House Committee on Education and the Workforce has also raised concern about the climate on Columbia’s campus and unwillingness of the administration to enforce its rules. Last Wednesday, the committee issued six subpoenas to Columbia University officials for documents related to the committee’s investigation into campus antisemitism. 

According to a summary of Columbia disciplinary hearings from the end of last semester that was released earlier this month by the committee, of the 40 students arrested when Columbia brought police dressed in riot gear to the campus to remove a student encampment on April 18, just two remain suspended. The remaining students are in good standing and can enroll in classes while waiting for their disciplinary hearings, although roughly half are on “disciplinary probation.”

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), chair of the committee, said in a statement that the lack of consequences for students was “reprehensible.” 

“Following the disruptions of the last academic year, Columbia immediately began disciplinary processes, including with immediate suspensions,” a university spokesperson told JI last week. “The disciplinary process is ongoing for many students involved in these disruptions, including some of those who were arrested, and we have been working to expedite the process for this large volume of violations.”

The subpoena demands that Columbia provide, by noon on Sept. 4, all communications between the school’s leaders about antisemitism and the anti-Israel encampment since Oct. 7, all records of Board of Trustees meetings since April 17, all records of Board of Trustees meetings since Oct. 7 relating to antisemitism or Israel and any documents relating to allegations of antisemitism on Columbia’s campus since Oct. 7.

In a letter to Dr. Katrina Armstrong, Columbia’s interim president, Foxx said the subpoenas were issued because “Columbia has failed to produce numerous priority items requested by the Committee, despite having months to comply and receiving repeated follow-up requests by the Committee.” Jewish Insider’s senior congressional correspondent Marc Rod contributed reporting.

The House Committee on Education and the Workforce issued six subpoenas to Columbia University officials on Wednesday for documents related to the committee’s investigation into campus antisemitism.

This is the second round of subpoenas issued by the committee in its antisemitism investigation, coming just days before Columbia begins classes for its fall semester, and as the campus prepares for renewed anti-Israel protests.

The committee chair, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), threatened such a move on Aug. 1, accusing the school of failing to provide documents the committee had requested in spite of repeated warnings.

The subpoena demands that Columbia provide, by noon on Sept. 4, all communications between the school’s leaders about antisemitism and the anti-Israel encampment since Oct. 7, all records of Board of Trustees meetings since April 17, all records of Board of Trustees meetings since Oct. 7 relating to antisemitism or Israel and any documents relating to allegations of antisemitism on Columbia’s campus since Oct. 7.

In a letter to Dr. Katrina Armstrong, Columbia’s interim president, Foxx said the subpoenas were issued because “Columbia has failed to produce numerous priority items requested by the Committee, despite having months to comply and receiving repeated follow-up requests by the Committee.”

Foxx’s letter also instructs Columbia to preserve all documents created or held by former Columbia President Minouche Shafik, who abruptly resigned last week, that relate to the antisemitism investigation.

A recent report by the committee, based on some documents provided by Columbia, revealed that most students involved in the occupation of Hamilton Hall in late April had not been disciplined, despite Columbia’s public threats of expulsion.

“Columbia should be a partner in our efforts to ensure Jewish students have a safe learning environment on its campus, but instead, university administrators have slow rolled the investigation, repeatedly failing to turn over necessary documents,” Foxx said in a statement. “The information we have obtained points to a continued pattern of negligence towards antisemitism and a refusal to stand up to the radical students and faculty responsible for it.”

The committee has, to date, not publicly taken action to implement or enforce its first subpoena, to Harvard University.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), the top Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, issued a new call for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to hold a hearing addressing antisemitism on college campuses, following the resignation on Wednesday of Columbia University President Minouche Shafik.

Cassidy said in a statement provided exclusively to Jewish Insider that Sanders, who chairs the committee, “has refused to hold a hearing to address the antisemitism against Jewish students.” The Republican senator has been urging Sanders to hold a hearing on the matter since late last year. “In the last ten months since October 7, we’ve seen antisemitic demonstrations take over college campuses,” the statement reads. 

“The Columbia president clearly mishandled the protests and the threats to Jewish students. The outrage over antisemitism in higher education is not going away. Jewish students coming back to campus this fall need assurance that their schools and the Department of Education will protect them from attacks and discrimination,” Cassidy said of Shafik, arguing that the problem of campus antisemitism goes beyond her tenure as president of Columbia.

“I urge HELP Democrats to reconsider their opposition to holding a hearing to ensure schools and the Biden-Harris administration uphold their legal responsibility to maintain a safe learning environment for all students,” he continued. “The time for accountability is now.” 

Cassidy told JI in November that Sanders had declined to call a hearing on campus antisemitism, so he instead organized a bipartisan roundtable on the issue, which the HELP chairman did not attend. 

Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), who has been pushing for a HELP hearing alongside Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), told JI in May that Sanders told him that he planned to hold a hearing on antisemitism and Islamophobia, but such a hearing hasn’t materialized. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) accused Republicans during the November roundtable of ignoring the difficulties being faced by Muslim and Arab students.

“I’m hearing about the 400% increase in antisemitism since Oct. 7 on my [state’s] campuses,” Kaine said at the time. “But I’m also hearing from students who are Arab American or Muslim American or Palestinian American or who express any support for Palestinians — that they’re being targeted too… They’re afraid for their safety, they’re afraid for their livelihood and we’re not including them in this discussion.”

Sanders hasn’t responded to questions about his plans on the subject, and the three senators told JI that they have not received any updates on announcing or scheduling a hearing. 

Asked by JI in May about organizing such a hearing, Sanders replied that, “The issue of bigotry on campus is something that we are concerned about” before abruptly entering a senators-only elevator. 

Columbia University President Minouche Shafik announced her resignation on Wednesday, days before the start of the school year — and months after the end of a chaotic school year that saw her testify before Congress about antisemitism and navigate the unruly fallout of the first anti-Israel encampment in the nation. 

Dr. Katrina Armstrong, CEO of Columbia’s Irving Medical Center, will serve as interim president, a university spokesperson confirmed to Jewish Insider. A source familiar said Armstrong has already been in touch with Hillel leadership at Columbia. 

News of Shafik’s resignation was first reported by the Washington Free Beacon’s Eliana Johnson. Shafik is the fourth Ivy League president to step down in the last year amid rising anti-Israel activism on campuses, following the University of Pennsylvania’s Elizabeth Magill, Harvard’s Claudine Gay and Cornell University’s Martha Pollack.

“I have had the honor and privilege to lead this incredible institution, and I believe that — working together — we have made progress in a number of important areas,” Shafik, who only started in the role in July 2023, wrote in an email to the Columbia community. 

“However, it has also been a period of turmoil where it has been difficult to overcome divergent views across our community. This period has taken a considerable toll on my family, as it has for others in our community. Over the summer, I have been able to reflect and have decided that my moving on at this point would best enable Columbia to traverse the challenges ahead,” she wrote.

Following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, Columbia, like other American universities, saw an uptick in antisemitism and targeting of Zionist students. But in an April hearing before the House Education and the Workforce Committee, Shafik avoided the kind of viral moment that dogged her colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

But when she went back to Manhattan, she faced the first anti-Israel encampment at an American university. Her decision to call in the police to break up the demonstration set off a wave of anger among many students and faculty members on campus and sparked dozens of other solidarity encampments at other universities. 

From there, her leadership was under a microscope. Following a number of antisemitic incidents related to the encampment, several members of Congress from both parties went to Columbia to speak to Jewish students and show solidarity.

In a statement, the Anti-Defamation League said it is “saddened that the leadership of another flagship university has crumbled under the weight of antisemitism on its campus,” calling on the school to move quickly to fill the leadership vacancy before the fall semester.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), in a statement first shared with JI, cheered Shafik’s decision to step aside: “As a result of President Shafik’s refusal to protect Jewish students and maintain order on campus, Columbia University became the epicenter for virulent antisemitism that has plagued many American university campuses since Hamas’ barbaric attack on Israel last fall.” 

“I stood in President Shafik’s office in April and told her to resign, and while it is long overdue, we welcome today’s news. Jewish students at Columbia beginning this school year should breathe a sigh of relief…We hope that President Shafik’s resignation serves as an example to university administrators across the country that tolerating or protecting antisemites is unacceptable and will have consequences,” Johnson added.

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), the chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said that, under Shafik’s leadership “a disturbing wave of antisemitic harassment, discrimination, and disorder engulfed Columbia university’s campus” and students were allowed to break the law with impunity.

“Columbia’s next leader must take bold action to address the pervasive antisemitism, support for terrorism, and contempt for the university’s rules that have been allowed to flourish on its campus,” Foxx continued, 

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), a prominent member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, crowed, “THREE DOWN, so many to go,” adding that her “failed presidency was untenable and that it was only a matter of time before her forced resignation.”

She added, “We will continue to demand moral clarity, condemnation of antisemitism, protection of Jewish students and faculty, and stronger leadership from American higher education institutions.”

Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) told JI that the resignation was “long overdue.”

“I have been calling for President Shafik to be ousted or resign ever since her abysmal failure to condemn Columbia’s antisemitic outbursts or ensure the safety of Jewish students on her campus,” Lawler said. “Let this be a lesson to all who waver in the face of evil.”

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) said that “when President Shafik failed to enforce the code of conduct and protect Jewish students just trying to walk to class safely, she failed at her job and allowed a hostile, antisemitic environment to escalate.”

He asserted that similar treatment of any other minority group would have been quickly stopped by school administrators and that signs reading “go back to Poland” displayed just outside Columbia’s gates when he visited the campus have stuck with him.

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) called Columbia “ground zero for campus antisemitism in NYC,” urging the new leadership to “summon the moral clarity and the moral courage to confront the deep rot of antisemitism at Columbia’s core.”

But Columbia’s problems didn’t stop with the encampment. In late April, student protesters occupied a campus administrative building, leading to hundreds of arrests by police. (The charges have since been dropped against most student protesters.) 

Two days later, President Joe Biden condemned unlawful protests at U.S. universities. “Destroying property is not a peaceful protest. It’s against the law. Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduation — none of this is a peaceful protest,” he said in a White House address in May. “It’s against the law.”

In May, the faculty of arts and sciences — which was mostly supportive of the anti-Israel encampment — approved a vote of no confidence in Shafik. 

Columbia made news earlier this month when three deans who had been placed on leave over exchanging antisemitic text messages resigned. 

And as recently as this week, lawmakers demanded that the school reimburse the New York Police Department for costs incurred in clearing the encampment on the Columbia campus.

Brian Cohen, executive director of Columbia/Barnard Hillel, declined to comment on Shafik’s departure but praised Armstrong’s appointment as interim president. 

“I think very highly of Dr. Armstrong and I know many colleagues feel the same way,” Cohen told JI. “She is a strong leader — when there were issues that needed to be addressed at the Medical Center, Dr. Armstrong was quick to respond and to address the issues.”

Jewish Insider Congressional correspondent Emily Jacobs contributed to this report.

The three Columbia University deans who were placed on leave in June after exchanging antisemitic text messages will resign, a university official confirmed to Jewish Insider on Thursday.  

The resignations come more than one month after several students told JI that the original announcement from Columbia administration was “confusing” and “intentionally ambiguous.” The June 20 announcement from President Minouche Shafik referenced the “permanent removal” of the three — Susan Chang-Kim, vice dean and chief administrative officer; Cristen Kromm, dean of undergraduate student life; and Matthew Patashnick, associate dean for student and family support — but added that they “remain on leave.” 

The controversial texts, first reported by The Free Beacon, occurred during a May 31 panel titled “Jewish Life on Campus: Past, Present and Future.” In the exchange, the administrators seemed to belittle the concerns of Jewish students amid a sharp rise in antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment on campus. 

The text messages, which have since been published by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which opened an investigation into the incident and demanded a full transcript of the texts, included a message from Chang-Kim at 1:46 p.m. reading, “Comes from such a place of privilege … hard to hear the woe is me, we need to huddle at the Kraft center. Huh??” At 2:06 p.m., Kromm wrote, “Amazing what $$$$ can do” during a speech about an October 2023 Columbia Spectator op-ed by a campus rabbi.

A fourth administrator, Dean of Columbia College Josef Sorett, also participated in the exchange but to a lesser extent. Shafik said at the time that disciplinary action would not be taken against Sorett, as “he has apologized and taken full responsibility, committing to the work and collaboration necessary to heal the community and learn from this moment, and make sure nothing like this ever happens again.” 

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said in a statement on Thursday that it was “about time” the deans step down. “Actions have consequences and Columbia should have fired all four of these deans months ago,” Foxx said. 

Foxx condemned Columbia for sending “mixed signals” by allowing Sorrett to remain on staff. 

A spokesperson for Columbia University confirmed to JI that the three deans are resigning but declined to provide further detail. 

The resignations, which were first reported by The New York Times come as the Columbia community is bracing for another surge of anti-Israel and pro-Hamas activity, which overtook the campus throughout the 2023-24 academic year. 

Several incidents have already occurred this week — before the fall semester begins. Early Thursday morning, vandals attacked the Brooklyn Heights apartment building of the university’s chief operating officer, Cas Holloway, who is Jewish, splashing the building with painted red triangles, a symbol associated with Hamas terrorists. 

The perpetrators also released insects into the building and distributed posters throughout the lobby that read, “You signed off on police brutality. Now you want to expel us?” a reference to the illegal anti-Israel encampments and subsequent disciplinary action — including the shutdown of the university —  that took place in the spring.  

On Monday, five Columbia students and graduates filed a class action lawsuit against students and activists involved with the encampments, which reportedly consisted of weeks of threatening chants such as “Death to Israel,” “Death to America,” “Death to Jews,” and “Hamas we love you.”  The case includes Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) as defendants. 

Earlier this week, the group Columbia University Apartheid Divest wrote in an Instagram post that it is “fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization.” CUAD, a coalition formed in 2016, has gained renewed support since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks, with at least 80 student groups at Columbia joining the coalition. 

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), the chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, threatened to subpoena Columbia University on Thursday, accusing the school of failing to provide documents the committee requested as part of its antisemitism investigation.

“In many cases, these items were requested months ago. Columbia’s continued failure to produce these priority items is unacceptable, and if this is not promptly rectified, the Committee is prepared to compel their production,” Foxx wrote in a letter to Columbia President Minouche Shafik and board of trustees co-chairs Claire Shipman and David Greenwald.

Foxx said that if the school does not fulfill her requests by noon on Aug. 8 — one week from Thursday — the committee “is prepared to issue subpoenas.”

A Columbia spokesperson told JI that the school has “received the Chairwoman’s letter and we are reviewing it. We are committed to combatting antisemitism and all forms of hate.”

The letter outlines a series of document requests and warnings provided to Columbia, which Foxx said the school has repeatedly failed to properly fulfill.

Foxx said the school has only provided text messages from two of the eight administrators and two of the 10 trustees the committee had designated as priorities, and that the provided messages did not cover the requested time period. She said Columbia has also refused to confirm whether it has collected messages from the other individuals.

She said Columbia has also failed to produce records from board of trustees meetings and a list of disciplinary cases relating to antisemitism, instead largely providing information that is already public, which Foxx described as of “limited value.”

Columbia would be the second school after Harvard University to receive a subpoena from the committee. Foxx said that Harvard had failed to properly fulfill that subpoena, but no further public action has been taken in response to that alleged obstruction.

Jewish student leaders at Columbia University were flummoxed on Monday following a “confusing” and “intentionally ambiguous” announcement by President Minouche Shafik that three administrators had been removed from their posts for text messages that veered into antisemitism during a May panel on Jewish life at the university.

The statement from Shafik and Provost Angela Olinto referenced the “permanent removal” of the three — Susan Chang-Kim, vice dean and chief administrative officer; Cristen Kromm, dean of undergraduate student life; and Matthew Patashnick, associate dean for student and family support — but added that they “remain on leave.”

Eliana Goldin, a rising fourth-year political science major pursuing a dual degree at the Jewish Theological Seminary, told Jewish Insider that the wording “was intentionally left ambiguous so that students would think some sort of concrete action was being taken by the university.”

“This mirrors the lack of equivocal condemnation of the antisemitic condemnation of the antisemitic administrators,” Goldin, co-chair of Aryeh, a pro-Israel club associated with Hillel on campus, continued. “In reality, the university is trying to skirt responsibility and using bureaucratic measures to avoid taking real responsibility.”

A Columbia University spokesperson told CNN that the three officials are still employed by the university.

The controversial texts occurred during a May 31 panel titled “Jewish Life on Campus: Past, Present and Future,” and in the exchange the administrators seemed to belittle the concerns of Jewish students amid a sharp rise in antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment on campus. 

The text messages, which have since been published by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which has opened an investigation into the incident and demanded a full transcript of the texts, included a message from Chang-Kim at 1:46 p.m. reading, “Comes from such a place of privilege… hard to hear the woe is me, we need to huddle at the Kraft center. Huh??” At 2:06 p.m., Kromm wrote, “Amazing what $$$$ can do” during a speech about an October 2023 Columbia Spectator op-ed by a campus rabbi.

A fourth administrator, Dean of Columbia College Josef Sorett, also participated in the exchange but to a lesser extent. Shafik said that disciplinary action would not be taken against Sorett, as “he has apologized and taken full responsibility, committing to the work and collaboration necessary to heal the community and learn from this moment, and make sure nothing like this ever happens again.” The other three administrators were placed on leave on June 20 and were under university investigation for their participation in the exchange. 

A spokesperson for Columbia University declined to elaborate to JI on the wording of Shafik’s statement. 

“This incident revealed behavior and sentiments that were not only unprofessional, but also, disturbingly touched on ancient antisemitic tropes,” Shafik wrote on Monday. “Whether intended as such or not, these sentiments are unacceptable and deeply upsetting, conveying a lack of seriousness about the concerns and the experiences of members of our Jewish community that is antithetical to our University’s values and the standards we must uphold in our community.”

Shafik also wrote that the university “will launch a vigorous program of antisemitism and anti discrimination training for faculty and staff this fall, with related training for students under the auspices of University Life.” The university will release more information about the training throughout the summer, Olinto wrote. 

“I am encouraged that President Shafik removed the deans, but I am confused by the wording,” Noah Lederman, a rising sophomore studying philosophy and pre-law who was part of the delegation of Jewish students who attended a Congressional hearing on antisemitism at Columbia in the spring, told JI. 

In February, Lederman was heading back to his dorm from a pro-Israel demonstration, wearing a shirt with an Israeli flag, when he was “physically assaulted by a masked individual right outside of the Northwest Corner Building on Broadway and 120th Street,” he told JI at the time. 

Lederman, who is the student president of Columbia’s Meor chapter, which runs campus social events tied to study of traditional Jewish texts, added of Monday’s announcement, “This reads to me as every other email has; very performative. It sounds like this was phrased in a way to make people believe the administrators were being fired… the ambiguity is unprofessional. Be forthright about what’s going on.” 

A spokesperson for Virginia Foxx, (R-NC) who oversaw the House Committee on Education and the Workforce investigation into the texts, told the Columbia Spectator on Monday that the removals are “not enough” and that Columbia is “far from off the hook.” 

Columbia University administrators mocked concerns in the Jewish community about antisemitism and anti-Israel activity on campus, as well as accused the community of using the issue for financial and other gain, in private text messages released on Tuesday by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Some of the text messages, exchanged between administrators during a panel on Jewish life on campus, were revealed last month in a Washington Free Beacon report, which included images of the text chat captured by an onlooker. The full text chat, requested by the committee, reveals a further level of vitriol.

Speakers on the panel included former Columbia Law School Dean David Schizer, who leads the school’s antisemitism task force; Brian Cohen, the executive director of Columbia’s Kraft Center for Jewish Life; Ian Rottenberg, the school’s dean of religious life; and Rebecca Massel, a journalist with the Columbia Daily Spectator. 

The exact context of some of the messages, many of which appear to be in response to specific comments made by members of the panel, is not clear.

Susan Chang-Kim, the chief administrator of Columbia College; Cristen Kromm, dean of undergraduate student life; and Matthew Patashnick, associate dean of student and family support, have all been placed on leave following the Free Beacon’s original report regarding the messages. The texts from the officials appeared to downplay and denigrate the concerns expressed by the Jewish campus leaders and students. Josef Sorett, the dean of Columbia College, was also involved in the chain, and remains in his post.

“Comes from such a place of privilege… hard to hear the woe is me, we need to huddle at the Kraft center. Huh??” Chang texted the group.

Kromm agreed, emphasizing the needs and interests of anti-Zionist Jews. “Yup. Blind to the idea that non-Israel supporting Jews have no space to come together.”

Chang responded that she was “trying to be open minded to understand but the doors are closing.”

At the end of the panel, Kromm sent two vomiting emojis into the chat, to which Chang-Kim responded, “I’m going to throw up.”

Kromm added, “amazing what $$$$ can do.”

Kromm and Patashnick mocked at least one of the speakers for, they suggested, trying to portray himself as a “hero,” a notion that Sorett laughed at.

The administrators also dismissed the concerns raised by Columbia Hillel’s Cohen as disingenuous or a ploy for other interests.

“He knows exactly what he’s doing and how to take full advantage of this moment. Huge fundraising potential,” Patashnick said, a sentiment that was endorsed by Chang-Kim and Kromm.

“He is such a problem!!!” Chang-Kim said of one of the speakers. “Painting our students as dangerous.”

Patashnick also complained that speakers were “laying the case to expand physical space!” adding, “they will have their own dorm soon.”

Kromm lamented, “if only every identity community had these resources and support.”

The officials also dismissed the notion that Jewish students were expelled from clubs for their identities, and largely brushed off accusations that some Columbia students had expressed support for Hamas.

Chang-Kim called the panel “difficult to listen to,” with which Sorett agreed, while Kromm called one of the speakers “strategic” in his portrayal of events on campus.

Chang-Kim also appeared to question why the issue was a subject of discussion for Columbia’s board of trustees.

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), the chair of the House committee, condemned the officials in a statement.

“Jewish students deserve better than to have harassment and threats against them dismissed as ‘privilege,’ and Jewish faculty members deserve better than to be mocked by their colleagues,” said Foxx. “These text messages once again confirm the need for serious accountability across Columbia’s campus.”

Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA), closing out his second term on Capitol Hill, has emerged as a prominent, pragmatic voice among younger members of the Democratic caucus, and is seen as a potential leader on key issues. 

Jewish Insider’s Editor-in-Chief Josh Kraushaar and senior congressional correspondent Marc Rod sat down with Auchincloss, who is Jewish, for nearly an hour in his Capitol Hill office last week to discuss the state of the Democratic Party, the situation in the Middle East, antisemitism, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s upcoming address to Congress — and more.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Jewish Insider: What [lessons] do you read from that pretty decisive victory from George Latimer [over Rep. Jamaal Bowman] in New York?

Auchincloss: I would caution any pundit from extrapolating from that race to broader dynamics. There was a lot going in there that is idiosyncratic to that district. There is Jamaal’s break with the president on [the] bipartisan infrastructure [bill]. There’s obviously some of his own unforced errors in regards to both constituent communications and engagement, and also actions here on the Hill. It’s got a big Jewish community there, very engaged Jewish community. You’ve got Oct. 7 as a catalyzing agent, a challenger who is already very well-vested in the community. I know it’s an attractive proposition to take a single primary with — how many people voted, like 30,000? — I would caution against extrapolation.

JI: It seems like rock-solid support for Israel is at a low point in the Democratic Party, at least in [the time you’ve been on the Hill]. Is it possible to get back, in the Democratic Party, to the pre-Oct. 7 point and what would have to happen to make that happen?

JA: Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, the three most prominent Democrats on Capitol Hill, in Washington — strongly pro-Israel. The Democratic Party remains a pro-Israel party. 

We have an under-30 problem, for sure. So I worry more about Congress 20 years from now than I do Congress today — you saw the vote tally for Israel … But I do worry about the next generation, and that is going to require addressing not just Gaza, but also the West Bank. And in some ways, the West Bank is going to be equally as important as Gaza, because much of Netanyahu’s strategy over the last decade was about destabilizing both … The Israelis need to stop with expansion of settlement activity … In terms of antisemitism, as I’ve said before, the Democratic Party can’t have double standards on antisemitism, and we should look at the Labour Party in Great Britain as a warning.

JI: Is the [Democratic] party headed in that direction?

JA: No, the mainstream of the party is not. And yet, I will say that your values are communicated by the fights that you’re willing to pick … Just because the mainstream of the Democratic Party, I believe, solidly understands and opposes antisemitism, does not mean that that value gets communicated effectively if we do not condemn, name, shame antisemitic elements, and that includes what’s happening on college campuses. 

JI: Rashida Tlaib spoke at a conference where there was promotion of terrorism, PFLP affiliates in Michigan. Very few Democrats — a couple spoke out — but very few wanted to comment, that we talked to. Do Democrats need to speak out when there are these episodes within the party?

JA: It’s unacceptable, yes. And I think we also, though, have to be cautious that we are not injecting oxygen in a way that takes a spark and makes it into a fire, right?… Some things we’re going to say, ‘Hey, this is best just marginalized by silence.’ But I think other things, like when individuals are claiming that allegations of rape or sexual violence after Oct. 7 are propaganda — that’s unacceptable, that needs to be said.

JI: What are you looking at and thinking about ahead of [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s] congressional speech? What are you hoping to hear from him? What are you afraid that [he’ll say]?

JA: What I’m hoping is that he’s going to tell us he’s going to call elections. That’s what I’m hoping for … What I want to hear is a concrete proposal for day-of governance to defeat Hamas. The president’s 10 points that he put forward a month ago, month and a half ago — [including bringing the] hostages home [and the] permanent defeat of Hamas — those two remain the objectives, and I think the prime minister needs to articulate how he does that and and not do hand-waving of ‘Military now, governance later.’ It’s got to be how we’re going to do military and governance intertwined.

JI: What is your sense of how [Netanyahu’s speech is] going to play on Capitol Hill, and could this hurt the cause of support for Israel, within your party especially?

JA: It’s up to how the prime minister addresses Congress. If it’s a repeat of 2015, yeah, it’s going to hurt. I’m attending out of respect for the U.S.-Israel relationship, which I think is critical … but if the prime minister criticizes Joe Biden directly, I’m walking out of that speech …  and I would encourage Democrats broadly to make that our approach.

JI: Hamas has repeatedly turned down this [cease-fire] deal, has repeatedly shifted the goalposts … If there isn’t a deal that is achievable here, what does the path forward look like? Do you think that the administration should be supporting Israel continuing its military operations, at that point, until it feels that it’s done? Or do you think that there needs to be sort of a movement by Israel to unilaterally start winding things down at this point, regardless?

JA: I’m not sure it’s a binary like that. Actually, I would argue that they have to be synthesized. My criticism of Netanyahu has never been that he argues that military force is necessary in Israel. I have, to date, still not said that there should be a permanent cease-fire there, because I continue to believe that Israel needs to use military force to degrade Hamas’ capabilities, to control the security perimeter around Gaza, to put pressure on Hamas to negotiate, right? So I think all those things are true. 

My criticism of Netanyahu has always been that he has not twinned that military pressure with a governance strategy. And people call it, oftentimes, the day-after approach. I actually reject that term because it implies a sequentiality that I don’t think exists. It is parallel. It is day-of. You’ve got to be attacking Hamas and, same day, in north, central, even south Gaza, empowering elements of — and it will be probably the Palestinian Authority — to provide security, economic development, infrastructure maintenance.

JI: Do you think Hamas can be, in the language of Netanyahu, defeated in Gaza?

JA: Yes, is the short answer. People like to say, ‘Oh, you can’t defeat an ideology,’ as though we should just all just throw up our hands and be like, ‘Yeah, you’re right. Hamas should just get to do whatever they want.’ No, we can. We can defeat Hamas. Does that mean that there is no human being in Gaza who subscribes to Islamist terrorism? No, of course, not … If you go back to the classic definition of a state as having a monopoly on the organized use of violence and depriving Hamas of the levers of statehood, of having a monopoly on the organized use of violence, 100% we can defeat Hamas. We will not defeat Hamas purely with [bullets] or [bombs]. We will defeat Hamas because there will be an alternative that the people of Gaza find more compelling. 

Part of defeating them is also looking at the education system in Gaza, [which] I think is really critical. People are looking for this easy, knee-jerk bow tie: ‘Oh we’re going to recognize Palestinian statehood, be able to walk away and we’ve done it.’ I think it’s a lot harder. It’s incremental gains in security, infrastructure, economic development, education that just increase standards of living for Palestinians so that they are not being educated into or subscribe to a death cult’s ideology.

JI: This Saudi deal that’s being talked about, they’re apparently asking a lot of the U.S.: more advanced weapons, defense guarantees, domestic nuclear enrichment. Are those things that you’d be amenable to the U.S. providing, if it [helps achieve] regional normalization?

JA: I strongly support the Abraham Accords. I strongly support, obviously, Saudi recognition of Israel and Saudi entrance into the Abraham Accords. I am deeply skeptical of a defense guarantee [from] the United States for Saudi Arabia. I understand what Saudi Arabia gets out of that. I’m not totally sure [what] we get out of that, what Israel gets out of that … I would want to see, also, significant capital, both financial and political, from the Saudis for Gaza as well. The Arab states have done nothing for the Palestinian people for a century. It’s time for that to change, and that needs to be part of a deal.

JI: How are you looking at Qatar right now?

JA: A necessary evil. They’re the interlocutor, obviously, between us and Hamas. I’m not, obviously, in the conversations about the exact ways to calibrate pressure on Hamas’ political arm in Qatar; I agree that we should put more pressure on them, to the extent that we can, to accept the deal, the temporary cease-fire. I also understand that if you do it too much, and they end up in the Sahel [in Northern Africa], and we lose all contact with the political wing of Hamas, we don’t have an interlocutor. I’m not sure that serves the purposes of the hostages, either.

JI: The foreign funding from Qatar has been reported as sort of a leading driver for some of the problems of antisemitism on campus? Is there anything legislatively that can be done to address foreign interference or foreign money going into universities?

JA: I think that needs to be explored as part of the tax deal [in the] next Congress about tax treatment for universities that take significant amounts of or have significant connections to Islamist ideology.

JI: On the taxes issue — does the administration need to start really putting teeth into these investigations and start threatening or actually taking away tax-exempt status and federal funding from these schools?

JA: Obviously there’s a range of repercussions available as part of OCR investigations. Today, I couldn’t point to an example where I say, ‘Oh, the administration should have been tougher in this sense.’ And so I am reluctant to say that. I will say, as part of the tax deal, that needs to be part of the conversation … We benefit from immigration, we benefit from the fact that other countries want to invest in and send their students to our universities. I’m very liberal on this concept. We also have to recognize that in this there are a couple of bugs in that operating system, and one of them is that, in the same way that Saudi and Qatar are trying to launder their money through golf or through other outfits, they’re trying to do it through education as well, and we do have to be cognizant of that. The same way that I was a co-lead of the TikTok bill we can’t allow the next generation of Americans to be inculcated in a fundamentally anti-American ideology.

JI: You’ve got a lot of colleges and universities [near] your district … What do they need to be doing over the summer, proactively to prepare for [the fall semester] and to, you know, have better responses ready to go in the fall [to antisemitic activity]?

JA: At a high level, enforce their own rules and boundaries. And this was one of the reasons I voted against the Antisemitism Awareness Act. These colleges already have time, place and manner restrictions. They already have Title VI compliance rules that they just under-enforced or downright ignored. I talked about this with … a president of a prominent university who has done a good job. I was like, ‘What’s your secret?’ And he was like, ‘I just enforced what the rules are.’

JI: Your vote against the [Antisemitism Awareness Act] stood out — tell us a little bit about your thinking on that front?

Auchincloss: It opens a constitutional can of worms. It codifies cancel culture on campus. And I’m opposed to cancel culture. And it solves no problem … We don’t need to update congressional statute. We need these faculty and university leadership to enforce their own time, place and manner restrictions, and then we need to fund OCR at the Department of Education to prosecute universities that are failing… 

I saw the potential downside of it being misappropriated to chill speech. And you can see that happening. No other protected class has a single and solitary definition … I think that facts and context and evolving societal understanding should matter in this … What we need these universities to be is ‘small l’ liberal. The Jews have thrived in liberal, open, meritocratic environments. What we do not want to do is double down on, I think, is identitarian politics. I do not think that in the long run, that is going to serve the Jewish people.

JI: That loops into this debate that is happening in the Jewish community about [Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs], which is, do DEI programs need to be expanded to better include Jews, or should they be dismantled because they’ve been shown to have, it seems like, ingrained bias or failure to recognize the situation of Jewish people?

JA: I prefer the word pluralism, because it’s really what we’re talking about — at least how I interpret the intentions behind DEI. Pluralism is a very old American idea. If you read the 2018 Harvard statement on inclusion and belonging that [Harvard political science professor] Danielle Allen wrote — that version of I think she called it pluralism, but probably today would be called DEI — that version, to me, is conducive to a suitable learning environment.

JI: We saw in New York that the people who occupied Hamilton Hall [at Columbia University] were not charged, most of them at least, at the White House vandalizing statues — I don’t think any of them have been charged. Are you concerned about that?

JA: More broadly about property and violent crime being under-enforced — I’ve always been opposed to that. I disagreed with the decision by a previous Boston [district attorney] to blanket take 20 property crimes and say she proactively was not going to prosecute … I’m a law-and-order liberal. I believe that we should be prosecuting property and violent crime assertively, including this.

It was meant to be the most exciting year of her life, but for Amit, an Israeli student now wrapping up a yearlong fellowship at Columbia University, it was an experience that she described as “toxic” and one that she would not recommend to future applicants from her country.

“We were supposed to be these very prestigious students that the university is happy to have, they even gave me a big scholarship and so theoretically my program should have been very proud to have me,” Amit, who asked that her real name not be used for fear of retribution from the department and faculty assessing her final research paper, told Jewish Insider. “But it has not been a good experience at all, and if another Israeli applicant came to me to ask if they should do this, I would tell them not to.”

A graduate student in the School of Arts and Science at the Ivy League college that has been an epicenter of anti-Israel activity since the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks, Amit said the negative experience stemmed from “a whole dynamic of covert and overt situations.”

Those situations have ranged from threatening demonstrations on campus to hostile and ignorant peers to faculty who essentially erased her and her experience as an Israeli. Now that the year is over, Amit said, “I feel like the acid is leaving my system, it was just so toxic, and I am very disappointed.”

Amit is one of hundreds of Israeli students who traveled to the U.S. in the last year to enrich their academic knowledge and enhance their professional skills, but who found themselves the targets of fierce anti-Israel activists, as Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza played out.

Beginning on Oct. 7, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists invaded Israel from the Palestinian enclave, murdering, raping and taking hostage hundreds of people, mostly civilians, and through to the hostile anti-Israel encampments that sprung up on campuses during the spring semester, many Israelis studying in the U.S. have experienced both the pain of the attacks and the negative climate on campus.

Experiences like that of Amit, who told JI that she felt “canceled” by the director of her department and had been denied the chance to engage in open dialogue with those attacking Israel, and her, have cast a dark shadow — especially over high-level programs — giving pause to future Israeli fellows, doctoral and postdoctoral students who are considering studying in the U.S.

“I really hope that what we’ve been seeing on social media is an exaggeration,” Yana, an Israeli who is heading to the Harvard Kennedy School of Government this summer on an Israeli Policy Fellowship, told JI. She also asked that her real name not be used out of concern that it could impact her experience. 

“I feel confident that the majority of the people I meet there will see me face to face and maybe we’ll have tough and challenging conversations, but I’m pretty sure that I will at least be able to talk to them,” she said, admitting that as much as she is excited about the program, she is also nervous.  

“I haven’t done all the things I did to get accepted in order to be low-profile or hide at the side of the road,” said Yana, an Israeli who is heading to the Harvard Kennedy School of Government this summer on an Israeli Policy Fellowship. “It’s very easy for Israelis to say, ‘This is too hard, they hate us, they are all antisemites, so we are letting go of these platforms,’ but I think we have to keep making efforts to convince Israelis that these programs are important, they are important for us now and important for our future.”

“I hope that when I say I served in the IDF, people will not cancel me, but I’m not sure,” Yana continued, describing how she has already been deliberating whether she should stay away from studying subjects that might cause friction.

“I hope it won’t be like that, but I am still being cautious,” she said, pondering how free she will be to express herself and how her future professors might respond.

Yana said that studying at an Ivy League college in the U.S. was a long-term dream, but that she has also received a mixed response from family and friends in Israel.  

“Two years ago, even one year ago, people would have been so proud of me for being accepted to Harvard,” she recounted. “But even while I was going through the application process, I got a lot of criticism. My closest friends were not pleased about it and my father was really angry with me. He said, ‘You’re going to pay them so much money and they’re against you – why would you do that?’ He did not understand why I wanted to go there.”

Her family and friends also expressed concerns for her safety on a campus that has become increasingly hostile to Jews, and Israelis in particular, she said.

“As an outspoken Israeli student who supports my country, over time, I had to deal with a level of social isolation,” said Barak Sella, who recently completed the mid-career Masters Degree in Public Administration at Harvard’s Kennedy School. “This wasn’t from antisemitism but mainly because most people just wanted to avoid the conversation.”

But, Yana added, that she would not be deterred by the anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric.

“I haven’t done all the things I did to get accepted in order to be low-profile or hide at the side of the road,” she said, adding, “It’s very easy for Israelis to say, ‘This is too hard, they hate us, they are all antisemites, so we are letting go of these platforms,’ but I think we have to keep making efforts to convince Israelis that these programs are important, they are important for us now and important for our future.”

Barak Sella, who recently completed the mid-career Masters Degree in Public Administration, also at Harvard’s Kennedy School, similarly described his experience as toxic.

“I went to Harvard to experience an international cohort and expand my network and intellectual horizons,” Sella, previously the executive director for the Reut Institute, an Israeli strategy and leadership think tank, told JI. “I aimed to gain skills and insights that would help enhance my leadership skills and impact within Israeli society.”

While he described his American campus experience up until Oct. 7 as “fantastic,” as one of around 20 Israelis in a program of some 200 students, Sella said it soon became very difficult.

“There were many sessions and protests against Israel, and being visibly Israeli was a burden,” he said, describing how the debate over Israel, its actions, and its right to exist ended up permeating into every subject – even topics that were totally unrelated to the Middle East.

Whenever he tried to speak up and defend Israel, Sella said, “I was rudely shut down.”

“As an outspoken Israeli student who supports my country, over time, I had to deal with a level of social isolation,” he continued. “This wasn’t from antisemitism but mainly because most people just wanted to avoid the conversation.”

“Most students at Harvard are not antisemitic or anti-Israel – that is just a loud but small minority – the majority of students are thoughtful and moderate people who are interested in creating relations with Israeli students,” Sella added.

While the protests were noisy, Sella said the main problem with them was that they “see Israeli identity as illegitimate … that is why Israelis must continue to apply and participate in these programs.”

“We just can’t give in to this type of behavior,” he emphasized. “We need to double down and ensure a solid and high-quality Israeli presence on campuses.”

While a new batch of Israeli students is set to arrive in the U.S. over the summer, some prestigious programs – and donors supporting these programs – have already been impacted by antisemitic and anti-Israel activities on campus and the failure by some schools to confront it.

In October, the Wexner Foundation abruptly announced the end of a 30-year relationship with Harvard and its Kennedy School, citing the university’s failure to condemn Hamas’ barbaric attacks on Israel. Its statement described an environment in which Israeli students – emerging leaders there to study a mid-career master’s degree and forge important relationships with other local and international fellows – were increasingly being marginalized.

Elad Arad, an Israeli studying for a post-doctorate in chemical engineering at Columbia, said it was critical for Israelis to remain present at top U.S. academic institutions, not only to act as ambassadors for their country, which is feeling more and more isolated, but also to ensure the future of Israeli academia and research, particularly in the field of science.

Not having the opportunity to study abroad, he noted, would contribute to a reduction in academic levels within Israel’s higher education system.

“No one will give me a faculty position without having a postdoc from an Ivy League institution or a well-known institution or university,” Arad said, explaining, “I need to be here for two reasons, the first is prestige and the second that it is much easier to get my [research] work published and make an impact, if it is coming out of a place like these universities.”

He said he had heard about other postdoctoral students rethinking the option of studying abroad, deciding that it might be best to wait until the war ends or to study in Europe, instead of the U.S.

“The main problem is that many of the postdocs already here are afraid to go back to Israel because they think that from there, they will not be able to publish any papers at all and that will end their academic career,” Arad said, adding that could have an impact not only the future of Israeli academia but also on its thriving innovation sector.

Sender Cohen, chairman of the board of the Fulbright Fellowship in Israel, told JI that all these programs were “critically important because they build academic bridges,” in both the short and long term across disciplines.

“It would be heartbreaking for Israelis to miss the opportunity to study in the U.S. and for American universities to lose the intellectual contribution that Israelis offer. We just cannot let that happen,” Professor David Schizer, who served as the dean of Columbia’s Law School from 2004-2014, told JI. “I recognize that some Israelis may be hesitant to come to the U.S., but I would encourage them to come.”

“History has shown that a lot of the Fulbrighters have gone on to great things in universities or in government or in research institutions, and they utilize the relationships formed on the program,” he said.

“For example, those who go to military colleges, the officers get to know each other and then they become generals, they build personal relationships,” Cohen added. “It’s the same with the Fulbright fellows, you have all these brilliant academics spending time together in these departments and then they might end up leading research or becoming the president of a university or even a secretary of education.”

Professor David Schizer, who served as the dean of Columbia’s Law School from 2004-2014, told JI that “it would be heartbreaking for Israelis to miss the opportunity to study in the U.S. and for American universities to lose the intellectual contribution that Israelis offer.”

“We just cannot let that happen,” Schizer, who is now a co-chair of the university’s task force on antisemitism, said. “I recognize that some Israelis may be hesitant to come to the U.S., but I would encourage them to come.”

He said that American universities, including Columbia, needed to be doing much more to ensure that Israeli students feel “safe and welcome on their campuses.”

“Unfortunately, it has been a difficult year,” Schizer explained. “There have been a number of absolutely unacceptable instances in which Israeli students have experienced discrimination based only on their country of origin, and that problem has to be fixed.”

“Israeli students are enormously valuable as members of the Columbia community,” he said, referring to his own institution. “It’s critical that the university ensures that they have the excellent experience that they deserve.”

Schizer, who lectures in law and economics, said that this was not only “a moral obligation because Columbia is committed to the idea of not discriminating based on national origin,” but also a legal one.  

Under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, “universities that accept federal funding are not allowed to discriminate based on race, color, or national origin,” he said. “Israeli students are entitled to the same experience that any other student is entitled to have.”

Both Schizer and Cohen said there are some efforts underway to address the toxic experiences Israeli students described from the last academic year.

At Columbia, Schizer said the antisemitism task force had put together a list of recommendations for university’s leadership, including suggestions that future anti-Israel protests be contained to “a designated part of campus,” and that it “enforces its own rules more effectively.”

“We looked into why the university has, at times, failed to enforce its own rules,” he said. “We found that in most cases it was because the bureaucracy at the university was not trained to deal with a situation like the one we had and was not properly prepared, perhaps they didn’t even recognize that times have changed.”

“It can’t be solved overnight, it’s like turning a supertanker,” said Cohen, noting that some major university donors, both Jewish and non-Jewish, are “pulling back in a way that is having an effect.”

He said he believed that some schools, where Israeli and Jewish students were particularly mistreated, would likely see their funding cut, while other universities and individual departments might see their funding increase.

“I’m not actually too worried about it for the long term because at a lot of these universities, the actual people who are in charge, are pragmatic centrists,” Cohen said. “And, I think, everyone realizes there’s a problem.”  

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) is declining to criticize his alma mater’s decision to divest from Israel and from other companies involved in  Israel’s war in Gaza, despite serving on the school’s board of trustees. 

The school, which has a partnership with Columbia University, announced earlier this month that its trustees had voted to implement a divestment plan through the board’s investment committee. 

“Our screens already prevent investments in armaments, weapons, and defense manufacturers, as well as companies that participate in human rights violations. Managing our endowment in a manner that actively seeks the good and leverages our resources to reduce harm is an ongoing process, and we will remain committed to these principles into the future,” the trustees said at the time. 

The trustees said that they had been “working on this decision since November of 2023,” one month after the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks against Israel. 

Warnock earned both his master’s degree and his doctorate at the Union Theological Seminary, graduating with honors in 2006. He joined the board of trustees in the late 2010s, though he hasn’t actively attended meetings or participated in votes in recent years. 

Reached at the Capitol last week by Jewish Insider, Warnock denied being a trustee despite him still being listed on the school’s website as a member. An addendum to Warnock’s listing on the site was added after JI’s request for comment, with the senator now being described as on an “indefinite leave of absence.”

Warnock’s office did not respond to JI’s numerous requests for comment about whether he supported the school’s decision, which came after anti-Israel encampments took over Columbia’s campus for weeks, resulting in a number of violent and antisemitic demonstrations, some of which were directly aimed at Jewish students. 

For his part, Warnock has been critical of Israel’s war in Gaza while condemning Hamas for the Oct. 7 attack. He has signed on to or led multiple statements calling for a cease-fire paired with the release of the hostages. 

The Georgia senator, who also serves as senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, was confronted by a group of anti-Israel protesters while delivering a sermon in March. The group was seen wearing matching shirts that read “Stop Arming Israel” as they quietly stood up and exited the church during Warnock’s sermon.

“I want to thank God for the students and the young folk. I wish they’d hang out, so we could talk after church. Let them know that they’re welcome to stay. Let’s talk after church,” Warnock said as the protesters left. 

Reached by JI for this story, a representative for the school pointed to its initial statement on the divestment, which said, “To be clear, as we take these actions, we remain unequivocal in our denouncement of the horrific killing by Hamas of Israeli citizens on October 7, 2023, and call for the immediate release of all hostages. With respect to both Palestine and Israel, we affirm their right to secure existence and self-determination.”

Hundreds of Jewish Columbia University students signed on to an open letter to the university community on Wednesday, declaring that they are “proud to be Zionists” while speaking out against the anti-Israel protesters that have engulfed the Ivy League campus since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks. 

The letter, titled “In Our Name,” was authored by four students — Eliana Goldin ‘25; Elisha Baker ‘26; Eden Yadegar ‘25 and Rivka Yellin, Barnard College ‘26. By Wednesday night, it garnered more than 400 signatures. 

“Over the past six months, many have spoken in our name,” the letter opens. “We are here, writing to you as Jewish students at Columbia University, who are connected to our community and deeply engaged with our culture and history. We would like to speak in our name.”

“Most of us did not choose to be political activists,” the students wrote. “We do not bang on drums and chant catchy slogans. We are average students, just trying to make it through finals much like the rest of you.”

“If the last six months on campus have taught us anything, it is that a large and vocal population of the Columbia community does not understand the meaning of Zionism, and subsequently does not understand the essence of the Jewish People,” the letter continued. “Yet despite the fact that we have been calling out the antisemitism we’ve been experiencing for months, our concerns have been brushed off and invalidated.”

The letter goes on to reference several incidents that have occurred on campus.: “We sounded the alarm on October 12 when many protested against Israel while our friends’ and families’ dead bodies were still warm. We recoiled when people screamed ‘resist by any means necessary,’ telling us we are “all inbred” and that we ‘have no culture.’ We shuddered when an ‘activist’ held up a sign telling Jewish students they were Hamas’s next targets… We ultimately were not surprised when a leader of the CUAD [Columbia University Against Apartheid] encampment said publicly and proudly that ‘Zionists don’t deserve to live’ and that we’re lucky they are ‘not just going out and murdering Zionists.’ We felt helpless when we watched students and faculty physically block Jewish students from entering parts of the campus we share, or even when they turned their faces away in silence. This silence is familiar. We will never forget.”

“One thing is for sure,” the students wrote. “We will not stop standing up for ourselves. We are proud to be Jews, and we are proud to be Zionists.” 

In an interview with Jewish Insider, Goldin, a third-year political science major pursuing a dual degree at the Jewish Theological Seminary, said that the letter’s conclusion was most significant to her because it emphasizes that “we want to sit down and have a dialogue. The point of a university is to be able to have complex conversations. We even want to sit down with people who are saying ‘globalize the intifada.’” 

The concluding paragraph reads, “We came to Columbia because we wanted to expand our minds and engage in complex conversations. While campus may be riddled with hateful rhetoric and simplistic binaries now, it is never too late to start repairing the fractures and begin developing meaningful relationships across political and religious divides. Our tradition tells us, “Love peace and pursue peace.” We hope you will join us in earnestly pursuing peace, truth, and empathy. Together we can repair our campus.” 

Goldin told JI that “the media is not accurately covering what the Jewish community on campus looks like and this was our way of saying what the Jewish community stands for.” She noted that the letter took two days of “nonstop writing and editing.”  

“It’s important that the entire world sees there is a strong contingent of Jewish students on campus who are Zionists and willing to stand up and speak for that,” Goldin said. “The anti-Zionist Jews are speaking for all Jewish students at Columbia right now and they’re getting a lot of attention, so it’s important for people to see this strong majority of Jewish students who feel otherwise.”

Goldin said that the letter has caught the attention of Jewish students who hadn’t been vocal about support for Israel in the past. “I just got an email from someone Jewish who is not involved with the Jewish community,” she said. “He said the letter really spoke to him and signed on. So I think this has a certain impact within the pro-Israel community.”

“In terms of the anti-Israel community, I’m not sure how much of an impact it can make,” Goldin continued. “But the main purpose of the letter really was to show that amid all the biased media coverage, we will actually speak for ourselves.”

LOS ANGELES — Last week, while college administrators across the U.S. seemed paralyzed over how to respond to campus anti-Israel protesters, one school weighed in with a simple statement that served as a counterweight to the hemming and hawing of elite private universities. “The University of Florida is not a daycare, and we do not treat protesters like children,” a UF spokesperson said, declaring that students in an unauthorized encampment would face disciplinary action if they did not leave. 

The statement achieved every PR flak’s dream: It went viral. Much of the positive attention heaped on the school landed on Ben Sasse, the former Nebraska senator and Yale-educated historian who has been the president of UF since early 2023. (A guest on Fox News on Monday praised Sasse and said, “Don’t be an ass, do it like Sasse.”)

“It isn’t that complicated to affirm free speech and free assembly, which are fundamental American rights and something that institutionally we’re committed to. But that doesn’t mean that the people who are the loudest are the ones who don’t have to obey the rules that everybody else does,” Sasse told Jewish Insider on Monday in a conversation at the Milken Institute Global Forum in Los Angeles. 

For many universities, the seven months since the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks in Israel that sparked a war in the Middle East and touched off a wave of antisemitism in the U.S. have been marked by instability and indecision. Sasse took a stand early, condemning Hamas’ attack soon after Oct. 7 and raising his voice against antisemitism. But when it comes to the encampment on the Gainesville campus, Sasse said his response is only about enforcing rules and not going after students for having opinions with which he disagrees.

Campus rules allow tents on one occasion, said Sasse — tailgating during football season, when tents are allowed only in certain places and for a particular amount of time. “Why would a specific group of protesters get special license that nobody else gets?” he asked. 

“We support folks’ free speech rights, but that includes the right to make an ass and an idiot of yourself, and a lot of the protesters say ridiculously, historically and geographically ignorant things,” Sasse said. There should be a role for universities and educators to play in responding to the content of what protesters are saying, he added, especially when some of their language echoes terrorist talking points.

“We don’t start by trying to prohibit speech, but we do want to ask fundamental questions about whether or not enough education is happening. The paraglider memes that are now replacing Che Guevara on T-shirts is so bizarre. Which paragliders are we talking about — the savages who raped teenage girls at a concert? That’s who you want to be the icon and the sort of shorthand for the movement you’re defending?” Sasse asked. “At the end of the day, there was an instigator that moved on 10/7, and it’s just amazing how quickly stupid and reductionistic so many of the protests have become.”

Sasse, who earned a bachelor’s degree at Harvard and a doctorate in history at Yale, declined to comment specifically on how those or other schools are handling similar issues. But he took an indirect swipe at universities like Columbia and the University of Southern California that have canceled commencement and other university events.

“I don’t make it my business to comment inside other institutions’ management decisions particularly, but I just don’t know who benefits by canceling these commencements. I don’t know who benefits by allowing people to disrupt the opportunity for students who have an exam tomorrow morning to be able to study in the library,” he said. “I know that we suffer as a community when people are spitting on police. I don’t know who benefits by vandalizing buildings. I just don’t understand the leadership decisions that are made in a lot of other places.”

He took the same approach regarding other universities, like Northwestern, that have sat down to negotiate with the protesters and even reach agreements with them. Sasse has no plans to do the same. “We just don’t think it’s prudent or wise or helpful to negotiate with the people who happen to scream the loudest,” Sasse explained. 

UF has more Jewish students than any other university in America, according to data compiled by Hillel International — 6,500 Jewish undergrads and 2,900 Jewish graduate students. Sasse attended a massive seder at the university last month that drew more than 1,000 people. 

“It is a special community. I think everybody feels safe. But I want the feelings to not be subjective, I want it to be because objectively, they are safe,” Sasse said. “Our Jewish Gators, as they call themselves, feel like it’s a pretty darn special place to be right now.”

As universities around the country strike various deals with anti-Israel protesters to quell the turmoil on college campuses — including giving protesters a seat at the table regarding investment decisions — Jewish leaders fear that even these largely symbolic concessions could further poison the atmosphere for Jewish students.

Negotiating with protesters sets up a climate in which “Jewish students — who are not violating rules —- are being ignored, bullied and intimidated,” Mark Rotenberg, vice president and general counsel of Hillel International, told Jewish Insider. “People who violate university rules should not be rewarded with financial benefits and rewards for the violation of university rules,” he continued. 

Shira Goodman, senior director of advocacy at the Anti-Defamation League, echoed that the series of deals struck all “ignore the needs of Jewish students increasingly at risk of harassment and intimidation, or worse, on campus.” 

“It is critical to acknowledge the facts on the ground,” Goodman said. “For days and in some cases weeks, anti-Zionist protesters have openly violated school policies and codes of conduct by erecting encampments that have provided cover for students to fan the flames of antisemitism and wreak havoc on the entire campus community… The protesters’ aim and impact on many campuses has been to intimidate and alienate Jewish students for whom Zionism and a connection to Israel is a component of their Jewish identity. They must be held to account, not rewarded for their conduct.” 

The nationwide “Gaza solidarity encampments” began on April 17 at Columbia University. On April 29, Northwestern University set the precedent for conceding to some of the protesters’ demands when its president, Michael Schill, reached an agreement with the activists to end their anti-Israel encampment, in which protesters camped out and engulfed campuses for weeks. 

The protesters — most, but not all, of whom were students — took over buildings, blocked access to throughways, vandalized school property and chanted intimidating, antisemitic slogans while calling for an end to Israel’s war with Hamas and demanding that institutions cut ties with the Jewish state.

The deal at Northwestern complied with several of the students’ demands. These include allowing students to protest until the end of classes on June 1 so long as tents are removed, and to encourage employers not to rescind job offers for student protesters. The school will also allow students to weigh in on university investments — a major concession for students who have been demanding the university to divest from Israeli corporations. 

The Anti-Defamation League, StandWithUs and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law joined together to slam the strategy and call for Schill’s resignation after the agreement was announced. But a handful of schools, including University of Minnesota, Brown University, Rutgers University and University of California, Riverside followed suit — giving into the demands of encampment protesters in an effort to shut them down. 

While all of the agreements center around divesting from Israel, resolutions at each school look different. At Rutgers, a proposed deal reached last Thursday includes divesting from corporations participating in or benefiting from Israel; terminating Rutgers’ partnership with Tel Aviv University; accepting at least 10 displaced students from Gaza; and displaying Palestinian flags alongside other existing international flags on campus. Eight out of the 10 demands were met, while Rutgers students, faculty and alumni continue to push for the two not yet agreed to — an official call for divestment as well as cutting ties with Tel Aviv University.

At Minnesota, meanwhile, protesters packed their tents after a 90-minute meeting with Jeff Ettinger, the school’s interim president. A tentative deal was reached, which could include divestment from companies such as Honeywell and General Dynamics, academic divestment from Israeli universities, transparency about university investments, a statement in support of Palestinian students, a statement in support of Palestinians’ right to self-determination and amnesty for students arrested while protesting (nine people were arrested on campus on April 22). 

In a statement to students and faculty,  Ettinger wrote that coalition representatives will be given the opportunity to address the board of regents at its May 10 meeting to discuss divestment from certain companies. Public disclosure of university investments would be made available by May 7. Ettinger also said that the administration has asked university police not to arrest or charge anyone for participating in encampment activities in the past few days, and will not pursue disciplinary action against students or employees for protesting. 

Rotenberg, who was general counsel of University of Minnesota for 20 years before coming to Hillel, told JI that he is working on a statement objecting to the settlements, which will be addressed to the school’s board of regents. 

“I am hopeful that this is not a trend,” Rotenberg said. “No university can exist if rules violators are rewarded with financial incentives, while students who do abide by the rules are not similarly rewarded,” he continued. “That’s an upside-down world and it cannot be acceptable for individuals who violate university regulations to be given the benefits while our students’ voices are not heard.” 

Rotenberg expressed ire over universities’ lack of consulting with Jewish faculty or students ahead of making the agreements. At Northwestern, seven Jewish members of the university’s antisemitism advisory committee stepped down from the body last Wednesday, citing Schill’s failure to combat antisemitism while quickly accepting the demands of anti-Israel protesters on campus.

“Any meeting with the board of regents at University of Minnesota that relates to these issues, must include Jewish voices — voices of the overwhelming majority of the Jewish community who identify with and support Israel,” Rotenberg said. 

“There are many ways to enforce university time, place and manner regulation that do not involve rewarding violators,” he continued, applauding the University of Connecticut, University of Florida and Columbia University for shutting down encampments while “eliminating the dangers of disruption and violence, without rewarding the violators.” At Columbia, for example, officers in riot gear removed demonstrators who had seized Hamilton Hall and suspended students who refused to dismantle their encampment.

Not all efforts to strike deals have been successful. At University of Chicago, for instance, negotiations to remove encampment tents from the campus central quad were suspended on Sunday, after protesters reached a stalemate with the university president, Paul Alivisatos.

“The Jewish community is right to be outraged,” Miriam Elman, executive director of the Academic Engagement Network, told JI. “You don’t capitulate to groups that are in violation of reasonable restrictions by giving into demands. That is not moral leadership… the right statements are not negotiations with rule violators, but rather say that free expression is a core value but you have to abide by university policy in doing that,” she continued, noting that she has observed a “trend with private universities being more able to weather the storm, as well as just doing better than some of the public universities.” 

Like Rotenberg, Elman singled out Minnesota for its “disheartening” snub of Jews. 

“Their statement [on encampments] had nothing to say to the Jewish community,” Elman said. “Nothing condemning the rank antisemitism on display, in rhetoric and calls for violence against Israeli citizens. How can you not even in one paragraph of your statement condemn how antisemitism has infused these protests?”

In a statement to JI, Jacob Baime, CEO of the Israel on Campus Coalition, called on university administrators to “clear the encampments, equally enforce existing policies, and protect Jewish students and their friends and allies,” without capitulating to “supporters of Hamas.” 

Experts said that it’s too early to know whether or not the concessions offered are merely symbolic — Brown, for example, plans to wait until October for its corporate board to vote on a proposal to divest from Israeli interests, as per its negotiation with protesters. But already, according to the ADL’s Goodman, administrations that have made deals “[incentivized] further rules violations and disruption and normalized antisemitism on campus.” 

Goodman cautioned that as universities try to restore order during finals and graduations, more may strike similar deals. “Administrators may see this as an acceptable solution to resolve the current situation on their own campus… It will also be interesting to see how they determine whether protestors who committed no further code of conduct violations comply and what happens if they do not comply.” 

Rotenberg warned, “The Jewish community has ample reason to fear when people take the law into their own hands and who, after being warned, decide to violate the norms of their community and then get rewarded for doing so.” Going down that path, he said, is “marching down the road to authoritarianism.”

As anti-Israel encampments on college campuses sprung up at dozens of universities last week, the national leadership of the College Democrats of America (CDA) asked the group’s Jewish and Muslim caucuses to draft a statement condemning the antisemitism that was quickly appearing among some protesters. 

The byzantine process that followed would lead the College Democrats’ top Jewish leader to accuse the influential organization of ignoring antisemitism at campus protests to further a one-sided, anti-Israel agenda, after the organization’s leadership nixed the inclusive statement that had been created by the top Jewish and Muslim activists in the group.

Allyson Bell, chair of the CDA’s national Jewish caucus and an MBA student at Meredith College in Raleigh, N.C., got to work writing a statement about antisemitism with Hasan Pyarali, the Muslim caucus chair and a senior at Wake Forest University. The two of them turned in a draft of a statement detailing antisemitism at Columbia University and stating that the College Democrats “absolutely and irrevocably denounce the antisemitism that has taken place at Columbia University and other college campuses over the past week,” according to a document shared with Jewish Insider.

But College Democrats’ national leaders weren’t pleased with this draft, Bell stated. “They wanted us to write a 50/50 approach, to both protect the peaceful side of the protesters and stand against antisemitism,” Bell told JI on Wednesday night. So she and Pyarali gave it another stab. (“It’s been really tough for people to work together on this issue, so I’m so glad that we’ve been able to work together,” Pyarali told JI.)

This time, the draft statement began with a denunciation of antisemitism and a statement of support for the “broad and interfaith coalitions of students who call for a ceasefire, release of the hostages, and a two-state solution where both Israelis and Palestinians can live side by side in peace.” This too, was voted down. 

The statement that was ultimately released by the College Democrats on Tuesday ignored the middle path proposed by Bell and Pyarali. Instead, the statement described “heroic actions on the part of students around the country to protest and sit in for an end to the war in Palestine and the release of the hostages.” It called Israel’s war against Hamas “destructive, genocidal, and unjust” — language that Bell had never seen. An Instagram post with the statement touted the endorsement of Pyarali and the Muslim caucus, with no mention of the Jewish caucus — except a comment on the post from the Jewish caucus’ own Instagram account. 

“This should not have ever been released without Jewish students’ support. Protect Jewish students, do better,” the College Democrats’ Jewish caucus commented. 

“It’s a hurtful thing, not only to not feel heard, but also to know that the organization you’re in doesn’t believe that the antisemitism is happening and doesn’t care enough about it to even include the factual things that we’ve seen on video,” explained Bell. 

For months, the Democratic Party has faced criticism from young activists for President Joe Biden’s support for Israel in its war against Hamas. In March, a cadre of influential progressive activist groups, including the Sunrise Movement and March for Our Lives, signed onto a “youth agenda” that focused on climate change, gun violence prevention, immigration reform and reaching a “permanent ceasefire” in Gaza. Debates over Israel and antisemitism have roiled progressive organizations since Oct. 7. 

College Democrats touts itself as the official collegiate arm of the Democratic National Committee, the party’s campaign apparatus. The group endorsed Biden’s reelection campaign, and in the past it has served as a crucial tool for reaching young people in an election year, even as the organization has drifted far to the left of the national party in recent years. Spokespeople for the DNC and the Biden campaign declined to comment when asked if they support the message adopted by College Democrats.

The statement sharply diverged from the path charted by Biden, who has supported Israel in its war against Hamas after the Oct. 7 terror attacks that killed more than 1,200 people in Israel, while also seeking humanitarian protections for Palestinian civilians. College Democrats’ national communications chair, Sohali Vaddula, a New York University undergraduate, told JI on Wednesday that the group “has opposed President Biden’s support for Israel in terms of providing military aid, which would further the genocide that’s ongoing.” 

On Tuesday morning, hours before CDA came out in favor of campus protests, a White House spokesperson slammed the violent tactics and antisemitism exhibited by some anti-Israel protesters at U.S. college campuses after activists at Columbia violently stormed a campus administrative building. Biden offered a similar message in a Thursday morning speech, the president’s first major remarks on the campus protests. 

The College Democrats statement recognizes antisemitism halfway through, with a line that university administrations “need to protect students from all forms of hatred — antisemitism and Islamophobia — without impeding on the rights of students.” It refers to antisemitism having increased “in the weeks following October 7th” with no mention of what occurred that day. College Democrats did not issue a statement on the violence in the Middle East until December, two months after the Hamas attack, when they issued a call for a cease-fire and hostage deal. They refrained from doing so sooner because the issue was “controversial,” said Vaddula. 

“This issue has always been controversial, even before Oct. 7, and especially after Oct. 7,” Vaddula said. (She was not an executive board member at the time and wasn’t involved in that decision.) 

The College Democrats’ Tuesday statement says the group stands alongside protesters who are calling for an “immediate permanent ceasefire, releases of hostages, and a two-state solution where both Palestinians and Israelis can live side by side in peace.” But this is not what most of the protesters are demanding. Chants of “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” — widely seen as a call for the extermination of the Jewish state — are heard frequently from protesters, who also often chant about “intifada.” More than 1,000 Israelis were killed in the Second Intifada two decades ago. Other language and signage exhibited at encampments across the country state that Zionists are not welcome among the protesters.

“It’s hurtful to see so many progressive allies look at the situation as a black-and-white issue, where they can’t hold in themselves, in their hearts, empathy for the Israeli people, for hostages, for Jewish people who are victims of antisemitism,” said Stephanie Hausner, now the chief operating officer at the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and a former senior leader with both CDA and the Young Democrats of America. “As someone who was deeply involved in the organization, both College Democrats and Young Democrats and the Democratic Party, it’s really hard to see what’s going on in those spaces.” 

“I have not seen one student encampment talking about a two-state solution with both sides living side by side,” one former longtime Democratic Party staffer and White House aide observed. 

Pyarali, the Muslim caucus chair, disagreed: “I think the majority of people are standing for a two-state solution, and at least we want them to know that at least the majority of College Democrats are,” he told JI on Thursday. “We do think it is possible to be supportive of Israel without being supportive of this genocidal campaign.” 

Stephanie Hausner, now the chief operating officer at the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and a former senior leader with both CDA and the Young Democrats of America, which serves young professionals, lamented the group’s approach to the protests and the war.

“It’s hurtful to see so many progressive allies look at the situation as a black-and-white issue, where they can’t hold in themselves, in their hearts, empathy for the Israeli people, for hostages, for Jewish people who are victims of antisemitism,” Hausner told JI. “As someone who was deeply involved in the organization, both College Democrats and Young Democrats and the Democratic Party, it’s really hard to see what’s going on in those spaces.” 

Young Democrats’ Jewish caucus chair, Zach Shartiag, echoed that assessment. “Our organization has turned a blind eye, even in my mind pre-10/7, to issues of antisemitism,” he told JI. 

“The Jewish caucus had not signed off on this particular statement because we felt like this one was more representative of what our organization wanted to support,” College Democrats’ national communications chair, Sohali Vaddula, a New York University undergraduate, told JI . “We just don’t want statements to focus entirely on antisemitism because that is a double standard. We should also be focusing on the rising Islamophobia on campuses. There are other students that feel unwelcome on these campuses, not just Jewish students. We wanted to highlight that and not make it one-sided. We felt that the Jewish caucus was making it one-sided.” 

“Jewish Dems and the Democratic Party firmly stand with Israel and support its right to self-defense, especially in the aftermath of the horrific attacks perpetrated by Hamas,” Jewish Democratic Council of America CEO Halie Soifer told JI on Thursday. “President Biden, the head of the Democratic Party, has never wavered from his staunch commitment to Israel’s safety and security, while Republicans in Congress blocked emergency aid to Israel for more than six months. We stand with Israel and any statement to the contrary isn’t representative of the vast majority of Democrats and President Biden.”

Vaddula, the College Democrats board member, acknowledged that the Jewish caucus did not approve of the group’s final statement. But, she added, condemning only antisemitism would present a “double standard.” The statement was adopted by a vote of 8-2 among executive board members. She said the group didn’t need to specifically mention instances of antisemitism “because we didn’t feel that the existence of antisemitism at the protests was in question.”

“The Jewish caucus had not signed off on this particular statement because we felt like this one was more representative of what our organization wanted to support,” she said. “We just don’t want statements to focus entirely on antisemitism because that is a double standard. We should also be focusing on the rising Islamophobia on campuses. There are other students that feel unwelcome on these campuses, not just Jewish students. We wanted to highlight that and not make it one-sided. We felt that the Jewish caucus was making it one-sided.” 

By ignoring Islamophobia, as the first drafts did, “certain students and identity groups [would] feel excluded from organization,” said Vaddula. When asked about Jewish Democrats who feel excluded, Vaddula said “there’s a seat at the table and the Democratic Party for everybody.”

Ultimately, she said the reason for not aligning with the Jewish caucus came down to the Jewish caucus’ difference of opinion on the war on Gaza. Vaddula said the Jewish caucus might not be “representative” of the Jewish community and cited groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, an anti-Zionist organization whose positions opposing the Jewish state represent a far-left fringe of the U.S. Jewish community.

“Unfortunately, the Jewish caucus just wasn’t willing to denounce genocide,” said Vaddula. “We felt like maybe that wasn’t the best representative sample of Jewish College Democrats or just Jewish young Democrats in general.” (In a follow-up conversation on Thursday, Vaddula clarified that “well-informed people of goodwill will continue to disagree when we use the word ‘genocide’ to describe the situation in Gaza, and of course, there is room for them in College Democrats.”)

“It does feel like the administration, or at least members of the executive board, believe that Jewish students are pro-genocide or anti-Palestine simply for being Jewish,” Allyson Bell, chair of the CDA’s national Jewish caucus and an MBA student at Meredith College in Raleigh, N.C., said. “That conversation hasn’t even been had, but it’s assumed. And like I said before, it’s isolating. It’s alienating. It’s disheartening, and it’s hurtful. I feel for my caucus members. I hate that we’re in this position where we’re trying to figure out like, How do we get heard? How do we share how we’re feeling without getting in trouble for it?”

“When I look at organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace and all these other organizations, some of whom actually are Jewish and are also calling out a genocide, I think it’s important to think about the larger messaging that we’re sending out,” Vaddula added. “I think that is in line with what most of the Jewish groups are saying.” (A March Pew poll found that 62% of U.S. Jews say the way Israel is carrying out its war in Gaza is acceptable, and 89% see Israel’s reasons for fighting Hamas as valid.)

Bell, the Jewish caucus leader, said that in conversations with other top College Democrats, someone implied that she supported genocide, even though no one had discussed the matter with her.

“The irony of saying that to a Jewish student — I honestly just can’t wrap my head around it at this point,” said Bell, who signed onto the December statement supporting a cease-fire. “It does feel like the administration, or at least members of the executive board, believe that Jewish students are pro-genocide or anti-Palestine simply for being Jewish. That conversation hasn’t even been had, but it’s assumed. And like I said before, it’s isolating. It’s alienating. It’s disheartening, and it’s hurtful. I feel for my caucus members. I hate that we’re in this position where we’re trying to figure out like, How do we get heard? How do we share how we’re feeling without getting in trouble for it?”

College Democrats’ turn away from Israel is striking against the backdrop of the organization’s long history of alignment with Israel and pro-Israel organizations such as AIPAC, which is now viewed as a target by many progressive activists. AIPAC used to bring the leaders of both College Democrats and College Republicans on bipartisan missions to Israel, a tradition it continued as recently as 2017. The leaders of both groups also used to travel to Washington each year for AIPAC’s annual policy conference. 

“College Democrats owe it to their president and national party, not to mention the Israelis and Palestinians still committed to peace and coexistence, to avoid incendiary statements that will only exacerbate the already explosive situation on campus,” Jonathan Kessler, former leadership development director at AIPAC and founder of the peacebuilding NGO Heart of a Nation.

Despite the Gaza war and campus unrest, in an April Harvard Kennedy School poll, 18- to 29-year-olds ranked the Israeli-Palestinian conflict near the bottom of a list of most important topics; it ranked 15th out of 16 topics mentioned. But Vaddula and Pyarali both told JI they are struggling with College Democrats’ endorsement of Biden in light of his support for Israel. 

“I’ve spoken to so many people who have seen his unfettered support as so soul-crushing, because we voted for Joe Biden with the thought that this is someone who’s gonna bring dignity back, someone who’s gonna bring compassion back to the White House,” said Pyarali, who called Biden “complicit in genocide.” Pyarali said Israel was “justified in their targeting of Hamas” after the “horrific” events of Oct. 7, but “it’s never been about targeting just Hamas.” He called the war genocidal from the beginning. 

The College Democrats’ Jewish caucus chair said the experience over the past week has made her question her future with the organization.

“At this point, I’ve kind of just decided that it’s worth speaking out about, even if it means that I need to move away from College Democrats of America,” Bell said. “This is important enough that I think more people need to be speaking out in support of Jewish students and the rising antisemitism that is happening across college campuses, even though currently it’s not a popular stance.”

In a surprise White House address on Thursday morning, President Joe Biden condemned the violent protests that have swept American college campuses and decried the antisemitism that has taken place at many of the demonstrations.

“We’ve all seen the images and they put to the test two fundamental American principles,” Biden said in his first major remarks on the campus protests. “The first is the right to free speech and for people to peacefully assemble and make their voices heard. The second is the rule of law. Both must be upheld.”

In a brief speech lasting just over three minutes, Biden drew a clear differentiation between lawful protests and the violence that has occurred on some campuses.

“Violent protest is not protected. Peaceful protest is. It’s against the law when violence occurs,” the president said. “Destroying property is not a peaceful protest. It’s against the law. Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduation — none of this is a peaceful protest. Threatening people, intimidating people, instilling fear in people is not a peaceful protest. It’s against the law.” 

Biden specifically called out the hate experienced by Jewish students on many campuses. “Let’s be clear about this as well: There should be no place on any campus, no place in America, for antisemitism or threats of violence against Jewish students,” said Biden.

“There is no place for hate speech or violence of any kind, whether it’s antisemitism, Islamophobia or discrimination against Arab Americans or Palestinian Americans. It’s simply wrong,” added Biden. “There’s no place for racism in America. It’s all wrong. It’s un-American.” 

The president did not mention Israel or anti-Zionist rhetoric, nor did he make any reference to the content of the protests or the protesters’ demands. But Biden said “no” when asked by a reporter if the protests will lead him to reconsider his policy in the Middle East. He also responded with a “no” when asked if the National Guard should intervene.

“I understand people have strong feelings and deep convictions,” said Biden. “In America, we respect the right and protect the right for them to express that. But it doesn’t mean anything goes. It needs to be done without violence, without destruction, without hate and within the law.”

Earlier this week, after student protesters violently occupied a Columbia University administrative building, White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates condemned their actions.

Good Wednesday morning.

In today’s Daily Kickoff, we look at how administrators are addressing protests, encampments and clashes on campus, and report on today’s expected vote on the Antisemitism Awareness Act. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Sheryl Sandberg, Ofir Akunis and Amy Schumer.

Secretary of State Tony Blinken is in Israel today for meetings with top officials, including President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Blinken’s visit to Israel follows a two-day trip through the region that included meetings in Jordan and Saudi Arabia aimed at discussing cease-fire negotiations and a day-after plan for Gaza. The trip comes as Israel prepares for a Rafah operation, following Netanyahu’s comments earlier this week that such a move was imminent, “with or without a deal” to reach a cease-fire and free the remaining hostages. More on Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s comments about a potential Rafah invasion below.

“Bringing the hostages home is at the heart of everything we’re trying to do,” Blinken tweeted earlier today. “We will not rest until every hostage — woman, man, young, old, civilian, soldier — is back with their families, where they belong.”

Thousands of miles away from high-level diplomatic conversations aimed at ending a monthslong war, American college administrators are conducting their own negotiations — with anti-Israel student protesters — in an effort to restore calm on campuses across the country in the waning weeks of the spring semester.

With final exams and commencements around the corner, this time of year is usually one of packed libraries, graduation celebrations and senioritis. Not so this year on a number of campuses, where student protesters from Columbia to Northwestern to the University of North Carolina to UCLA continued to sow chaos on campus, in some cases moving from the encampments they constructed last month to take over university buildings, as they did with the takeover of Columbia’s Hamilton Hall. In other cases students commandeered university property, as students at UNC did when they took down an American flag and hung a Palestinian flag in its place.

At UCLA, overnight protests turned violent, with clashes between pro- and anti-Israel student demonstrators breaking out in the area around the encampment. At Columbia, police with riot shields arrested dozens of protesters in Hamilton Hall, effectively bringing an end to the protesters’ siege of the administrative building. Overnight, the campus encampment was cleared after two weeks.

Administrators from Evanston, Ill., to New York to Chapel Hill, N.C., have varied in their approaches to the demonstrators and their demands. Read below for more on the concessions that administrations have made to campus protesters below.

Following Columbia protesters’ takeover of Hamilton Hall earlier this week, White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates released a statement condemning antisemitism and the extreme tactics of the students.

“President Biden has stood against repugnant, antisemitic smears and violent rhetoric his entire life. He condemns the use of the term ‘intifada,’ as he has the other tragic and dangerous hate speech displayed in recent days,” Bates told JI. “President Biden respects the right to free expression, but protests must be peaceful and lawful. Forcibly taking over buildings is not peaceful — it is wrong. And hate speech and hate symbols have no place in America.”

Bates did not say whether Biden planned to speak about the issue publicly, or to meet with Jewish students. In a proclamation announcing Jewish American Heritage Month, which begins today, Biden addressed the situation on many campuses.

“Here at home, too many Jews live with deep pain and fear from the ferocious surge of antisemitism — in our communities; at schools, places of worship, and colleges; and across social media. These acts are despicable and echo the worst chapters of human history,” Biden said in the proclamation.

Meanwhile, a new Harvard/Harris poll found that 80% of Americans support Israel in its war against Hamas; that number drops to 57% among the 18-24 year-olds surveyed. Those numbers are perhaps best reflected in a statement released by College Democrats of America on Wednesday, showing support for the encampments and anti-Israel protesters.

Today in Washington, Jewish students from Northwestern will meet with legislators to discuss their experiences on campus in recent days, ahead of a House vote on the Antisemitism Awareness Act. More on the legislation from JI’s Marc Rod below.

The events on campus are raising concerns among congressional lawmakers. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Tuesday called on Columbia administrators to “bring order to their Manhattan campus” and compared the behavior of Columbia’s student protesters to the “brand of aggressive lawlessness” shown by “the student Nazis of Weimar Germany.”

A day prior, a group of 21 pro-Israel House Democrats sent a letter blasting Columbia and accusing administrators of failing to break up the campus’ anti-Israel encampment. The legislators alleged that failing to do so constitutes a violation of Jewish students’ civil rights. The letter, led by Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) and Dan Goldman (D-NY), describes the encampment as “the breeding ground for antisemitic attacks on Jewish students, including hate speech, harassment, intimidation, and even threats of violence.”

Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) is preparing a measure to censure Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) for her comments last week referring to Jewish students as either “pro-genocide or anti-genocide”; the Minnesota congresswoman made the comments while visiting Columbia University.

House Education and Workforce Committee Chair Virginia Foxx (R-NC) invited the heads of Yale, UCLA and the University of Michigan to speak at a hearing later this month focused on “Calling for Accountability: Stopping Antisemitic College Chaos.”

Meanwhile, House and Senate Republicans’ campaign arms are planning to use footage that has emerged in recent days in ads targeting vulnerable Democrats who have not condemned the protests. Among those the NRSC and NRCC plan to target: Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Bob Casey (D-PA) and Jon Tester (D-MT), as well as Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), who is mounting a Senate bid in Michigan.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said yesterday at a Senate hearing that “what is happening on our campuses is abhorrent.”

“Hate has no place on our campuses and I’m very concerned with the reports of antisemitism,” Cardona said. He added that “unsafe, violent” protests and attacks on students are not protected by the First Amendment.

Cardona said that support for Hamas, the “from the river to the sea” slogan and calls for Jews to go back to Poland or be killed are “absolutely not” acceptable. He told lawmakers the department needs additional funding and investigators for its Office of Civil Rights to respond to the spike in incidents and investigations.

northwestern negotiations

Jewish leaders slam Northwestern agreement with anti-Israel protesters

After an anti-Israel encampment was erected at Northwestern University last week, the school’s president on Monday reached an agreement with protesters to end the encampment — acceding to several of their demands in the process, which drew strong condemnation from many in the Chicago and national Jewish communities, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports. 

Message received: In a letter to university President Michael Schill, the Jewish United Fund — Chicago’s Jewish federation, which also oversees Northwestern Hillel — excoriated the administrator for embracing “those who flagrantly disrupted Northwestern academics and flouted those policies. The overwhelming majority of your Jewish students, faculty, staff, and alumni feel betrayed. They trusted an institution you lead and considered it home. You have violated that trust,” the letter said. “You certainly heard and acted generously towards those with loud, at times hateful voices. The lack of any reassuring message to our community has also been heard loud and clear.”

Resignation call: The Anti-Defamation League, StandWithUs and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law joined together to call for Schill’s resignation after the agreement was announced. “For days, protestors openly mocked and violated Northwestern’s codes of conduct and policies by erecting an encampment in which they fanned the flames of antisemitism and wreaked havoc on the entire university community,” the groups said in a statement. “Rather than hold them accountable – as he pledged he would – President Schill gave them a seat at the table and normalized their hatred against Jewish students.”

Read the full story here.

Notes from New England: Brown University administrators reached an agreement with encampment organizers to put the issue of divesting from Israel up for a vote when its largest governing body, the Corporation, meets in October.

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schumer says

Schumer accuses ICC of ‘long term, anti-Israel bias’ amid Israeli arrest warrant fears

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) accused the International Criminal Court on Tuesday of a decades-long bias against Israel as it weighs issuing arrest warrants for Israeli officials on charges relating to the war in Gaza. Schumer said in an exclusive statement to Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs that he has “always had deep concerns about the ICC’s long term, anti-Israel bias. And I am urging the Biden administration to send a very strong stance against possible arrest warrants that the ICC could issue against top Israeli officials.”

Reported charges: Schumer’s statement comes in response to a series of reports in recent days alleging that the ICC is planning to order the arrests of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and members of his war cabinet over their handling of the war in Gaza. The New York Times reported that if the warrants were issued, the officials would be charged with preventing humanitarian aid deliveries into Gaza and with responding too “excessively” to the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks. Senior members of Hamas leadership would also be charged with committing war crimes as part of the case. 

NSC comment: Reached for comment on the probe, a National Security Council spokesperson said in a statement to JI on Monday that, “As we have publicly said many times, the ICC has no jurisdiction in this situation and we do not support its investigation.”

Read the full story here.
 

Johnson’s call: House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) called on the Biden administration to join him in urging the ICC not to issue arrest warrants for top Israeli officials on charges relating to the war in Gaza. Johnson said in a statement provided exclusively to JI that it is “disgraceful” that the ICC is “reportedly planning to issue baseless and illegitimate arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and other senior Israeli officials.”

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on the hill

House vote on IHRA codification likely to divide Democrats

The House is set to vote today on the Antisemitism Awareness Act (AAA), which would codify the Trump administration executive order declaring that antisemitism is a prohibited form of discrimination on college campuses, as defined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Outlook: The vote is one in a series of moves by House Republicans to respond to escalating anti-Israel protests on college campuses. Even though it has 15 Democratic co-sponsors in the House, the support of more than 30 Jewish organizations, including Democratic Majority for Israel, and strong bipartisan support in the Senate, the bill is likely to see opposition from a significant number of Democrats due to the codification of the IHRA definition, and its examples stating that some criticism of Israel is antisemitic.

Two proposals: Discussion in the run-up to Wednesday’s vote has also appeared to pit the AAA and another bipartisan antisemitism bill, the Countering Antisemitism Act (CAA), against each other, even though major Jewish advocacy groups and some of the bills’ sponsors sponsors see the two bills as complementary, not competing.

Going deeper: Like the AAA, the CAA also endorses and utilizes the IHRA definition, albeit without its examples, and states that it “should be utilized by Federal, State and local agencies.” CAA also has strong bipartisan support in both chambers, as well as the backing of some more liberal-leaning Jewish groups that haven’t endorsed the AAA.

What they’re saying: Rep. Kathy Manning (D-NC), the lead House sponsor of the CAA, told JI she’ll vote for the AAA and called on Congress to promptly consider the CAA. “I support passage of H.R. 6090, the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which would require the Department of Education to continue considering the IHRA working definition as it investigates anti-Jewish discrimination and enforces federal civil rights law,” Manning told JI. “Making use of this definition would enhance the Department’s ability to respond to antisemitism on college campuses.”

Read the full story here.

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exclusive

House members urge ‘highest possible funding’ for Holocaust education amid campus antisemitism

Amid rising antisemitism on college campuses and around the country, a bipartisan group of 20 House members urged key leaders to provide “the highest possible funding” in 2025 for the Never Again Education Act, which provides funding and resources for Holocaust education efforts through the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Quotable: “The distance in understanding between today’s youth and those who witnessed or survived World War II is widening,” the lawmakers warned in a letter to the leaders of the House Appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the issue. “It is critical to institutionalize education about the events and ideology of the Holocaust before this knowledge is lost to history. Tragically, this reality is closer than we think.”

Drawing connections: The letter points to surveys showing shrinking knowledge of the Holocaust among millennials and members of Gen Z and research suggesting links between inadequate Holocaust education and antisemitic beliefs. It draws a direct line between the encampments and other anti-Israel and antisemitic activity at a growing number of colleges and a lack of education about the Holocaust.

Signatories: The letter was signed by Reps. Buddy Carter (R-GA), Kathy Manning (D-NC), Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY), Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), Mike Bost (R-IL), Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA), Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), Katie Porter (D-CA), Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), Nikema Williams (D-GA), Jared Golden (D-ME), Joe Neguse (D-CO) and Maxwell Frost (D-FL).

Read the full story here.

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troop talk

U.S. hasn’t seen moves needed to support Rafah invasion, Lloyd Austin says

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said on Tuesday the U.S. still hasn’t seen the steps it expects from Israel before it can support an Israeli invasion of southern Gaza city of Rafah, the same day Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated Israel’s intentions to conduct operations in the city, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

No steps: The U.S. has said for months that it will not support a large-scale operation in Rafah without a plan from Israel to protect civilians from throughout Gaza who are sheltering in Rafah. Austin told members of the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday that the U.S. has so far not seen steps by Israel to remove those civilians from harm’s way.

But: He did say, however, that the U.S. sees “some signs that they are moving towards that direction,” but “we have not seen a number of things that we believe will have to happen.” He said an Israeli plan must include provisions not only for moving “the preponderance” of civilians, including housing and medical care. Austin also said that “there have been far too many civilian deaths already” and that the U.S. “would want to see things done in a much different way” in Rafah.

Force protection: The defense secretary was pressed on how the U.S. will address attacks — which have reportedly already begun — on U.S. troops assembling and operating a humanitarian aid pier on the Gaza coastline. Austin said that Israel would “do everything possible” to provide security for the mission, a prospect that some Democratic lawmakers, including Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), suggested they found troublesome, given concerns about Israel’s military operations in Gaza. He also said U.S. troops would have the right to defend themselves, including returning fire from the pier if they are attacked.

Read the full story here.

Elsewhere in Washington: Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) blasted the Biden administration over a report that it’s considering allowing Palestinian refugees from Gaza to the U.S. “Not a single Hamas sympathizer should be let into this country, and I will use every resource at my disposal to ensure this radical Biden policy never sees the light of day,” Scott said, claiming, “We have no clue who is coming into our country.”

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Q&A

Ofir Akunis ready to fight antisemitism as Israel’s new consul-general in N.Y.

When Ofir Akunis arrives in the U.S. today to begin his tenure as Israel’s consul-general to New York, he will be, like many of the envoys Jerusalem has sent to the city in recent years, on his first diplomatic posting, but with many years of political experience under his belt. But unlike some of the other Likud politicians sent to the Big Apple, who were popular with the party base but headaches for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for various reasons, Akunis, 50, spent most of his political career being identified closely with the prime minister. He spoke with Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov during Passover, three days before he was set to begin his new role, saying that he will not be cowed by the increasing antisemitism in the city that he will call home in the coming years. 

Wartime challenges: “I feel that I am starting in a historic era, with what is going on in the entire West, not just in the U.S. and New York and college campuses. I spoke and met with almost all of my predecessors, and I think that it is the most challenging time in the last 30 years, if not more, for a consul-general of Israel in New York,” Akunis told JI. “I like challenges. When I’m challenged, I know how to express our stances. Our position is just as Zionists and Israelis. When I resigned from the government, I said I am doing so as a Jew, a Zionist and an Israeli, in that order. Zionism comes from Judaism and being Israeli comes from Zionism. That is how I plan to act – as a proud Jew. I don’t plan to apologize to anyone…certainly not for the chain of events beginning on Oct. 7.”

Campus concerns: “Certainly, the current events require an immediate intervention in what is happening on campuses. I view the incitement and the violence with horror. They are built on antisemitic foundations, not only anti-Israel ones… It’s clear as day that this is organized and funded. We see students who have no idea what they’re talking about when you ask them what ‘from the river to the sea means.’ If you support Hamas and Islamic Jihad, you’re saying you want to destroy Israel and establish a Muslim caliphate instead,” Akunis said. “We have to fight them off, with basic unity with the Jewish communities and groups of Israelis who live there. We have to operate as one body. That is how I plan to act. I feel that this moment requires unity. I visited New York less than a month ago and felt there was unity between the Jewish community establishment and the Israelis on this, and I hope it will be preserved. When we stand united, we will succeed.”

Read the full interview here.

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Worthy Reads

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner: In The Atlantic, University of California, Berkeley School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky reflects on a recent incident that culminated with anti-Israel student demonstrators disrupting a dinner in his home. “Overall, though, this experience has been enormously sad. It made me realize how anti-Semitism is not taken as seriously as other kinds of prejudice. If a student group had put up posters that included a racist caricature of a Black dean or played on hateful tropes about Asian American or LGBTQ people, the school would have erupted — and understandably so. But a plainly anti-Semitic poster received just a handful of complaints from Jewish staff and students. Many people’s reaction to the incident in our yard reflected their views of what is happening in the Middle East. But it should not be that way. The dinners at our house were entirely nonpolitical; there was no program of any kind. And our university communities, along with society as a whole, will be worse off if every social interaction — including ones at people’s private homes — becomes a forum for uninvited political monologues.” [TheAtlantic]

AI Alliances: In Bloomberg, UAE Ambassador to the U.S. Yousef Al Otaiba touts efforts by Abu Dhabi and Washington to invest in the field of artificial intelligence. “To secure the advantages AI offers, governments must race to realize the technology’s potential — and limit its harm. Who controls the data and computing power? What rules are necessary to create fair and responsible access in both emerging and mature markets? Where is the clean energy needed to operate the data centers that are the brains and muscles of AI? To meet these challenges, the UAE is working with the US and other partners to write a new playbook for this breakthrough technology. It involves resetting government regulations, reimagining public-private sector collaboration, and reshaping our relations in the world. And it is based on core principles that enable AI to flourish, while putting in place a regulatory framework to ensure its just and ethical use.” [Bloomberg]

Where Is the Outrage?: The Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus interviews Sheryl Sandberg about her new documentary, “Screams Before Silence,” about the sexual violence that took place on Oct. 7. “The world that assails Israel for its conduct of the war in Gaza should be speaking out about Hamas’s concerted assault on women. The terrorist group can deny this all it wants, but any repudiations are belied by the facts: The sexual violence was not isolated but repeated and methodical, from bloody venue to bloody venue. … Where is the outrage? Where is the condemnation? ‘I think politics are blinding us,’ Sandberg, the former chief operating officer of Facebook, told me in a Zoom call. ‘I think people have become so polarized and so bought into their frameworks that they’re not able to see information that doesn’t align with those frameworks.’ Sandberg paused, then added, ‘I think there’s some antisemitism happening as part of this.’” [WashPost]

Encampment Conversations: In The Wall Street Journal, Dr. Michael Segal, a Harvard alumnus, shares what he learned from a conversation with students involved in the school’s anti-Israel encampment. “Today’s demonstrators aren’t showing the same intellectual vitality. In our discussions, they professed a vague vision of Arabs and Jews all living together in peace, sharing the land. I told them that this vision died on Oct. 7, and that outsiders interpret their ‘from the river to the sea’ signs as calling for the brutality of that day to be repeated throughout Israel. They told me that the slogan was years old, but I pointed out, and they agreed, that the original version was ‘from the water to the water, Palestine will be Arab.’ They told me that [the] original slogan wasn’t anti-Jewish because the Jews of the Middle East once referred to themselves as Arab Jews. I allowed that such a vision wasn’t entirely crazy, recounting my experience with how Arab doctors, nurses and patients get along fine with their Jewish counterparts in Israel’s hospitals. But although this is a cheery vision, the events of Oct. 7, which many groups at Harvard rushed to praise, and similar events going back a century, killed that vision. I was surprised by how much the students didn’t know. None had heard of the Farhud, the 1941 slaughter of Jews in Baghdad — something that can’t be blamed on the 1947 partition plan for the Palestine Mandate.” [WSJ]

Around the Web

Foggy Bottom Factor: The State Department determined that five IDF battalions committed human rights violations prior to the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks; four of those battalions have resolved the violations, while Foggy Bottom mulls action against a fifth, the Netzah Yehuda battalion.

Moscow Meddling: U.S. intelligence officials cautioned that Russia is using AI, fake social media accounts and its own state-run propaganda to exploit divisions in the U.S. over the Israel-Hamas war.

Trump Time: In an in-depth interview with Time magazine, former President Donald Trump discusses his relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the possibility of a two-state solution and Israel’s prosecution of its war against Hamas.

Omar’s Aim: Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) introduced a resolution to block more than $650 million in arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, citing Saudi Arabia’s human rights record and the UAE’s support of the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan.

Hitting the Houthis: Reps. Mark Green (R-TN), Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), Michael McCaul (R-TX), Joe Wilson (R-SC), Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL) and Mike Lawler (R-NY) and Del. Aumua Amata Radewagen (R-AS) introduced the “Combating Houthi Threats and Aggression Act” to impose additional sanctions on the Houthis and their backers.

RJC Targets: The Republican Jewish Coalition said it will back “credible” primary challengers to Republicans who voted against last month’s Israel funding bill.

First in JI: Twenty-seven Republican governors signed onto a statement recognizing May as Jewish-American Heritage Month and standing “in solidarity with the Jewish community, especially at a time when Jewish people around the world face persecution.”

Prize Patrol: Fox News Israel-based reporter Trey Yingst was awarded the Axel Springer Academy’s George Weidenfeld Prize for his reporting; Axios‘ Barak Ravid was given the White House Correspondents’ Association’s award for journalistic excellence.

Released: A Tennessee man jailed on charges of shooting a gun near a Jewish day school in Memphis last year was released on bond.

Guess Who’s Back: A Cornell professor who is on a leave of absence after coming under criticism for praising the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks returned to the Ithaca campus to join anti-Israel protests at the Ivy.

PEN-ned In: The Atlanticreports on the challenges facing PEN America — including the decision not to hold its annual conference following a series of speaker cancelations — as it faces criticism for its refusal to accuse Israel of genocide.

Labor Pains: A group of former Google employees who were fired for protesting the company’s ties to Israel filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board over their terminations.

Done Deal: WeWork struck a new restructuring agreement with its top backers to exit Chapter 11 bankruptcy; the deal omits founder Adam Neumann, who had floated a proposal to purchase the company back for upwards of $500 million.

Schumer in the Spotlight: Varietytalks to comedian Amy Schumer about her rise to fame and, since Oct. 7, antisemitism she has faced and the responses she’s gotten over her support for Israel.

Active Voice: The Wall Street Journalinterviews musician John Ondrasik, also known as Five for Fighting, about his outspoken support for Israel and concerns about support for Israel in the entertainment industry.

Across the Pond: U.K. Foreign Secretary David Cameron pushed back against calls to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terror group, saying that such a move would “weaken” London’s negotiating position.

Down Under: Prosecutors in Sydney, Australia, charged four teenagers with a plot to purchase weapons and carry out a terror attack against Jews.

Court’s Call: The International Court of Justice rejected a Nicaraguan request to order Germany to halt its transfers of weapons and aid to Israel.

Lapid in Abu Dhabi: Israeli Opposition Leader Yair Lapid is in the United Arab Emirates today; The New York Timestalked to Lapid over the weekend for the debut edition of its new weekly series, “The Interview.”

Searching for Answers: The Wall Street Journalreports on the efforts of Israeli parents to discover how their children — who were killed in Gaza after being taken hostage — died.

The Best Defense: 1948 Ventures’ Aaron Kaplowitz said that Israel’s defense technology could be used to address issues from climate change to energy costs.

Aid Endeavors: World Central Kitchen resumed its Gaza operations weeks after an Israeli strike killed seven aid workers; in a Washington Post op-ed, founder José Andrés explains the decision to return to the enclave.

Remembering: Writer Paul Auster, author of The New York Trilogy, died at 77. Dr. Werner Spitz, a forensics expert who played a role in numerous high-profile cases, including that of President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., died at 97.

Pic of the Day

Secretary of State Tony Blinken met on Wednesday in Tel Aviv with the families of American-Israelis being held hostage by Hamas terrorists. A statement from the Hostage Families Forum said that Blinken expressed “cautious optimism” about the potential for a deal to secure the release of some of the remaining hostages.

From left: Lee Siegel, the brother of hostage Keith Siegel; Blinken; Aviva Siegel, who was held hostage by Hamas for 51 days; and Elan Siegel, the daughter of Aviva and Keith.

Birthdays

Israeli entrepreneur and software engineer, founder and CEO of Conduit, Israel’s first billion-dollar internet company, Ronen Shilo turns 66…

Progressive political activist, literary and political journalist, Larry Bensky turns 87… Retired national director of the Anti-Defamation League, now national director emeritus, Abraham Henry Foxman turns 84… Assistant professor at Yeshiva University and editor emeritus of Tradition journal, Rabbi Shalom Carmy turns 75… Deborah Chin… Boston area actor, David Alan Ross… Brigadier-general (reserves) and former chief medical officer in the IDF, he was also a member of the Knesset for 10 years, Aryeh Eldad turns 74… Of counsel at D.C.-based Sandler Reiff where he specializes in redistricting law, Jeffrey M. Wice… Former member of the U.S. House of Representatives (D-CO) from 2007 until 2023, Edwin George “Ed” Perlmutter turns 71… Austrian-Israeli singer-songwriter, Timna Brauer turns 63… Real estate entrepreneur, he is a co-founder of the Israeli American Leadership Council (IAC) and supporter of FIDF, Eli Tene turns 61… Member of the board of governors of the Jewish Federation of Greater Rochester, Rina F. Chessin… Member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, David R. Karger turns 57… Israeli judoka, she is a member of the International Olympic Committee and the head of the merchandise division of Paramount Israel, Yael Arad turns 57… Majority leader of the Washington State Senate, he is a co-owner of minor league baseball’s Spokane Indians, Andrew Swire “Andy” Billig turns 56… Senior attorney in the Newark office of Eckert Seamans, Laura E. Fein… Political columnist at New York magazine since 2011, Jonathan Chait turns 52… Radio personality and voice-over artist, Gina Grad turns 46… Attorney and co-founder of I Am a Voter, a nonpartisan civic engagement organization, Mandana Rebecca Dayani turns 42… D.C.-based political reporter, Ben Jacobs turns 40… Senior video journalist covering investigative and national news for the Washington Post, Jonathan Gerberg… Member of the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova, Marina Tauber turns 38… Operations manager at GrowthSpace, Jenny Feuer… Principal at Forward Global, Omri Rahmil… Photographer and digital media editor at the Jewish Women’s Archive, Hannah Altman turns 29… Sam Zieve-Cohen…

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) took aim on Tuesday at recent antisemitic incidents at Columbia University, calling on college administrators to “bring order to their Manhattan campus” following tensions on campus that escalated into violence more than a week after students set up an anti-Israel encampment on the Morningside Heights campus. 

Speaking on the Senate floor, McConnell urged Columbia’s leadership to follow the lead of Princeton University and the University of Florida, where school administrators have not allowed their respective encampments to remain active. McConnell also excoriated the student protesters, comparing their behavior on Columbia’s campus to the “brand of aggressive lawlessness” shown by “the student Nazis of Weimar Germany.”

“Education never has anything to do with it; it’s about dangerous, radical politics. But just as the roots of this hate are not a mystery, neither is the way forward for college administrators. It’s time for the leaders of America’s most elite universities to take serious action,” McConnell said. “It’s not enough for administrators to lament campus disorder. Strongly worded statements don’t mean anything if they’re not backed by action.”

McConnell noted that “elite universities aren’t in the news for a decline in academic rigor” or because “another generation of students has decided to test the limits of the First Amendment with grotesque hate.”

“No, they’re in the news because weakness and inaction from campus leaders has allowed universities to become cauldrons of criminal chaos,” McConnell said. 

McConnell also used his speech to target the criticism he and other Republicans have received for opposing Adeel Mangi’s nomination to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Mangi, a Pakistani American litigator, has faced universal GOP opposition and tepid Democratic support for his nomination. Both Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) say they’ll vote against Mangi’s confirmation due to his lack of bipartisan support and ties to controversial groups, though he has the backing of a wide swath of the Jewish community, including the Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee and National Council of Jewish Women.. 

Mangi has repeatedly condemned terrorism and the Oct. 7 attacks. He has also distanced himself from a board he served on at Rutgers University that held an event commemorating the 9/11 attacks. The White House has defended Mangi, saying in March that Republicans had launched a “cruel, Islamophobic, smear campaign” against him.

“The hateful ideas being expressed are not new to America’s universities. The world’s oldest form of hate has been alive and well in higher education for some time now. From the vile ‘boycott, divest, and sanction’ movement a decade ago to the establishment of outfits like the Rutgers Center for Race, Rights, and Religion, the forces of bigotry have been on the move,” McConnell explained. 

“These forces have powerful friends: President Biden’s nominee for the Third Circuit, Adeel Mangi, has long been a patron of the antisemitic Rutgers center. In fact, as new evidence indicates, he’s played a much more active and enthusiastic role than he described to our colleagues on the Judiciary Committee,” he continued. “Apparently, every progressive organization in the country is furious that my colleagues and I have dared to call attention to these disqualifying facts.”

“So let’s get it straight: Radicalism has no place in higher education or on the federal bench.” 

McConnell called on President Joe Biden and the White House to pull Mangi’s nomination and condemn the antisemitism taking place on college campuses, accusing the president of “prioritizing the feelings of his political supporters over moral clarity.”

“Antisemitism is not a nuanced academic theory. It is not, as the White House press secretary described campus radicals’ motivations yesterday, a mere ‘difficult viewpoint,’” McConnell said. “It is not justified by political disagreements with Israel and its government. It is not entitled to take over campuses and make life miserable for Jewish students.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) similarly condemned the unrest on Columbia’s campus on Tuesday, saying on the Senate floor, “Smashing windows with hammers and taking over university buildings is not free speech. It is lawlessness. And those who did it should promptly face the consequences that are not merely a slap on the wrist.”

“Free speech, discussion, and even strong disagreement are fundamental American values, and campuses should be places where those values are cherished,” Schumer said. “Campuses cannot be places of learning and argument and discussion when protests veer into criminality, and those who commit such acts are doing nothing to convince others that their cause is just.”

Columbia has faced two weeks of anti-Israel protests from students on campus that escalated into numerous instances of physical assault and harassment against Jewish and pro-Israel students. More than 100 anti-Israel activists were initially arrested last week, though most have since returned to the campus.

Columbia University President Minouche Shafik said on Monday that the administration was unable to reach an agreement with protesters and would move ahead with having them removed from the encampment. University spokesman Ben Chang said later Monday that students who refused to leave the encampment would face disciplinary action. 

The campus devolved into chaos on Monday evening as scores of protesters used hammers and other tools to break open doors to the university’s Hamilton Hall and took over the building. Students hung banners reading “Intifada” and “Liberation Education” on windows and ledges. 

University police have since locked down all but one entry point into the campus while they attempted to gain control of the situation, while remaining agitators said Columbia’s refusal to divest from Israel had moved them to double down on their efforts.

A group of 21 pro-Israel House Democrats blasted Columbia in a letter sent Monday morning, accusing administrators of failing to break up an anti-Israel protest encampment on its campus and alleging that failing to do so constitutes a violation of Jewish students’ civil rights.

The letter reflects escalating concern among pro-Israel lawmakers as the Columbia encampment continues to function more than a week after police initially cleared the site, and as students at a growing number of colleges across the country have followed in the demonstrators’ example.

We “write to express our disappointment that, despite promises to do so, Columbia University has not yet disbanded the unauthorized and impermissible encampment of anti-Israel, anti-Jewish activists on campus,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter to the school’s trustees. “As a result of this disruption on campus, supported by some faculty members, many students have been prevented from safely attending class, the main library, and from leaving their dorm rooms in an apparent violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.”

The letter describes the encampment as “the breeding ground for antisemitic attacks on Jewish students, including hate speech, harassment, intimidation, and even threats of violence.”

Columbia, the lawmakers alleged, has “violate[d] its legal obligations to protect all students from discrimination and harassment” by allowing the encampment to continue; they argued that Columbia must break up the encampment to ensure compliance with the Civil Rights Act.

The lawmakers said that Columbia’s decision to move to hybrid classes in response to the encampment constituted an implicit acknowledgment that “encampment had created an impermissibly hostile and unsafe environment for Jewish students.”

“In other words, instead of solving the root cause of discrimination and harassment that students faced on campus, the administration decided to segregate some students from campus altogether, which naturally created an unsafe environment on campus for all students,” the lawmakers alleged.

They praised Columbia’s negotiations last week with protesters to voluntarily disband the encampment, but said that it is “abundantly clear” the protesters are unwilling to do so, and that it is now “past time” for Columbia to step in.

“The time for negotiation is over; the time for action is now. It is ultimately the responsibility of the Board of Trustees to act,” the letter continues. “If any Trustees are unwilling to do this, they should resign so that they can be replaced by individuals who will uphold the University’s legal obligations under Title VI.”

The letter’s signatories include Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Dan Goldman (D-NY), Kathy Manning (D-NC), Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), Wiley Nickel (D-NC), Tom Suozzi (D-NY), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Brad Schneider (D-IL), Haley Stevens (D-MI), Ritchie Torres (D-NY), Chris Pappas (D-NH), Lois Frankel (D-FL), Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Henry Cuellar (D-TX), Greg Landsman (D-OH), Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Marc Veasey (D-TX), Darren Soto (D-FL), Donald Norcross (D-NJ), Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Dean Phillips (D-MN).

Hoyer is the former Democratic majority leader and Schiff is the Democratic nominee for California’s next senator.

As an attempt to shut down the anti-Israel encampment that has been on campus for more than a week, Columbia University President Minouche Shafik entered negotiations with student protestors. Among her interlocutors is Khymani James, a student quoted in national news outlets including CBS News who was described as a protest organizer in a recent interview with the Columbia Spectator.

Newly unearthed footage of James, posted on his public Instagram in January and published by The Daily Wire on Thursday, reveals a radical side of the Columbia junior. In the video, which James described as a recording of a conversation with a school official who called to discipline him after he posted a threat against Zionist students, the Columbia junior spoke at length about his hatred of Zionists and his belief that they should not be alive. (James was also recorded in a video at the encampment encouraging protestors to form a human chain to keep “Zionists” out of the camp.)

“Zionists don’t deserve to live,” James said in the January video. “Zionists, along with all white supremacists, need to not exist.”

“Be grateful,” he said, “that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists. I’ve never murdered anyone in my life and I hope to keep it that way.” A Columbia spokesperson told Jewish Insider on Thursday that such statements are “unacceptable, full stop,” but declined to comment specifically on James’ case and whether he will face disciplinary action. (At 1:30 a.m. on Friday morning, James released a statement expressing “regret” for the comments in the Instagram video. “Every member of our community deserves to feel safe without qualification,” wrote James, who added that Zionism “necessitates the genocide of the Palestinian people” and “I oppose that in the strongest terms.”)

As similar encampments have spread to dozens of universities around the country, James isn’t the only student protestor promoting violence against Zionists. A growing number of campus activists have veered into extremism — including demanding the expulsion of Zionists from their campuses, calling for the destruction of the state of Israel and promoting their messages in terrorist-aligned social media channels. At Columbia, some protestors called on Jewish students who walked by to “go back to Belarus” and “go back to Poland.”

Student organizers of campus anti-Israel encampments at several universities have taken to Telegram, a messaging app, to spread their message and elicit support, donations and advocacy from other students and outside supporters. 

A channel run by the organizers of the encampment at New York University, which was shut down by the university on Monday, posted a message on Wednesday encouraging supporters to follow another Telegram channel called “Resistance News Network,” where organizers said people could stay informed about updates on the situation in Gaza. (It is not known who sent the message, as Telegram allows users to remain anonymous.)

“Resistance News Network” is a channel that is closely associated with Hamas and other terrorist groups. Its pinned post — the post to which it directs all new members of the channel — is a message posted early on Oct. 7 with a video from Hamas’ military chief, praising the group’s terror attack in Israel and calling on supporter to take up arms. Several times a day, the Telegram channel posts messages praising Hamas attacks on the “Zionist enemy” in Gaza and quoting propaganda from other terror groups like Hezbollah and the Houthis. 

NYU spokesperson John Beckman told JI that the “matter has been referred to our Bias Response Line for investigation.” 

“NYU takes very seriously instances and allegations of antisemitism, exhortations of violence, and our responsibility to create a safe and welcoming environment for all NYU students,” Beckman said.

The “Resistance News Network” channel has cheered the anti-Israel encampments, and on Thursday it posted a message from Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — a U.S.-designated terrorist organization — calling on Arab students to “follow … the example of American universities.” 

Members of the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at The Ohio State University shared a message with the “Resistance News Network” channel on Thursday asking members of the Hamas-aligned Telegram channel to support them and to stand with other SJP chapters. 

“We ask for you all to pray for the safety of our brothers and sisters in Gaza, and to support your local SJP as they combat the controlling powers that have stripped the world of any decency,” the message said. 

An Ohio State spokesperson said “there is no ongoing encampment or continuous demonstration at Ohio State,” noting that the gathering had been broken up by campus officials earlier on Thursday. But the spokesperson declined to comment on the SJP chapter seeking support in a Hamas-aligned forum.

At Princeton, a university staff member posted a photo to the social media platform X of a person at the encampment — where at least one professor has held their classes this week — holding a Hezbollah flag.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) faced down more than 100 anti-Israel protesters on Columbia University’s campus on Wednesday, vowing to push President Joe Biden to call in the National Guard to get the activists removed as they tried to drown out his address on the embattled campus. 

Protesters began surrounding the area around the press conference more than an hour in advance, with Johson’s advance staff and Columbia University employees telling Jewish Insider as the House speaker was heading to the event that they were expecting disruptions from the raucous group of protesting students. Members of the group began raising their middle fingers in the air and booing as Johnson and his colleagues arrived on the scene, with many shouting “F*** you” and demanding the lawmakers leave the campus. 

Johnson said amid constant boos from the crowd that “there is executive authority that would be appropriate… if this is not contained quickly and if these threats and intimidation do not stop. There is an appropriate time for the National Guard.”

“We have to bring order to these campuses,” Johnson continued amid constant jeers and antisemitic chants from the crowd. “We cannot allow this to happen around the country. We are better than this.”

Johnson added that he planned to call Biden on Wednesday evening about what executive actions could be taken on the matter. 

Speaking to Jewish Insider in an interview after the presser, Johnson said that, “My intention is to call the president myself after all this and relay to him what I’ve seen here and demand of him action. There’s executive authority that he has. Certainly his voice is important too and he needs to call this [antisemitism on college campuses] out.”

“It’s so disappointing to see students have such a high level of disrespect for their fellow students, for their classmates, for public officials who are trying to speak to them about the issue,” Johnson said of what surprised him most during his visit. “They’re openly rebellious and scornful, and that’s fine because that’s free speech, but when it crosses the line and they’re physically intimidating and threatening their fellow students, that’s something that must be stopped.” 

Asked if he thought the rise in antisemitism—and the ascent of hard-left Democrats cheering on the anti-Israel protesters — would impact how American Jews vote in November, Johnson told JI that, “By the end of this week I will have traveled to 35 states doing campaign events and ballroom events and stuff all around the country for all of our candidates and some of these really tight races. I will tell you, one of the most motivated segments of the electorate right now is the Jewish community.”

“This isn’t my words, but they say they feel as though the Democratic Party is abandoning them, turning its back on Israel. Their actions and their votes show that, and I think that is going to be a factor in the election, I really do.”

Alongside Johnson were Reps. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY), Anthony D’Esposito (R-NY), Mike Lawler (R-NY), and Virginia Foxx (R-NC), the latter of whom chairs the House Education and Workforce Committee. 

All five were met with chants of “from the river, to the sea, Palestine will be free” seen by many as a call for Israel’s elimination, and people shouting their support for Hamas. Dozens of students cheered gleefully whenever the Oct. 7 attacks were mentioned. 

A group of Jewish students who had met with Johnson at the campus Chabad house earlier in the afternoon stood holding hands with one another behind the lawmakers at the press conference. 

Two of those students, who requested anonymity, provided JI with a flier one of them found on a bulletin board in their dorm warning about “skunks on campus.” The flier includes a skunk with the Israeli flag digitally imposed on its fur. The paper also advertised that it was created “in collaboration by Columbia University and the IOF,” their way of describing the Israeli Defense Forces. 

One of the students told JI that she and a few other Jewish students warned one of Johnson’s Jewish staffers to not wear her Star of David necklace too visibly on campus, especially not after nightfall. 

A Johnson spokesperson confirmed the incident to JI, saying that a junior Jewish staffer was warned not to wear anything visibly confirming her Judaism on Columbia’s campus. The spokesperson said that the staffer was told doing so may spark an angry or potentially violent reaction from protesters.

“I was embarrassed for our city and for this institution,” Malliotakis told JI of what she saw. “If this is the future of America, then we have a much bigger problem on our hands. This is one of the best schools in the country and that’s how students here are acting? Yeah, we have a real problem.”

Columbia has faced nearly a week of anti-Israel protests from students on campus that escalated into multiple instances of physical assault and harassment against Jewish students. More than 100 anti-Israel activists were arrested last week, though all have since returned to the campus.

Antisemitic harassment, threats and intimidation hit a boiling point overnight at Columbia University, leading the White House on Sunday to condemn “physical intimidation targeting Jewish students and the Jewish community.” The White House statement came shortly after a prominent Jewish rabbi at the school declared the campus wasn’t safe for Jewish students, and urged them to leave until the school addresses “extreme” antisemitism.

The reaction came amid a night of chaos and anarchy at the university and a few incidents of physical assault against Jewish students — and after a tumultuous week that resulted in over 100 arrests of anti-Israel activists. Among the most egregious antisemitic episodes: chants from protesters of “Go back to Poland”; signs with the Hamas symbol and the words “I’m with them”; chants calling for Hamas attacks on Tel Aviv; and protesters attempting to burn an Israel flag.

“The events of the last few days, especially last night, have made it clear that Columbia University’s Public Safety and the NYPD cannot guarantee Jewish students’ safety in the face of extreme antisemitism and anarchy,” Rabbi Elie Buechler, director of the Orthodox Union-JLIC at Columbia and Barnard, texted Jewish students on Sunday. “It deeply pains me to say that I would strongly recommend you return home as soon as possible and remain home until the reality in and around campus has dramatically improved.”

In response to Buechler’s recommendation, Columbia Hillel urged Jewish students to remain on campus. “We do not believe that Jewish students should leave Columbia,” the group wrote on X. “We do believe that the University and the City need to do more to ensure the safety of our students.”  

In a statement to JI, a Columbia spokesperson said, “Columbia students have the right to protest, but they are not allowed to disrupt campus life or harass and intimidate fellow students and members of our community. We are acting on concerns we are hearing from our Jewish students and are providing additional support and resources to ensure that our community remains safe.” 

White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates released a statement condemning the “physical intimidation” against Jewish students at Columbia University, and labeled them “blatantly antisemitic.” He said the anti-Israel protesters were “echoing the rhetoric of terrorist organizations.”  

“While every American has the right to peaceful protest, calls for violence and physical intimidation targeting Jewish students and the Jewish community are blatantly antisemitic, unconscionable, and dangerous – they have absolutely no place on any college campus, or anywhere in the United States of America.” Bates said. “And echoing the rhetoric of terrorist organizations, especially in the wake of the worst massacre committed against the Jewish people since the Holocaust, is despicable.”

“We condemn these statements in the strongest terms,” Bates added. 

President Joe Biden, in his annual Passover greeting to the Jewish community, also alluded to the antisemitism at Columbia University. “Even in recent days, we’ve seen harassment and calls for violence against Jews,” Biden said in his statement Sunday evening.

After Saturday night’s widespread antisemitic harassment on campus, several Jewish Columbia students said they felt afraid for their safety for the first time.

“[Saturday night] was an absolute breaking point and the first time people were truly afraid,” Eliana Goldin, a third-year political science major, told Jewish Insider. “My friends and I saw [non-Columbia students] sneak onto campus through a gap in the fence and we were verbally harassed, and some of my friends were physically assaulted. Public safety and NYPD did not help us. We were essentially stalked and followed as we tried to leave the escalating situation.” 

According to Goldin, the physical assaults included assailants slapping a Jewish student, another pouring water on several students and others attempting to grab Israeli flags and run away with them. 

“They yelled at us to go back to Poland, that we have no culture and chanted, ‘Strike strike Tel Aviv,” Goldin recalled. “My rabbi’s decision to tell everyone to stay away from campus was the right decision,” she said of Buechler’s statement, “because last night proved that the NYPD isn’t capable of protecting us… the environment here is openly hostile and possibly dangerous.” 

Goldin said she will return to campus after Passover because she feels “a strong responsibility as a Jewish leader on campus.” But she has at least one friend who plans to remain home for the rest of the year — and won’t come back in the fall if the situation continues. 

“Physical safety is at risk right now and until we can lock campus down from non-affiliates, we need NYPD on campus because no one was there for us and that was really scary,” Goldin said, noting that the escalation was a result of students helping non-affiliates enter campus by giving their IDs to help them swipe in or showing them the gap in the gate to enter. “[Students] definitely enable these more extreme protesters,” she said. “The rhetoric may be similar.”   

Noah Lederman, a freshman studying philosophy and pre-law, has signed an open letter with dozens of other students requesting to take Zoom classes as a safety precaution. “I’m afraid to come back to campus,” he told JI. 

“But I’m going to go back because I need to be there for my fellow Jewish students, who are like family to me now.” Lederman left campus on Sunday to spend Passover in Florida — a trip that was planned long before the unrest that unfolded last week. He told JI that several classmates are abiding by Buechler’s recommendation. 

“Within 20 minutes of [Buechler’s message], I’ve gotten six or seven texts from friends who are home for Pesach saying that they’ve pushed back their return flights to campus. Instead of coming back on Wednesday after yom tov, they’re tentatively waiting until Friday because they don’t feel comfortable.”

In February, while wearing a shirt with an Israeli flag on it during a pro-Israel demonstration on campus, Lederman was shoved, pinned against a wall and, told by a pro-Palestinian protester to “keep f—ing running.” Nearly three months later, he said that antisemitism on campus “is 100 percent worse… because the university is unable, or unwilling, to protect its Jewish students.” 

Antisemitism has skyrocketed on Columbia’s campus since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel and subsequent Israel-Hamas war. But according to Lederman, “things got really bad starting on Wednesday.” 

Last week, Lederman traveled with a group of students to Washington, D.C., to see Columbia’s president, Nemat Shafik, testify before a House Education and the Workforce Committee hearing on unchecked antisemitism at Columbia. 

“We returned Wednesday night to see the encampment, which was terrifying,” he said, referring to the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment”— a demonstration in which protesters occupied the space on the university’s South Lawn for 30 hours. On Thursday, 108 people were arrested and issued summonses for trespass — including Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN) daughter, Isra Hirsi. 

“There were flares lit up in the streets and we were offered escorts back by public safety to get back to our dorms,” Lederman said. “Then on Saturday there were protests on campus attempting to burn an Israeli flag.” 

As for Reps. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), Sara Jacobs (D-CA) and Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), three of the Columbia alumni serving in Congress, none responded to JI’s requests for comment on what was happening at their alma mater. 

Nadler later posted on X that “the anti-Semitic speech and protests taking place at and around Columbia has crossed a line and is creating an environment that is unsafe for Jewish students.” He called on the school to “do everything they can to protect students and ensure all feel safe on campus.”

Those who opted to weigh in — on both sides of the aisle — have largely condemned the chaotic scenes unfolding in New York and demanded Columbia take action to protect Jewish students. 

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, in a statement released Sunday evening, said: “College campuses must be places of learning and discussion. Every American has a right to protest, but when protests shift to antisemitism, verbal abuse, intimidation, or glorification of Oct. 7 violence against Jewish people, that crosses the line. Campuses must remain safe for all students.”

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) said in a statement she is “appalled at the virulent antisemitism being displayed on Columbia University’s campus.”

Rep. Adriano Espaillat, whose district includes Columbia University, wrote on X: “At the heart of every moment in history, there has been a tipping point, and at no other time in modern day society has the current climate of antisemitism been more prevalent and pronounced as it is today.”

In response to Rabbi Buechler’s urging of Jewish students to go home until the campus is safe again for them, Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) argued that the onus was on the school administration to provide that protection.

“Recommending Jewish students go home is not the answer. Expelling students who have engaged in this antisemitic behavior is,” Lawler wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “@Columbia and all universities across America must make it clear there will be zero tolerance for antisemitism or threats of any kind. Time to clean house!”

Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) wrote on X that, “The situation at Columbia Univ is unacceptable. While everyone has a 1st Amendment right to protest, students do not have a right to threaten violence and cause fear within the Jewish community on campus. @Columbia and @NYPDPC must ensure a safe environment for all students.”

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), the No. 3 House Republican who questioned Shafik during last week’s congressional hearing, called on Columbia to fire the current president and board in a statement.

“While Columbia’s failed leadership spent hundreds of hours preparing for this week’s Congressional hearing, it clearly was an attempt to cover up for their abject failure to enforce their own campus rules and protect Jewish students on campus,” Stefanik said. “Over the past few months and especially the last 24 hours, Columbia’s leadership has clearly lost control of its campus putting Jewish students’ safety at risk. It is crystal clear that Columbia University – previously a beacon of academic excellence founded by Alexander Hamilton – needs new leadership.”

“President Shafik must immediately resign,” Stefanik continued. “And the Columbia Board must appoint a President who will protect Jewish students and enforce school policies.”

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) announced on Sunday that he would “be coming to Columbia University to walk with the Jewish students” in the wake of the protests. 

“If the University won’t protect them, Congress will!” Moskowitz wrote on X.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) used his condemnation to call on Congress to pass his legislation with Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) combating antisemitism on college campuses.

“I never imagined seeing this in America. @Columbia’s cowering to antisemitic hate has let terrorist sympathizers take over campus & threaten Jewish students,” Scott wrote on X. “We must pass @SenatorTimScott & my Stop Antisemitism on College Campuses Act & pull all federal funds from Columbia NOW.”

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), wrote on the platform that, “Hamas & Iran want Jews to feel unsafe everywhere. ‘Til now they couldn’t reach U.S. Jews. Thanks to pro-Hamas campus rioters & feckless administrators, threats to Jews only grow. Incitement is not free speech. College leaders must stop enabling terror & keep Jewish students safe.”

Even Israeli President Isaac Herzog weighed in on the exploding antisemitism at Columbia University and other elite college campuses. 

“Firm and strong action must be taken to prevent antisemitism on campus. American academia must wake up to the threat, a clear and present danger to academic freedom and to the very lives of Jews on campus,” Herzog said.

This story was updated on Monday, April 22, at 10:52 a.m. ET.

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) accused Columbia University President Nemat Shafik of felony perjury after Columbia professor Joseph Massad denied that he had been reprimanded or otherwise disciplined over comments praising the Hamas attack on Israel.

Shafik, at a Wednesday congressional hearing, said that Massad had been “spoken to” about an article praising the Hamas attack on Israel and that administrators had communicated that his remarks  — which come as part of a long history of anti-Israel commentary — were “unacceptable.” Shafik said Massad also remains under investigation, with his tenure potentially at risk.

Shafik also said that Massad had been removed as chairman of an academic review committee at Columbia, later stating that she was unsure of his status and that he would be removed after Stefanik noted that he remained listed as the committee chair on Columbia’s website.

But Massad on Thursday told CNN that he was not reprimanded in any way and that no supervisors had communicated displeasure with the peace — instead, they offered support.

“I was shown solidarity by my chair and deans based on the death threats that I received and the campaign targeting me,” he said in an email to CNN.

In further comments to Electronic Intifada, he said that supervisors had specifically praised his article praising the attack and said they did not find it objectionable. Massad also denied that the article praised Hamas.

Massad said he had not been informed he was under any kind of investigation, and that he was already set to depart as chair of the committee next month, but expects to remain a committee member in the next class year.

Stefanik, in a statement to Jewish Insider, accused Shafik of lying to Congress in her testimony.

“A reminder to President Shafik that knowingly misleading Congress is a felony,” Stefanik said. “Despite Columbia President Shafik’s testimony, there has been NO action to fire or discipline pro-terrorist and antisemitic faculty chair Professor Joseph Massad… Shafik’s false testimony and refusal to address the severity of the rampant antisemitism on her campus is an affront to the Jewish students and faculty at Columbia under her failed leadership.” 

Columbia University did not respond to a request for comment.

Stefanik further accused Columbia of attempting to “cover up for Shafik’s lies” by “updating their website to show Massad as ‘outgoing chair’ but refus[ing] to immediately remove him despite Shafik committing to at the hearing.”

Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN) daughter was suspended from Barnard College on Thursday morning over her involvement in an anti-Israel protest on Columbia University’s campus, a day after Omar questioned Columbia’s president at a House Education and Workforce Committee hearing.

During her questioning, Omar repeatedly downplayed violations by anti-Israel protesters on campus and accused the school of unfairly and baselessly targeting pro-Palestinian activists. Omar did not mention her daughter’s leadership in a suspended campus anti-Israel group during the hearing.

Barnard is technically independent from Columbia but functions as an affiliate of the Ivy League school; Barnard students have full access to Columbia facilities and courses, with students receiving a diploma from both schools.

Omar’s daughter, Isra Hirsi, who maintains a robust public profile of her own, posted on X on Thursday morning that she and two other students were “suspended for standing in solidarity with Palestinians facing a genocide,” adding that she’s part of the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” an unauthorized tent camp set up on the Columbia campus by anti-Israel activists in violation of the school’s rules and warnings provided by school officials.

On Thursday afternoon, New York Police Department officers entered the encampment and began arresting demonstrators who refused to disperse.

Hirsi also described herself as an organizer with Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine, which was suspended on Columbia’s campus but has continued its activities.

In her questioning of Columbia President Nemat Shafik, Omar said she was “appalled” that Columbia suspended and expelled six students from school housing “for their involvement in the pro-Palestinian panel event on campus,” claiming that the students were “arbitrarily targeted” and that Palestinian students were “harassed [and] intimidated” by private investigators.

The panel Omar referred to included an individual linked to a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, and Columbia leaders said on Thursday had contacted the FBI about the event.

“This was a very serious case. We had students who on an online call invited people who were inciting violence,” Shafik said. “And that is unacceptable. And so we needed to get to the bottom of it.”

Shafik said the students refused to cooperate with the investigation and will remain suspended until they do so.

Omar further claimed that pro-Palestinian protesters at Columbia had been “attacked with a toxic chemical substance leaving many hospitalized.” She claimed that Columbia administration had failed to contact the students impacted for several days.

Shafik responded that police are investigating, and that the school did contact all of the students affected and “many of them didn’t want support,” and rejected Omar’s accusations that the school had not responded immediately.

Further, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), the education committee chair, said at the close of the hearing that, based on documents provided by the school, the students in question had been sprayed with a non-toxic prank item, and that the students who sprayed it are suspended.

Omar also questioned how many of the organizations that had been “canceled” by the school included Jewish students. SJP and Jewish Voice for Peace were suspended by the school for violations of its policies.

More broadly, Omar claimed that “there has been a rise in targeting and harassment against anti-war protesters” at schools around the country, further claiming that there “has been a recent attack on the democratic rights of students across the country.”

The Minnesotan legislator asked Shafik whether there had been any protests on Columbia’s campus “saying we are against Jewish people,” to which Shafik responded “no,” after some hesitation. Shafik attempted to elaborate on that answer, before being cut off by Omar.

Later in the hearing, Shafik agreed with other Columbia officials that some of the protests included content that was “completely anti-Jewish, completely unacceptable, horrible.”

During a break in the hearing, Omar delivered remarks to the press alongside a group of pro-Palestinian protesters who said they were Columbia students, and had spent much of the early part of the hearing shouting in the hallway outside the hearing room demanding to be let in, at times making it difficult to hear those speaking inside the room.

“This is not an honest conversation that we’re having today in this committee,” Omar declared, again repeating claims about “toxic chemical attacks” and accusing Columbia of creating “oppressive systems” to silence protesters.

She said it is a “disservice to our democracy” that the protesters were not allowed into the hearing room, which was full for almost the entire event.

Omar did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), who also participated in the hearing and the press appearance, implied in a post on X that Hirsi was being suspended in retaliation for Omar’s questioning, calling it a “political [reprisal].”

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) responded to Hirsi’s post, claiming that students “are being retaliated against for using their constitutional rights to protest genocide. It’s appalling.”

Columbia University President Nemat Shafik largely escaped the fireworks at a Wednesday congressional hearing that brought down two of her Ivy League colleagues last year, but nonetheless faced a grilling over the school’s handling of antisemitism, particularly regarding professors who have made pro-Hamas comments. 

Questioning from lawmakers on the House Education and Workforce Committee highlighted Joseph Massad and Mohamed Abdou, who expressed support for Hamas and other terrorist groups, and Katherine Franke, who said that IDF veterans are too dangerous to remain on Columbia’s campus.

Shafik said that she was “appalled” by Massad’s comments and condemned them, adding Massad had been “spoken to,” an answer Republican lawmakers found inadequate. Shafik said Massad remains under investigation. 

Massad, lawmakers noted, is also the chair of a review committee in Columbia’s school of arts and sciences.

Shafik claimed that Massad was no longer chair of the committee, but walked that claim back when Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) said later in the hearing that he still appeared to be named as such on Columbia’s website. She said she’d clarify the record following the hearing. Pressed on whether she would commit to removing Massad as the committee chair, Shafik hesitated, but then said that she would.

Claire Shipman and David Greenwald, the co-chairs of Columbia’s board of trustees, who appeared beside Shafik at the hearing, said that Massad should not retain that committee chairmanship.

Asked whether Massad could be fired despite his tenure status, Shafik said there are “very complex issues around that.” She suggested the outcome of the school’s investigation could prompt his firing. But she said she would not have approved Massad’s tenure if he were applying today.

Shafik said that Abdou, who is teaching at Columbia on a limited basis, will serve out the remainder of the semester but will be banned from teaching at Columbia again.

“He has written and said things that are in support of Hamas, which I find very problematic,” Shafik responded, when asked if Abdou is antisemitic.

According to Shafik, Franke has also been spoken to by senior Columbia officials, during which conversations Franke backpedaled on her comments; Shafik said she encouraged Franke to apologize and that the professor plans to “clarify her position.”

“Any faculty member at Columbia who behaves in an antisemitic or discriminatory way should find somewhere else to go,” Shafik added, speaking broadly.

Stefanik retorted that private conversations, as in the case of both Massad and Franke, are not a sufficient response, and that they effectively send the message that Columbia tolerates that behavior and commentary.

Stefanik said following the hearing in a statement, “If it takes a member of Congress to force a university president to fire a pro-terrorist, antisemitic faculty chair, then Columbia University leadership is failing Jewish students and its academic mission. No amount of overlawyered, overprepped, and over-consulted testimony is going to cover up for failure to act.”

She accused the Columbia leaders of “arrogance” and said that the school is “in for a reckoning of accountability.”

In her opening statement, Shafik declared that “the ultimate answer to antisemitism in all its forms is education, and we should not lose sight of the powerful impact of our core mission.”

“Will it work?” she continued. “There have been periods in our history when antisemitism is in abeyance, and they were characterized by enlightened leadership, inclusive cultures and clarity about rights and obligations. Those are the values I cherish and that I am determined to bring to Columbia.”

Shafik also found herself at odds during the hearing with Shipman, Greenwald and David Schizer, the Columbia law professor who chairs the school’s Antisemitism Task Force.

In one striking moment, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) questioned whether there had been protests at Columbia “saying ‘We are against Jewish people,’” to which Shafik said no — a position that the other members of the panel later contradicted.

Schizer said, “I think there have been antisemitic protests, so I would say yes.” 

Shipman referenced one incident “that the students were trying to call a ‘protest,’ but it was an event to harass admitted students who were Jewish, and it’s outrageous.”

Greenwald likewise said, “There have been antisemitic events on campus, which I interpret as anti-Jewish.”

Shafik was subsequently pressed on the content of some of the protests, which she said was “completely anti-Jewish, completely unacceptable, horrible… anti-Jewish things were said at protests, yes.”

The exchange mirrored another moment earlier in the hearing, when Shafik was asked if the slogans “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and “long live the intifada” are antisemitic.

Shafik initially said that she finds the slogans “very upsetting” and that she “hears them” as antisemitic but “some people don’t” and that “it’s a difficult issue because some people hear it as antisemitic, other people do not.”

But after Schizer offered a simple “yes” in response to the same question, Shafik said that she agrees and that there should be consequences for those on campus using those slogans.

Shafik also said that she finds calls to “globalize the intifada” to be personally unacceptable, but that Columbia’s current policies don’t reflect that.

Later in the hearing, Shafik said that some Jewish people say they don’t see the slogans as antisemitic, even if the majority do. She said that Columbia leadership has also sent a joint letter to the Columbia community describing the slogans as “hurtful.”

The Columbia leaders highlighted steps the school has taken to address antisemitism, and largely aimed for a non-combative approach, acknowledging that antisemitism remains a significant problem on Columbia’s campus and that the school has more to do to address it. 

Notably, panel members highlighted specific incidents of antisemitism in their opening statements to the committee.

Schizer said that an assault on a Jewish student on campus reminded him of his own ancestors’ experiences during the pogroms in modern-day Ukraine, describing that and other incidents as “unacceptable.”

“It’s also heartbreaking that many Jewish and Israeli students feel uncomfortable in student groups having nothing to do with the Middle East,” Schizer said. “This sort of pressure, signaling that Jewish are accepted only if they reject a core part of their religion and identity — well, it sounds like old-fashioned bigotry to me.”

He said, however, that the school is working hard to address issues, noting that Columbia is implementing recommendations from the task force on campus protest limiting locations of protests, improvements in policy enforcement, pursuing a “major initiative” to combat antisemitism and efforts to ensure that Jewish students’ reports of feeling uncomfortable are treated the same as those from other groups.

Schizer said further reports and recommendations are forthcoming.

Panelists also noted that Columbia had contacted the FBI and enlisted private investigators in response to a student-hosted virtual event that featured a Palestinian activist with ties to a U.S.-designated terror group.

“I am not satisfied with where Columbia is at the moment. As co-chair of the board, I bear responsibility for that,” Shipman said. “Our systems clearly have not been equipped to manage the unfolding situation but with each challenge, we have moved to adapt.”

“We are far from done,” she continued. “I am outraged by the vile sentiments I continue to hear by those who ignore our rules, and we are holding them accountable.”

Greenwald, who is Jewish, noted that he has personally been the subject of antisemitism.

“When [campus] debates devolve into antisemitic harassment, discrimination or violence, as has unacceptably happened at Columbia after Oct. 7, there must be consequences,” Greenwald said, adding later, “The antisemitism on our campus makes me sick to my stomach.”

Columbia University’s president and board co-chairs are set to testify at a House Education and Workforce Committee hearing dedicated to antisemitism on the New York campus on April 17, the committee announced on Monday.

Columbia’s president was initially asked to testify at a disastrous December hearing that contributed to the resignations of the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, but was unable to do so because of a scheduling conflict. Now, the school’s leaders will have their turn in the hot seat.

“Some of the worst cases of antisemitic assaults, harassment, and vandalism on campus have occurred at Columbia University,” Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), the committee chair, said in a statement. “Due to the severe and pervasive nature of these cases, and the Columbia administration’s failure to enforce its own policies to protect Jewish students, the Committee must hear from Columbia’s leadership in person to learn how the school is addressing antisemitism on its campus.”

Columbia’s president, Nemat Shafik, and Board of Trustees co-chairs Claire Shipman and David Greenwald will be testifying at the hearing. The committee requested last month that Columbia provide documents to the committee on its handling of campus antisemitism.

“Columbia is committed to combating antisemitism and we welcome the opportunity to discuss our work to protect and support Jewish students and keep our community safe,” a university spokesperson said in a statement to JI.

The recommendations handed down earlier this week from Columbia University’s task force on antisemitism painted a picture of Jewish students feeling “isolation and pain” in the wake of pro-Palestinian protests that have gripped the campus since Oct. 7. 

They also cited a lack of disciplinary response from the university regarding unauthorized protests of the Israel-Hamas war as contributing to Jewish students’ struggles on campus, and called for the university to more effectively investigate policy violations by creating an easier process for filing complaints.

But on the pivotal question of whether some of the slogans chanted at those rallies veer from legitimate political speech into antisemitism the task force’s recommendations are ambiguous.

The report states, “Obviously, the chants ‘gas the Jews’ and ‘Hitler was right’ are calls to genocide, but fortunately no one at Columbia has been shouting these phrases… Rather, many of the chants at recent Columbia protests are viewed differently by different members of the Columbia community: some feel strongly that these are calls to genocide, while others feel strongly that they are not.” 

The report does not, however, specifically address the slogan “from the river to the sea Palestine will be free,” which has frequently been chanted at protests on Columbia’s campus and is widely viewed by Jewish groups as a call for genocide of Israelis.

According to David Schizer, a professor of law and economics and dean emeritus of Columbia’s law school, who is one of the three co-chairs of the task force, the key issue that the 24-page report addresses is the thorny matter of campus free speech — emphasizing that “everyone needs to have a right to speak and to protest,” he said. 

“How can we make sure the people have the right to speak and protest, while at the same time ensuring that protests don’t interfere with the ability of other members of the community to teach classes, study for a test, to hear their professors,” Schizer, who is also the former CEO of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, continued. While the report emphasizes the right to peaceful demonstrations, it also condemns faculty for participating in unauthorized demonstrations.

But some prominent leaders of the movement to fight antisemitism in higher education expressed skepticism that a set of recommendations could fix the raging antisemitism on Columbia’s campus — which has included repeated violations of the rules on protests and physical assault and other serious attacks on Jewish students. 

“The new recommendations have some technically good work which could provide incremental advances, but it’s certainly not the kind of thing that will solve Columbia’s problems,” Kenneth Marcus, founder of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, told JI. The Brandeis Center recently filed federal complaints against the University of California for antisemitism at UC Berkeley and American University, while the Department of Education is currently investigating Brandeis Center complaints filed against Wellesley, SUNY New Paltz, the University of Southern California, Brooklyn College and the University of Illinois for violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and for discrimination against Jewish students.

The recommendations come as Columbia faces pressure from donors and investigations by Congress and the Biden administration over antisemitism. It also comes in the wake of scrutiny regarding a number of antisemitism task forces set up at elite universities as a response to the surge in antisemitism that erupted following the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks in Israel. Five months later, questions remain over the effectiveness and direction of such groups — with some experts claiming task forces have been all talk with minimal action so far. 

But Schizer said that in Columbia’s case, there have been months of ongoing research of university policies, including interviewing students. It aims to release a series of reports in the coming months with the goal of gaining a deeper understanding of the campus climate and providing further recommendations.

The report states that while it agrees with the university’s principle that calls for genocide, like other incitement to violence, violate the rules, “the application of it should be clarified.”

It goes on to encourage the university’s legal team to “provide more guidance on this issue,” and emphasizes that clearer guidance is needed, like the university has done with its rules on gender-based misconduct to include “scenarios,” “to provide greater clarity help to provide fair notice, so Columbia affiliates have more of a sense of what is permissible (even if offensive) and what is not.” 

Columbia administration plans to review the task force’s interim policy at the end of this semester. Minouche Shafik, the university’s president, said in a statement that the new recommendations —  the first set in a series — are welcomed by the university and “will continue across a number of fronts as the University works to address this ancient, but sadly persistent, form of hate.” 

Marcus said it’s “good that Columbia finally has good people asking serious questions about harassment and disruptive protests,” but he added, “What’s needed is not just a few recommendations regarding the rules on protest. The fact is that there’s been antisemitic bigotry [at] Columbia University for decades now.”

“It’s not as if a few changes to the protest policies are going to substantially change the institution as long as they continue business as usual,” he continued. “Much of what’s in this new set of recommendations could have been written on Oct. 6 given everything that’s happened since. What’s needed is not a series of incremental measures, but a rethinking of what Columbia is doing to cause harm, not just to Jewish students but also to the surrounding community. These recommendations may lead to technical and marginal changes in the ways that the university responds to specific incidents, and generally speaking that’s a good thing. 

But it’s certainly not a solution to the problem.” 

Marcus noted that the recommendations are “framed fairly narrow, with response to only one narrow piece of the problem.” 

“I know this is only one of the series of reports that we can anticipate, but if this is an indication of what’s to come, it may provide some useful professional iteration but not a truly substantial change,” he said. “It does not indicate a new mindset that is ready to deal with the problems Oct. 7 has revealed.” 

Mark Yudof, chair of the Academic Engagement Network, expressed a similar sentiment as Marcus, but added that he’s “hopeful” the report will bring change. Schizer, as well as the two other co-chairs of the task force, Ester Fuchs and Nicolas Lemann, are all longtime members of AEN. 

“We need adequate rules about speech and we need to put teeth into it and have reasonable procedures in which people are actually disciplined for violating the rules,” Yudof said, calling the report “complex.” 

While skeptical, Yudof also expressed praise for the recommendations — “I think Columbia’s report gets at the core problem of education and I applaud them,” he said. 

“I like the report and am hopeful… I would urge the Columbia administration to adopt the recommendations of the task force, but the proof will be in the pudding.”

In the aftermath of a surge in antisemitism that erupted following the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks in Israel, top universities including Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania and Northwestern announced the creation of new bodies tasked with studying antisemitism on campus and identifying how to address it. Their impending work is framed with urgency, and the bodies are generally discussed using language about the importance of inclusivity on campus. 

But nearly five months after the environment for Jewish students on these campuses began to rapidly deteriorate, questions remain over the efficacy and mandate of such groups. They will also face the thorny issue of campus free speech as they delve into questions about what, exactly, constitutes antisemitism on campus. 

The question over the credibility of these antisemitism task forces was underscored this week at Harvard, following the resignation of business school professor Raffaella Sadun, the co-chair of the presidential task force, reportedly because she felt university leaders weren’t willing to act on the committee’s recommendations. 

“They’ve utterly failed to protect Jewish and Israeli students. It’s shameful,” a Jewish faculty member at Harvard told Jewish Insider. They requested anonymity to speak candidly about interactions with students and administrators in recent months. The professor has seen numerous Israeli students kicked out of WhatsApp groups unrelated to politics because they are Israeli. The professor also described widespread opposition, among many students, to topics having to do with Israel — and a corresponding reluctance to act from administrators, who fear pushback from far-left students. 

“If you’re an administrator, and you care about your own personal well-being, and you want to keep Harvard out of the news or off social media, you basically try not to engage with these people in a way that will provoke them,” the professor said. “In the end this backfired on Harvard, because their failure to take care of Jewish students contributed to the accusations of institutional antisemitism, the lawsuit, the congressional investigation.”

“I think if the mandate is not clear, if there’s not enough resources, if the council doesn’t have committees and jobs, it’s just going to be window dressing,” said Miriam Elman, executive director of the Academic Engagement Network. “It’s not going to be able to do the work that needs to be done.”

Harvard announced the creation of an antisemitism task force in January, which immediately faced criticism due to comments made by its other co-chair, historian Derek Penslar, suggesting that antisemitism is not a major problem at Harvard. The body’s full membership has now been announced, but the scope and timeline of its work remains unclear. 

Interim Harvard President Alan Garber said in a Monday email that he expects the work of Harvard’s antisemitism task force to “take several months to complete,” but he asked the co-chairs “to send recommendations to the deans and me on a rolling basis.” It is not clear if the university will provide updates along the way; or if Harvard’s leadership will accept the task force’s recommendations.

At universities that already had antisemitism task forces prior to Oct. 7, those that achieved the most success generally have a budget to pursue actual work, a clear timeline for their work and strong buy-in from administrators, who must be willing to actually implement the groups’ recommendations, according to Miriam Elman, executive director of the Academic Engagement Network, which works to fight anti-Israel sentiment and antisemitism at U.S. universities. 

It’s not yet clear if the newly created task forces — especially those at private universities, which don’t have the same obligation for transparency as public universities — will achieve the needed support from leaders.

“I think if the mandate is not clear, if there’s not enough resources, if the council doesn’t have committees and jobs, it’s just going to be window dressing,” said Elman. “It’s not going to be able to do the work that needs to be done.”

At Columbia University, Shai Davidai, an assistant professor in the business school, said he doesn’t have confidence that a newly created antisemitism task force can succeed unless the faculty on the committee changes to include more Zionist and Israeli voices. 

“Stanford is aware of exactly what is going on, and if they cared they would have done something over the last five months,” said Kevin Feigelis, a doctoral student in the Stanford physics department, who on Thursday testified at a House Education Committee roundtable with Jewish students. “The university places people on these committees in one of two ways: either it places people who they think are going to be most sympathetic to the university or they go straight to Hillel and ask them. These are both troubling.” 

“At universities, if you want to make sure something doesn’t happen, you set up a task force,” Davidai continued. “The task force at Columbia has done absolutely nothing. They just talk.” 

At Stanford University, an antisemitism task force created in the wake of Oct. 7 has, like Harvard’s, been mired in conversations and controversy over its membership. Faculty co-chair Ari Kelman, an associate professor in Stanford’s Graduate School of Education and Religious Studies, had a record of downplaying the threat of campus antisemitism along with recent alliances with anti-Israel groups. He resigned, citing the controversy, and was replaced with Larry Diamond, a pro-Israel professor in Stanford’s political science department. Under its new leadership, the committee also expanded its name and scope in January to include anti-Israel bias. 

Despite the updates, Kevin Feigelis, a doctoral student in the Stanford physics department, who on Thursday testified at a House Education Committee roundtable with Jewish students, said that “the task force has still accomplished nothing and it’s not clear that they have the power to accomplish anything.” 

In January, Feigelis worked with the campus antisemitism task force to plan an on-campus forum meant to combat antisemitism. The symposium was disrupted by a pro-Palestinian protest that included threats to Jewish attendees.

The task force “was instituted just to appease people,” Feigelis said. “Stanford is aware of exactly what is going on, and if they cared they would have done something over the last five months. The university places people on these committees in one of two ways: either it places people who they think are going to be most sympathetic to the university or they go straight to Hillel and ask them. These are both troubling.” 

Feigelis expressed belief that the task force could accomplish more if it consisted of lawyers and more Israeli faculty. 

“If you really want to fix the problem, why conflate it with other issues that are going to prolong trying to find a solution to it?” Mike Teplitsky, a Northwestern alum and the president of the Coalition Against Antisemitism at Northwestern, said of the task force’s attempt to also focus on Islamophobia and other forms of hate. “I would call it a bureaucratic distraction from trying to fix the problem.” 

“If [the administration cared] the committee would not be made of political scientists and a biologist… lawyers should be the ones staffing a committee that determines what constitutes antisemitism. Instead they picked people who have no idea what constitutes free speech or what the code of conduct actually is.” 

He continued, “The task force is currently holding listening sessions, but it’s just not clear what will come of that.” 

After Northwestern University announced in November that it would create an antisemitism task force, 163 faculty and staff members at the university wrote a letter to President Michael Schill saying they were “seriously dismayed and concerned” by the announcement, raising concerns that the task force’s work would challenge “rigorous, open debate.” Three of the signatories of that letter — including Jessica Winegar, a Middle Eastern studies professor and vocal proponent of boycotts of Israel — were then named to the task force, which will also focus on addressing Islamophobia. 

“If you really want to fix the problem, why conflate it with other issues that are going to prolong trying to find a solution to it?” Mike Teplitsky, a Northwestern alum and the president of the Coalition Against Antisemitism at Northwestern, said of the task force’s attempt to also focus on Islamophobia and other forms of hate. “I would call it a bureaucratic distraction from trying to fix the problem.” 

Mark Rotenberg, Hillel International’s vice president for university initiatives and the group’s general counsel, argued that antisemitism has proven to be so severe as to warrant its own mechanisms. The inclusion of Islamophobia “and other hateful behavior” in the group’s mandate would be like if a campus Title IX office, focused on gender-based inequality, was also required to focus on racism.

“Antiracism may be a very important thing, but merging it with the problem of violence in frat houses is not going to signal the women on that campus that they are really taking that problem seriously,” said Rotenberg, who works with administrators at campuses across the U.S. on antisemitism-related issues. “That’s our point about antisemitism.”

Lily Cohen, a Northwestern senior who is a member of the task force, came face to face with antisemitism on campus a year before the Oct. 7 attacks. After writing an op-ed in the campus newspaper decrying antisemitism and speaking out about her support for Zionism, she was called a terrorist and faced an onslaught of hate — including a large banner that was printed with her article, covered by “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” in red paint. 

“I think it comes from the top,” said Cohen, who noted that, after the op-ed incident, “no strong actions were taken to stand up for Jewish students or protect Jewish students, or even just express that that wasn’t OK. It fostered an environment where antisemitism is tolerated at Northwestern as long as it stays just subtle enough that you’re not saying Jews.”

Afterward, she met with university administrators to talk about what happened to her. “At the end of the day, listening is not enough,” she said. “I don’t think in any of the meetings I had with any administrators, that they actually referred to what happened to me as antisemitism. I think that that’s a huge problem here, is how easy it is to say, ‘We are not antisemitic, we’re just anti-Zionist,’ or ‘We don’t hate Jews, we just hate Zionists. We just hate Israel.’”

The group started meeting in January, and it was asked by the president to finish its work by June, which Cohen worries is not enough time, especially given its broad scope. Administrators at the school have not instilled much confidence in her in the past, but she is choosing to be hopeful.

“Being on the committee, I have to be optimistic that we’re going to do something and that the president will take our recommendations seriously, and will put them into action,” she said. “Because if not, what was it all for?”

Gabby Deutch is Jewish Insider’s senior national correspondent; Haley Cohen is eJewishPhilanthropy’s news reporter.

For two hours on Wednesday, lawmakers heard from a parade of Jewish students, each delivering the same message: They do not feel safe on their college campuses.

Speaking to a roundtable organized by the House Committee on Education & the Workforce, Jewish students from Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Columbia, Rutgers, Stanford, Tulane, Cooper Union and University of California, Berkeley spoke about about the harassment, threats and violence they’ve faced on their campuses since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

The students’ accounts were all remarkably similar, despite coming from a range of locations and school types, including openly antisemitic taunts and harassment, angry mobs rampaging through campus and overtaking campus buildings, vandalism and in some cases threats of or actual incidents of violence, all going largely or completely unaddressed by university administrators and campus police, despite repeated and sustained pleas from the students for help and support. 

In some cases, the students said professors and administrators were complicit or actively involved in the antisemitic activity. Students said that they feared for their safety and even their lives.

The students, saying they felt abandoned by their universities and had no faith in them to act to protect them, pleaded for action from Congress. They said that they hoped their testimony could serve as a wakeup call to both Congress and the American public.

“As my friends from Harvard and UPenn can tell you, it doesn’t end simply because presidents are replaced. Systemic change is needed,” Kevin Feigelis, a Stanford student, said. “Universities have proven they have no intention of fixing themselves. It must be you, and it must be now.”

Shabbos Kestenbaum — a Harvard student who said he’d contacted the school’s antisemitism task force more than 40 times without a response and had been threatened in a video with a machete by a still-employed Harvard staff member — called Congress and the courts the students’ “last hope.”

.@ShabbosK with the best case yet for the moral bankruptcy at @Harvard.

"I know these students. I sit in class with them. I share study halls with them. They publicly praise Hamas." pic.twitter.com/9qECoPMNH1

— House Committee on Education & Workforce (@EdWorkforceCmte) February 29, 2024

Multiple students and lawmakers said that the current events on campus carry echoes of 1930s Germany or the pogroms in Russia.

Some suggested potential courses of action that Congress and other federal branches could take, including leveraging U.S. taxpayer funding or the schools’ tax-exempt statuses, placing third-party monitors on campus and enforcing diversity requirements in Middle East studies departments requiring them to include pro-Israel views.

Students from Harvard, Penn and MIT all said that little has changed on their campuses since last year’s blockbuster congressional hearing on campus antisemitism, which prompted the ouster of Harvard and Penn’s presidents.

.@Stanford student Kevin Feigelis says his campus has changed from a center of learning into a wasteland of hatred.

"Dirty jew…monster…colonizer…child killer…these are the names a dozen Stanford Students hurled in my face one night in November as they surrounded me." pic.twitter.com/UYwoaJVnDu

— House Committee on Education & the Workforce (@EdWorkforceCmte) February 29, 2024

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), the committee’s chair, vowed that she and her colleagues would not stop their efforts to tackle antisemitism on campus.

“I was very emotional,” Foxx told Jewish Insider, “I’m a mother and a grandmother. I have one grandchild who went to college and I’m not sure what I would have done if he had come home to say he felt threatened on his campus like these students feel threatened. No student on a college campus, in this country, in the year 2024, should feel threatened.”

Foxx said that the committee’s antisemitism investigation is proceeding deliberately, but that the schools will be held to account. The committee has already requested documents from Harvard, Penn and Columbia and has now subpoenaed Harvard. Foxx suggested that other schools whose students had appeared Thursday could be next.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton decried antisemitism on U.S. college campuses on Saturday, telling an audience at the Munich Security Conference that young people in America are  “woefully uninformed” about antisemitism and the Holocaust. 

Clinton, now a professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, described an atmosphere in which students who are highly engaged on global issues only regularly protest Israel, despite a lack of knowledge about the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A series of recent events on campus exemplify the issue, Clinton said.

“Last week we had three panels about Ukraine, and they were superb. They went off without a hitch. We learned a lot and were challenged,” said Clinton. Two days later, the school hosted several panels about conflict-related sexual violence, with a focus on Ukraine, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Israel. The conversation focused on Israel was protested.

“You just have to ask yourself how you could have an event focused on using rape as a tactic of war against women and girls, which is [used] in conflict across the world, and you include the most recent horrendous example out of Israel, and that brings out the protesters,” Clinton said. “There is an invidious strain of antisemitism that has never gone away, but we had hopes it had been, certainly, submerged, that has been poking its head up for quite some time now.”

Speaking alongside Deborah Lipstadt, the U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, Clinton offered a brief history of efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, noting that her students at Columbia have minimal knowledge of the history. 

“What is so frustrating is that people have very little to no information about all of the efforts that were made, literally starting in 1948, but certainly moving most dramatically to the year 2000, to actually create a state for the Palestinian people,” said Clinton. 

“I say that,” she continued, “because even when I’m teaching, with very smart students, and the students are from all over the world at the School of International and Public Affairs, they have no idea about any of this.”

Clinton laid out a list of events that she considered crucial context for understanding Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack and the ongoing Israel-Hamas war — many of which she witnessed firsthand.  

“They have no idea about the collapse of the peace process, the rise of an intifada. They have no idea about then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, a man noted for his military experience, withdrawing from Gaza. They have no idea of Hamas’ takeover of Gaza. They have no idea that another Israeli prime minister back when I was secretary of state, namely [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, was willing at least to keep talking about some kind of two-state solution process,” Clinton said.  

It is the responsibility of educators, policymakers and the current generation of leaders to teach young people more about history, and in particular about the Holocaust, said Clinton, pointing to data that show young people know very little about the Holocaust.

“That’s our fault,” said Clinton. “The information they get, more often than not, is off of social media, where they are picking up not only misinformation but deliberate disinformation, that they are absorbing and acting on and not knowing even what they’re saying. So this is a problem that was really exposed on October 7, but we have to recognize it is a bigger problem even than that.”

Columbia University on Monday became the latest target of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce’s investigation into antisemitism on U.S. college and university campuses.

Committee Chair Virginia Foxx (R-NC) sent a letter to Columbia’s leadership requesting documents relating to the school’s handling of antisemitism, following similar requests sent to Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania.

Foxx, in her letter, traces Columbia’s “environment of pervasive antisemitism” back to 2004, in addition to numerous alleged incidents — detailed over more than eight pages — of antisemitic and anti-Israel comments and assault, harassment and vandalism targeting Jewish students on Columbia’s campus since Oct. 7. 

The chairwoman also noted that events by Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace have continued “with apparent impunity” on Columbia’s campus even though both groups have been officially suspended.

“Columbia’s failure to enforce its policies and uphold its commitments on antisemitism is a clear abdication of the university’s obligation to protect its Jewish students,” Foxx wrote.

She requested a slew of documents including those relating to reports of and responses to antisemitism on Columbia’s campus, funding from Qatari and other foreign donors to Columbia and funding for pro-Palestine and anti-Israel groups on campus.

Foxx gave the school until Feb. 26 to respond to the document request.

Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, had been invited to participate in a disastrous December hearing on campus antisemitism — which has led, in part, to the resignations of two of the three presidents who testified — but declined to attend due to a scheduling conflict.

A Jewish freshman at Columbia University who donned a shirt with an Israeli flag on it during a pro-Israel demonstration on Friday is on edge after he said he was shoved, pinned against a wall and, when he fled, told by a pro-Palestinian protester to “keep f—ing running,” Jewish Insider has learned.

Noah Lederman, a philosophy and pre-law major, was heading back to his dorm from a pro-Israel demonstration to prepare for Shabbat when he was “physically assaulted by a masked individual right outside of the Northwest Corner Building on Broadway and 120th Street,” he told JI. 

“I was at the counterprotest for much of the afternoon. We ended it when the pro-Palestinians were starting to march. I didn’t want to be there for that. I wanted to get out of there safely,” Lederman continued. “So everyone dispersed. I went to the bookstore across the street and turned my phone off for Shabbos. As I’m walking back to my dorm on 122nd Street, when I’m almost at 120th I notice a group of protestors appeared to be marching toward me in my direction.” 

Lederman, who had been waving an Israeli flag during the counterprotest, said he kept his head down, hoping to pass through without being noticed. “A masked member of the group wearing a white keffiyeh and carrying a camera, took notice of my shirt, which in addition to the flag said in English and Hebrew ‘together we will prevail.’ His eyes flared and he instructed a group of protestors behind him to spread across the sidewalk to engulf me. My initial thought was to stand still like water running along rocks. But before I could process, the man with the camera shoved me against the wall [of the building] aggressively and pinned me in an attempt to immobilize me. The mob surrounded me. As I broke free, the assailants continued to pursue me, shoving me and yelling ‘keep running, keep f—king running.’” 

“At a certain point an unknown, presumably Jewish, student yelled ‘leave him alone,’” Lederman recalled, adding that while he was shaking he found NYPD officers, who later filed a police report, a copy of which was obtained by JI. 

Lederman’s roommate, Liam Schoor, who was with Lederman at the time of the incident, told JI that “Noah couldn’t move through [the crowd of protestors] since he was essentially being slammed up against the wall. A bystander did say to let him go… Eventually the guy moved and Noah and I ran to some NYPD officers until the protestors cleared out and we could safely continue walking.” 

A spokesperson for Columbia told JI, “Since the alleged incident took place outside of Columbia’s gates, the NYPD has handled this investigation. The safety of our community is our highest priority.” 

According to Lederman, the wall that he was pinned up against was part of a Columbia building. It is not clear whether he was attacked by a Columbia student, but Lederman noted that at least some of the protestors were from the group Students for Justice in Palestine, which remains temporarily suspended from campus but has continued mobilizing anti-Israel events on campus throughout the suspension. 

According to a witness, the anti-Israel rally was made up of at least 500 people spanning more than five blocks, while the counterprotest had some 20 people.

This story was updated at 2:45 p.m. ET on Wednesday, Feb. 7 to include a comment from Columbia University.

The president of a new Columbia Law School group formed to combat rising antisemitism on campus told Jewish Insider that its adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism played a role in the Law School Student Senate’s vote to reject it as a recognized university group.

“A group of students were strongly opposed to our formation from the very beginning,” Marie-Alice Legrand, president of the Law Students Against Antisemitism, recalled, noting that some condemned its use of the State Department-adopted IHRA definition. 

“They have accused us of using that definition to silence free speech. We have assured them that is not our mission, we want to educate,” she continued. 

A majority of approximately 33 senators voted against the Law Students Against Antisemitism group in an anonymous vote on Jan. 23, the Columbia Spectator reported, noting that nine organizations have requested recognition this year, and Law Students Against Antisemitism is the only group that has not been approved. (The Student Senate is made up of 49 members.)

Before the senate meeting, where LSAA presented, individuals referring to themselves as “Concerned Jewish Students at CLS,” who identify as “Jewish pro-Palestine students,” signed a letter to the senators.  

According to Legrand, the individuals printed out copies of the letter and brought them to the meeting to “urge the Senate to decline to charter,” raising their concern that “LSAA has adopted a pernicious and insidious definition of antisemitism.”

In the letter, a copy of which was obtained by JI, the students wrote that the IHRA definition is one “that conflates anti-Zionism with antisemitism. In doing so, the IHRA definition effectively labels as antisemitic large groups of pro-Palestine Jewish and non-Jewish students on campus.”

The letter went on to say that, “Many individuals accurately believe that the creation of a State of Israel was a racist endeavor because doing so involved killing more than 15,000 Palestinians, expelling more than 700,000 Palestinians, and creating a refugee crisis that has resulted in over 2 million Palestinian refugees worldwide.” 

Legrand said that during the group’s presentation, they faced more than an hour of “hostile questions accusing us of all kinds of things [like that we] want to police our fellow students… other groups got approved within five minutes. The same principles and rules don’t apply to every person at the university.”

Without university recognition, LSAA cannot host events on campus, reserve rooms or receive funds or a university email address, according to Legrand, who is not Jewish and grew up in Germany in a house that belonged to a Jewish family killed at Auschwitz. 

The president of Columbia Law’s Student Senate, Justin Onwenu, said in a statement to JI: “I am disappointed by the signal that this sends to many in our Jewish community. I am hoping that the club will resubmit and consensus can be reached because combating antisemitism is one of the most pressing issues of our time.”

In a statement, a spokesperson for Columbia Law told JI, “The Law School stands firmly against all forms of bigotry, hate, and discrimination, including antisemitism. Dean Gillian Lester has reiterated the Law School’s commitment to fostering a community where people can freely learn, live, work, and express themselves in letters to the Law School and Columbia communities.”

Legrand noted that the denial of LSAA signals a larger antisemitism problem at Columbia. “The administration’s lack of leadership has only emboldened the antisemitism that is on campus,” she said. 

“We want to reapply,” Legrand said, adding that some 40 law students, mostly Jewish, have expressed interest in joining.  

This story was updated at 7:05 p.m. ET on Monday, Feb. 5, 2024, to include comments from Columbia Law School and from Columbia Law’s Student Senate president.

Just weeks after Columbia University announced a temporary suspension of the campus chapters of National Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) as official student groups through the end of the fall term, both groups have continued organizing on-campus events.

According to witnesses, some of the unauthorized events by the anti-Israel groups have included holding protests featuring chants of “intifada, intifada, long live the intifada” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Deans have done nothing to stop the events the school claimed were canceled, students on campus tell JI.

“It feels like [JVP and SJP] have ramped up more [since the ban],” Alon Levin, a Columbia School of Engineering graduate student, told Jewish Insider. “We’re seeing it now almost on a daily basis,” he said, adding that some of the events are held under different names associated with JVP and SJP, such as a protest he witnessed on Monday that was sponsored by Student Workers of Columbia, held on Barnard’s campus. Barnard College is affiliated with Columbia University and Barnard students are part of Columbia clubs.

“I’ve been to a few of these events so I can document what’s going on, and usually it’s not overtly under SJP or JVP but other groups that are under the banner of Columbia University student organizations that say they will pick up the slack for those groups by doing things like booking rooms,” Levin said. 

Other events, such as a menorah lighting held throughout the week of Hanukkah, are still advertised as being sponsored by JVP and SJP, despite the ban, which runs through Dec. 22, the end of the fall semester. 

JVP Columbia advertised for the event on its Instagram page, writing “@SJP.Columbia will join us 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.” 

In a statement to JI, Samantha Slater, a Columbia University spokesperson, didn’t outline any attempts made to prevent the groups from sponsoring campus events. 

“We have communicated with JVP 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,” Slater said. 

Immediately after the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack against Israel, National JVP released a statement declaring: “The Root of Violence Is Oppression,” laying the blame for the massacre on Israel. SJP has declared open support for Hamas. At Columbia, both groups have demanded that the university call Israel’s ground offensive in Gaza a genocide and to boycott business partnerships with the Jewish state. 

Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition formed in 2016, has gained renewed support since Oct. 7, with at least 80 student groups at Columbia joining the coalition. 

Levin said that the school’s “administration has lost control of the situation.” 

This isn’t the first time Columbia University failed to implement its suspension of campus events from unauthorized pro-Hamas groups.

Columbia Social Workers 4 Palestine, which has expressed support for SJP but is not directly affiliated, organized a teach-in and discussion last Wednesday titled “Significance of the October 7th Palestinian Counteroffensive” in the lobby of the Social Work Building. The event, which was originally planned to be held inside a classroom, had previously been canceled by the School of Social Work administration following online backlash.

Photos obtained by JI show Columbia faculty members not affiliated with the School of Social Work, including deans, attended the event. 

In a statement to the Spectator, a member of Columbia Social Workers 4 Palestine said that the group was never directly told that the event had been canceled. Organizers told the Spectator that they found out about the cancellation from a School of Social Work official Instagram post on Monday containing a statement from Melissa Begg, dean of the School of Social Work.

“This is not a CSSW-sponsored event. The students who organized the event did not seek approval for the fliers and text as required by CSSW processes,” Begg wrote. “CSSW supports free speech but does not condone language that promotes violence in any manner, which is antithetical to our values. This event will not go forward at CSSW.”

The group “decided to go ahead with the event as planned,” despite the statement from Begg, a Columbia Social Workers 4 Palestine member wrote in a statement to the Spectator. 

Members of the student group gathered in the lobby to give speeches, according to the Spectator. “On Oct. 7, the Palestinian Liberation fighters demonstrated their refusal to be dominated,” a speaker from Columbia Social Workers 4 Palestine said. “They showed the world that the Palestinian people will fight for freedom instead of quietly adapting to subjugation. They showed us that through creativity, determination, and combined strength, the masses can accomplish great feats.” 

“The matter is under review under University procedures,” according to a statement from Columbia School of Social Work. 

Natan Rosenbaum, a sophomore studying American studies and Talmud, echoed that the “frequency of JVP and SJP protests have virtually gone unchanged, about once or twice a week.”

“The size is also pretty similar,” he continued. “Maybe not what it was at its height but just today there was one that was 200 or 300 people on the Barnard campus,” Rosenbaum said, noting that he can hear the protests while studying in the library. 

Ari Shrage, a Columbia alum and board member of the newly formed Columbia Jewish Alumni Organization, told JI: “Columbia put out a statement that said that they ‘will not tolerate antisemitic actions and are moving forcefully against [them]’. Yet in the last few days students continue to send us videos where students call for genocide [chanting ‘from the river to the sea’]. We have photos of suspended groups holding events and distributing hate imagery. We have videos of deans standing and doing nothing to stop events that they claim were canceled. 

“Allowing students to chant ‘from the river to the sea’ for an hour is not acting forcefully. Deans standing for over an hour doing nothing to stop a ‘canceled’ event is not forceful,” Shrage continued. “Suspended groups handing out hateful images is not forceful. President [Minouche] Shafik should be asked under oath how these events continue despite making statements that they won’t allow them.” 

JI has seen the videos and confirmed their existence.

Columbia University suspended SJP and JVP on Nov. 10 due to the holding of an unauthorized event that “included threatening rhetoric and intimidation.” 

Gerald Rosberg, Columbia’s senior executive vice president, said in a statement at the time that the “decision was made after the two groups repeatedly violated University policies related to holding campus events, culminating in an unauthorized event… that proceeded despite warnings and included threatening rhetoric and intimidation.”

Rosberg explained in the statement that suspension means “the two groups will not be eligible to hold events on campus or receive University funding.”

“Lifting the suspension will be contingent on the two groups demonstrating a commitment to compliance with University policies and engaging in consultations at a group leadership level with University officials,” he continued. 

It is not clear whether the administration is aware of other events going on under the radar or if the suspension is set to be extended into next semester. 

SJP and JVP said in a Nov. 13 statement on Instagram that “the university has repeatedly changed event approval policies and been deliberately vague about these changes.” 

Rosenbaum called the suspension a “symbolic gesture.” 

“I have yet to be made aware of any formal punishment or action from the administration besides that one suspension which was quite short anyway,” he told JI. “It makes the administration come off as weak.”

Columbia University on Friday announced a temporary suspension of the campus chapters of National Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) as official student groups through the end of the fall term – the first Ivy League school to crack down on the anti-Israel groups. 

The suspension, which will last for about a month, was due to the holding of an unauthorized event that “included threatening rhetoric and intimidation.” 

Gerald Rosberg, senior executive vice president of the university, said in a statement that the “decision was made after the two groups repeatedly violated University policies related to holding campus events, culminating in an unauthorized event Thursday afternoon that proceeded despite warnings and included threatening rhetoric and intimidation.”

Rosberg explained in the statement that suspension means “the two groups will not be eligible to hold events on campus or receive University funding.”

“Lifting the suspension will be contingent on the two groups demonstrating a commitment to compliance with University policies and engaging in consultations at a group leadership level with University officials,” he continued. 

“Like all student groups, SJP and JVP are required to abide by University policies and procedures,” the announcement said. “This ensures both the safety of our community and that core University activities can be conducted without disruption. During this especially charged time on our campus, we are strongly committed to giving space to student groups to participate in debate, advocacy, and protest. This relies on community members abiding by the rules and cooperating with University administrators who have a duty to ensure the safety of everyone in our community.”  

The unauthorized event, which took place Thursday, involved hundreds of Columbia students participating in a walkout, as part of “Shut It Down For Palestine,” a nationwide movement in response to Israel’s war with Hamas. A flier for the demonstration, which was posted on the Columbia chapters of JVP and SJP Instagram accounts, called on students nationwide to demand governments cut off all aid to Israel and called for an immediate ceasefire. 

SJP and JVP also demanded that Columbia call Israel’s ground offensive in Gaza a genocide and to boycott business parterships with the Jewish state.

During a Wednesday sit-in at Columbia’s School of Social Work, an individual shouted antisemitic and anti-Black statements, then instigated fights with several students, the Columbia Spectator reported. 

Columbia’s event policy mandates that groups apply for permits at least 10 days in advance of any demonstration or protest in order to hold events on school property.

The move comes on the heels of a letter jointly written by the Anti-Defamation League and the Louis D. Brandeis Center in late October to nearly 200 university presidents that claims SJP “provides vocal and potentially material support to Hamas, a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization,” demanding that schools “investigate the activities of your campus chapter of [SJP] for potential violations of 18 USC 2339A and B, and its state equivalents, that is, for potential violations of the prohibition against materially supporting a foreign terrorist organization.” 

The announcement makes Columbia the second private university to take disciplinary action against SJP since the Israel-Hamas war started, following Brandeis University’s permanent crackdown on Monday. Brandeis cited SJP’s open support for Hamas, which the U.S. has designated as a terrorist organization, as the driving factor in its decision.

It also marks the first time a campus chapter of JVP has been suspended. Progressive pro-Israel lawmakers and activists have gradually cracked down on JVP and other extreme Jewish voices from the hard left as the anti-Zionist groups have grown increasingly radical amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. National JVP’s website says they “proudly endorse the Palestinian civil society call for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS).” 

Earlier this month, Columbia University’s administration declined to comment to Jewish Insider after 144 members of its faculty signed an open letter that called Israel an apartheid state while referring to Hamas’ terrorist attacks on Oct. 7 as a legitimate “military action.”

Soon after, Columbia President Minouche Shafik, Barnard College President Laura Ann Rosenbury and Teachers College President Thomas Bailey announced a new “Task Force on Antisemitism” that will in the coming months “identify practical ways for our safety and inclusion work to enhance support for all members of the Columbia, Barnard, and Teachers College communities, particularly our Jewish students. Longer term, it will recommend more ambitious changes related to academic and extracurricular offerings and student, faculty, and staff training programs.”

Requests for comments from Columbia’s SJP and JVP chapters were not immediately returned.

As the Israel-Hamas war shines a spotlight on accusations of antisemitism against several U.S. colleges, two Ivy League administrations that have faced criticism for their schools’ responses to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks released on Wednesday new actions to combat antisemitism on campus. 

University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill described the “University Task Force” of faculty, students and alumni in a press release as “our dedicated commitment” to counter antisemitism “on campus and beyond,” and noted additional efforts the university will unveil to address other forms of hate, including Islamophobia. Magill said the plan centers on three broad areas: safety and security, engagement,\ and education.

Mark Wolff, the dean of Penn’s School of Dental Medicine, is expected to chair the task force. 

The University of Pennsylvania’s plan is tied to the U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, which the Biden administration rolled out in May. 

“Among leading universities, Penn is distinguished by our proud history as a welcoming place for Jewish people, a home for leading Jewish scholarship, and by our important, successful partnerships with Israeli and Palestinian Dental academic institutions. So, it is even more incumbent upon Penn that we take a leadership role in combatting antisemitism on our own campus and campuses everywhere. With this Action Plan, this Task Force that I am proud to lead, and the combined expertise of our academic community, I believe we will,” Wolff said in a statement.

Penn’s “Division of Public Safety will also complete reviews of safety and security for all Penn-affiliated religious life centers, in addition to its current, increased security presence at these centers and at events and spaces across campus,” the statement said. “Penn will further boost educational and training programs to ensure antisemitism awareness, prevention, and response are an integral part of equity and inclusion programs for faculty, staff, and students. The University will also develop and advance partnerships with campus-based, and local, regional, and national organizations, including the American Jewish Committee, to counter antisemitism on college campuses.” 

Julie Platt, vice chair of Penn’s board of trustees and chair of the Jewish Federations of North America, said in a statement that with the plan, “Penn is building and strengthening its historic commitment to its Jewish community and providing a roadmap for meaningful action and learning to fight antisemitism.”

“President Magill is providing critical leadership here, at a time when it is absolutely essential to clearly communicate, in word and deed, that antisemitism will not be tolerated at Penn, and the security and safety of our community is a priority,” Platt continued. 

Magill noted in the announcement that threats will not be tolerated against any group. “I know that our Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab communities feel unseen and that their pain and grief have not been acknowledged. They have also been targeted with harassment and horrific threats. This is unacceptable and must be [addressed] with equal vigor,” she said. 

In a less-detailed plan, Columbia University President Minouche Shafik, Barnard College President Laura Ann Rosenbury and Teachers College President Thomas Bailey said that a new “Task Force on Antisemitism” will in the coming months “identify practical ways for our safety and inclusion work to enhance support for all members of the Columbia, Barnard, and Teachers College communities, particularly our Jewish students. Longer term, it will recommend more ambitious changes related to academic and extracurricular offerings and student, faculty, and staff training programs.”

The announcement continued, “Community and values don’t stand on their own. We must constantly reaffirm and reinforce them with action. The Task Force on Antisemitism represents the first in a series of steps we will be announcing in the coming days to reinvigorate community-building, develop robust support networks, and tackle head-on the destructive forces that seek to undermine our values and divide us across a range of issues.”

The actions at the two schools come after several prominent philanthropists have cut ties over the administrations’ failures to condemn Hamas’ massacre. Earlier this week, Columbia administration declined to comment to Jewish Insider after 144 members of its faculty signed an open letter that called Israel an apartheid state while referring to Hamas’ terrorist attacks as a legitimate “military action.”

Columbia’s administration also declined to comment to JI about the new plan.

Last week at a Hillel Shabbat dinner, Harvard President Claudine Gay announced the formation of a similar advisory council “to frame an agenda and strategy for combating antisemitism at Harvard.”

Columbia University declined to comment to Jewish Insider after 144 members of its faculty signed an open letter on Saturday that called Israel an apartheid state while referring to Hamas’ terrorist attacks as a legitimate “military action.”

The professors wrote that they are uneasy about students being deemed antisemitic if they “express empathy for the lives and dignity of Palestinians, and/or if they signed on to a student-written statement that situated the military action begun on Oct. 7 within the larger context of the occupation of Palestine by Israel.”

“In our view, the student statement aims to recontextualize the events of October 7, 2023, pointing out that military operations and state violence did not begin that day, but rather it represented a military response by a people who had endured crushing and unrelenting state violence from an occupying power over many years. One could regard the events of October 7th as just one salvo in an ongoing war between an occupying state and the people it occupies, or as an occupied people exercising a right to resist violent and illegal occupation, something anticipated by international humanitarian law in the Second Geneva Protocol,” the faculty letter said. 

“In either case armed resistance by an occupied people must conform to the laws of war, which include a prohibition against the intentional targeting of civilians,” it continued. “The statement reflects and endorses this legal framework, including a condemnation of the killing of civilians.”

Even as some of the protests have turned violent, the letter defended the student demonstrators against the “egregious forms of harassment and efforts to chill otherwise protected speech on campus [that] are unacceptable.” Earlier this month, an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s main library after confronting a woman ripping down flyers with names and pictures of Israelis kidnapped by Hamas. 

Columbia’s faculty demanded that the administration “cease issuing statements that favor the suffering and death of Israelis or Jews over the suffering and deaths of Palestinians.” 

When asked whether administration condemns the letter and thinks it is antisemitic, a spokesperson for Columbia told JI, “on this, we have no comment.” 

About two dozen of the 144 signatories were faculty members at Barnard College, which is affiliated with Columbia but is a separate institution. Barnard did not respond to JI’s request for comment. 

Faculty members from Columbia and Barnard wrote in the letter that Hamas’ attack caused “very disturbing reverberations on our campus” and that they have “grave concerns about how some of our students are being viciously targeted with doxing, public shaming, surveillance by members of our community, including other students, and reprisals from employers.” 

The faculty went on to defend a ​​student-written “Joint Statement from Palestine Solidarity Groups at Columbia University regarding the recent events in Palestine/Israel: Oppression Breeds Resistance.” 

Columbia’s student body is roughly 22% Jewish. Around 20 Jewish Columbia and Barnard students spoke at a rally on campus on Monday, slamming the university’s lack of response to incidents including the assault of an Israeli student, online death threats and swastika graffiti.  

Barnard psychology student Jessica Brenner, 20, said she is now anxious while walking to class. “I feel walking on campus many people just want me to die,” Brenner reportedly said at the rally. “Now I get it, I actually understand how the Holocaust happened. When Columbia professors band together and sign a letter that basically justifies Hamas’ actions, I do not feel safe.”

Also on Monday, four Jewish faculty members published a letter rebuking the initial letter from Columbia professors. The open letter had an additional 94 signatures hours after it was published on Monday night. 

“There is no excuse for Hamas’s barbaric attack on Israeli civilians, which was an egregious war crime,” the letter said. “There is no justification for raping and murdering ordinary citizens in front of their families, mutilating babies, decapitating people, using automatic weapons and grenades to hunt down and murder young people at a music festival celebrating peace, burning families alive, kidnapping and taking hostages (including vulnerable populations of elderly, people with disabilities, and young children), parading women hostages in front of chanting crowds, and proudly documenting these nightmarish scenes on social media.”

“We are horrified that anyone would celebrate these monstrous attacks or, as some members of the Columbia faculty have done in a recent letter, try to ‘recontextualize’ them as a ‘salvo,’ as the ‘exercise of a right to resist’ occupation, or as ‘military action,’” the letter continued.”We are astonished that anyone at Columbia would try to legitimize an organization that shares none of the University’s core values of democracy, human rights, or the rule of law.” 

Several national Jewish leaders who have been focused on the rise of antisemitism on campus  condemned the Columbia faculty letter. 

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, told JI that the group calls “on university leaders to denounce this hate and take necessary action against those who signed it.” 

“Campuses, including Columbia and Barnard, must maintain a safe learning environment for Jewish students,” Greenblatt said. “With an increase in antisemitic incidents on college campuses across the U.S., Jewish students are feeling threatened just as they are grieving the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. This letter, signed by those who are supposed to be supporting all students, is completely unacceptable. There is no way to justify Hamas’ war crimes and unconscionable atrocities.”

David Bernstein, CEO of the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values and author of Woke Antisemitism: How a Progressive Ideology Harms Jews, told JI, “We don’t just have an antisemitism problem, we have an education problem.” 

“What we are witnessing at Columbia and Barnard among both the students and faculty is the product of a highly ideological education that divides up the world into oppressed and oppressors. These students lay the blame on Israel entirely for the Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians. They cannot bring themselves to condemn the ‘Palestinian Fighters’ who massacred Israelis. It didn’t come from nowhere,” Bernstein said.

With less than half of students casting a vote, Columbia University’s Columbia College passed a BDS referendum calling on the school to divest from a number of international companies that operate in Israel.

Of the nearly 1,800 students who voted, 61% were in favor of the divestment resolution, while 27% opposed it and 12% abstained, according to election results announced Tuesday morning. Thirty-nine percent of Columbia College students voted in the week-long election.

The first U.S. campus-wide BDS referendum was held in 2010 at DePaul University. Since then, there have been hundreds of Israel-related referenda and student government votes on college campuses, nearly all of which are non-binding. To date, no university has divested its financial interests in companies targeted by the BDS movement.

“The whole goal of this referendum was always symbolic,” said Jessica Fuzailof, the president of Aryeh, an Israel advocacy group on Columbia’s campus. “It was always about sending a message of anti-Israel sentiment to the students here and making pro-Israel and Jewish students feel uncomfortable. There was no chance ever that this referendum was going to actually be applied in a financial way.”

The decision to allow a campus-wide referendum was approved by the student council in November 2019 and originally scheduled for April 2020, but pushed to the fall semester in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak. Since then, Aryeh and Students Supporting Israel (SSI) were the two largest campus groups opposing the measure.

“Overall, J Street U [at Columbia] did not support the referendum nor participate in the efforts by SSI and Aryeh to oppose it this fall,” Brit Zak, the chapter president of J Street U, told JI. “The purpose of our group is not to fight BDS on campus but to create a social and political climate for U.S. foreign policy that furthers Palestinian human rights and self-determination.” Zak said the group’s involvement largely ended last November after the student government voted to move it to a referendum. “Our interest on campus wasn’t so much in combating the referendum, but we were unable to support it.”

The language of the question was drafted by Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) and approved by the school’s student government last year. The question asked students, “Should Columbia University divest its stocks, funds, and endowment from companies that profit from or engage in the State of Israel’s acts towards Palestinians that, according to Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), fall under the United Nations International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid.”

Fuzailof called the question “incredibly misleading and biased.”

The student activist told JI that the student government was “holding a referendum under the guise of a fair evaluation of student sentiment and then allowing one side to write the referendum, a) in the most biased language possible, and b) with a factual error. The U.N. has never called Israel an apartheid state. That’s not true. And yet that’s in their referendum. They just slipped in the words ‘according to CUAD’ to make it OK that they’re lying.”

Fuzailof added that the divestment question was the first question on the ballot, coming ahead of selections for student government representatives.

In a brief statement Tuesday morning, Columbia President Lee Bollinger reaffirmed the referendum’s non-binding nature and said that all decisions regarding divestment are made “through a process involving the University’s Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investing (ACSRI), which advises the President of the University and Columbia’s Trustees on policies related to ethical and social issues, and which includes students, faculty, staff, and alumni.” Bollinger added that “altering our endowment in order to advance the interests of one side is not among the paths we will take.”

A similar referendum passed at Columbia’s Barnard College in 2018, 64%-36%. The Barnard referendum saw the school’s highest voter turnout in history, with nearly 50% of the college’s students casting ballots.

Despite Bollinger’s statement, students expect that pro-BDS activity will continue on the campus. 

“I know that [Columbia is] not going to divest just from this action. So it’s going to be interesting to see how that plays out on campus,” Zak told JI. “I think this is the first part of that process… demonstrating consensus. But Bollinger’s statement said that this did not demonstrate consensus. So that might be their next step.”

Fuzailof concurred. “I would not be shocked if CUAD’s next goal was to try and come for another school’s student council to sort of build consensus, but I don’t think they’ll get there,” she told JI. “The university has lots and lots of colleges. But [Columbia College] and Barnard were picked first for a reason. And that reason is that they’re the most progressive and most ‘woke.’ So I would not be surprised if [CUAD was] much less successful elsewhere.”

Brian Cohen, the Lavine Family executive director at the university’s Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life, told JI: “The BDS referendum stands in direct opposition to everything Columbia/Barnard Hillel stands for: love of Israel, an embrace of complexity and a commitment to engage with opposing points of view.” 

Cohen added that once international travel is possible, he looks forward to sending Columbia students to Israel, where they will have “the opportunity to meet directly with Israelis and Palestinians. We will educate students the only way we know how — by exposing them to diverse points of view and instilling in them the confidence to ask difficult questions.” 

Columbia University’s Columbia College will hold the first BDS referendum in its history this week, during which students will vote on whether they believe the school should divest its holdings and interests in a number of companies, including Bank Hapoalim, Hyundai and Boeing.

Columbia is seen as a critical campus by both pro-Israel and BDS activists around the country, due in part to its high profile as well as efforts extending back half a decade to push BDS measures on the New York campus. Columbia College is one of four schools that make up the university.

Brian Cohen, the executive director of Columbia’s Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life, said that the first BDS campaign on the campus, in 2015, failed “overwhelmingly,” but efforts to divest have gradually gained support on campus. Subsequent efforts to put divestment to a referendum also failed until November 2019, when Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), the main pro-BDS organization at the university, gained the requisite support in the school’s student council to hold a referendum.

“Year by year it became closer until last year when the vote passed,” Cohen told JI.

Columbia senior Jessica Fuzailof, the president of Aryeh, a pro-Israel group on campus, told JI that BDS campaigns have occurred every year since she arrived at college.

The vote was initially scheduled for the spring 2020 semester, but postponed until the fall after the university canceled the remainder of in-person classes and switched to virtual learning due to COVID-19.

Though the referendum was greenlit in the spring, the new student body — including more than 1,000 freshmen who were not on campus during previous campaigns and are attending classes remotely this semester — is voting on the measure. “It upsets me that this is one of the first things that first-year students need to experience,” Cohen said. “Just last week, they were celebrating their ‘virtual arrival’ to Columbia University.”

“Freshmen have not stepped foot on campus,” Fuzailof pointed out. “They haven’t joined clubs, they haven’t really heard about anything yet. And for the students who are observing the holidays, like Rosh Hashanah, that further takes them out of commission, that’s like a whole weekend that they lose, in terms of the ability to socialize outside of class. So [freshmen are] walking into this world, where they’ve got no idea what’s going on and all of a sudden their Facebooks blow up with language that they’re unfamiliar with and a referendum that they’re unfamiliar with.” 

The voting period, which falls between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, begins Tuesday at 10 a.m. and ends on Friday at 8 p.m. 

During the spring semester, Columbia President Lee Bollinger reiterated his opposition to BDS and warned against “legitimate debate turning into anger, then to hatred and demonization, and invidious discrimination.” 

The school has dealt with several accusations of antisemitism in recent years. Fuzailof told JI that the campus climate deteriorates during times of increased anti-Israel activity. “Every time we have a BDS referendum, a lot of hate speech, a lot of online bullying, and harassment comes out,” she said.

Bollinger has also stated that any efforts to divest are decided by the university’s socially responsible investment group, not by student referenda.

In 2018, the student body at Barnard College, which is affiliated with Columbia, overwhelmingly passed a referendum to divest from eight companies operating in Israel. The school administration, however, took no action after the vote.

Over the weekend, the campus newspaper, the Columbia Spectator, pulled an ad opposing BDS that had been placed by the school’s chapter of Students Supporting Israel. One version of the ad read, “CUAD’s BDS REFERENDUM IS JEW HATRED. Vote NO to hate! Vote NO to keep Jewish students safe on campus!”

In an email sent to the Spectator’s mailing list, the outlet’s top editors and publisher called the ad “clearly inappropriate” and said it “did not meet our standards for distribution.”

The results of the referendum will be announced on Sept. 29 — not a moment too soon for many students. 

“This is something that’s exhausting and very difficult to deal with. And we’ve been dealing with it for a long time. But that hasn’t diminished in any way the degree to which people care,” Fuzailof said. “The reason we’re all involved in organizing around this is because we care. And I also think that, our Israel programming on campus, and our Jewish and Israeli identities, don’t revolve around BDS. This is a thing that we have to deal with every year, but the majority of our programming is positive and political, and thought-provoking.”

Students at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) are rallying behind a professor facing calls for his dismissal as part of a list of demands sent to university administrators by student activists on the New York campus.

Three dozen Columbia SIPA students and alumni signed onto a letter Thursday defending visiting lecturer Mitch Silber, who was accused of harboring “racist, Islamophobic, and violent beliefs.”

That document outlining student activists’s efforts called for curriculum changes and a restructuring of the school’s processes ranging from recruitment to financial aid. The document also called for Silber’s course, “Modern Urban Terrorism,” to be “cancelled forever, and that SIPA thoroughly investigate all courses and professors at SIPA to determine who has engaged in racist actions, perpetual racism in their courses, and are aligned with the NYPD.”

In addition to teaching at the university, Silber is the executive director of the New York Jewish Community Security Initiative, a joint project of the UJA-Federation of New York and the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York. Silber, himself an alumnus of SIPA, previously served as director of intelligence analysis for the New York Police Department.

The document also alleges that “there are various deeply disturbing problems with this course specifically that it is aligned with the NYPD and it is extremely and violently Islamophobic, racist, unconstitutional, and imperialist.” The document notes a controversial 2007 NYPD report co-authored by Silber titled “Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat.” The report had been cited by the Obama-era Justice Department but critiqued by the Brennan Center for Justice. The Brennan critique is one of the assigned readings in the course’s syllabus.

“I think the course made me question a lot of my own preconceptions, and it made me learn a lot about effective ways to counter terrorism,” a student who took the class and signed onto the letter of support told JI. “There were some eye-opening aspects of seeing how the consensus in the counterterrorism community is how important it is to promote religion.”

Columbia’s Committee on Instruction, the body made up of faculty and student representatives responsible for approving and canceling courses, programs and majors, has investigated the allegations through a combination of course material review and interviews with students. The committee is expected to issue a decision on Silber’s course in the coming days, though the decision ultimately lies with the school’s top administrators.

In the letter from Silber’s supporters, the students allege that the accusations made against Silber are unfounded, and note that none of the document’s authors have taken Silber’s class.

“Had they ever stepped foot in Silber’s classroom,” the students wrote, “the accusers would have found a discussion-based course, in which students were pushed to question and challenge preconceived notions of terrorism. Silber made it clear that the 12-week course in question did not cover every facet of terrorism that has existed worldwide over time. He had designed the course to mostly focus on militant Islamist terrorism due to the threat facing major cities from groups such as al-Qa’ida and ISIS following the 9/11 attacks on New York City. Professor Silber never suggested that the only form of terrorism is Islamist, and, in fact, we studied at length Jewish terrorists, the Irish Republican Army (IRA), radical European terrorist groups active against West Germany, Puerto Rican separatist terrorists, and more.”

The letter also noted that Silber had taught the course since 2008, and accused the communique’s authors of implying “that 300 students over a 12-year period would have willingly or unwittingly participated in a Monday night Islamophobia club.”

Officials from SIPA did not return a request for comment.

A BDS referendum at Columbia University originally slated for this month has been postponed until the fall semester due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Background: The decision to hold a spring referendum was determined during a November student government vote, after the motion failed to garner enough support in the spring of 2019. The referendum was to be held at the same time as broader student government elections, originally scheduled for April 4-8. The university switched to remote learning on March 11, leaving the school’s student council elections up in the air as administrators and students made arrangements to leave the campus, which is in the U.S. epicenter of the pandemic.

Executive decision: The decision to postpone the referendum was announced late last week. In a statement released Friday, the Columbia Elections Commission and the Columbia College Student Council Executive Board said that holding the referendum while the campus is empty would deprive students of the opportunity to engage in discussions about BDS in the lead-up to the vote.

Why it matters: Pro-Israel and anti-Israel students at Columbia have clashed for years, but the referendum marks the first time BDS was to be put to a campus-wide vote. Students graduating this spring will not be eligible to vote in the fall referendum, while incoming freshmen will be casting their ballots after a short time on campus.

Columbia University will hold a campus-wide referendum on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement in early April, the first time BDS will be brought to a vote by the New York school’s entire student body.

Background: Past efforts to pass anti-Israel legislation on the campus have been limited to the school’s student government. In 2018, students at Barnard College, which is affiliated with Columbia, voted 64-36 in a referendum to divest from eight companies that operate in Israel.

Speaking out: In a statement denouncing antisemitism released last week, Columbia President Lee Bollinger addressed the upcoming vote, calling the BDS movement “controversial.” Bollinger noted that “hard-fought debates about very real and vital issues” can quickly shift “to hostility and even hatred toward all members of groups of people.”

Nod of approval: Academic Engagement Network executive director Miriam Elman, whose organization works within academia to strengthen faculty opposition to BDS and promote free expression on campus, told JI she was pleased with Bollinger’s statement. “Strong campus leaders reinforce the university’s values, and this is what President Bolliger did in his statement,” Elman told JI. “President Bollinger helpfully took the opportunity to place the referendum question within the larger context of BDS, noting that this movement often crosses the line from legitimate criticism of Israeli policy to ‘hostility and even hatred’ toward Jews.”

Coronavirus conundrum: The voting period is scheduled for April 4-8, coinciding with the beginning of Passover. University officials announced earlier this week that the school would shift to online courses for the remainder of this week ahead of Columbia’s spring break. While voting is still scheduled to take place on time and online, it is unclear whether in-person classes will resume on campus for the remainder of the semester. Students at a number of top-tier universities, including Stanford, Harvard and Yale, have been asked to leave campus and have not been given a confirmed return date.

Happening simultaneously: A new campaign, calling on the Columbia community to unite in opposition to Palestinian Authority payments to the individuals responsible for the murder of Sara Duker, a Barnard College alumna who was killed in a 1996 terror attack, recently launched on the campus.