Jewish students at Columbia faced hostile environment during pro-Palestinian protests, report finds
Jews and Israelis at Columbia University were ostracized by student groups, humiliated in classrooms and subjected to verbal abuse when pro-Palestinian demonstrations rocked the campus last year. Their complaints were often downplayed or ignored by school officials and faculty, the university’s anti-Semitism task force said in a report released Friday.
The faculty task force cited the “serious and widespread” problems revealed in nearly 500 student testimonies and recommended revamping anti-bias training for students and staff and overhauling the system for reporting complaints about anti-Semitism.
Student organizations should stop issuing political statements that have nothing to do with their mission. Jewish students, they say, felt excluded from many clubs and organizations.
The task force also proposed a definition of antisemitism that included discrimination or exclusion based on “real or perceived ties to Israel” and “certain double standards applied to Israel.” Such double standards, the report said, included “calls for divestment from Israel alone” – something that a main question from pro-Palestinian groups such as the death toll increased dramatically in the last war between Israel and Hamas.
The task force noted that the definition of anti-Semitism was intended for use in training and education, not for discipline or to restrict freedom of expression.
“These recommendations are designed to uphold the right to protest, to protect the rights to speak, teach, research and learn, and to combat discrimination and harassment, including anti-Semitic harassment,” it said. Taskforce on Antisemitism Co-Chairs Ester Fuchs, Nicholas Lemann and David M. Schizer. “While our report focuses on anti-Semitism, we hope that our recommendations will also strengthen efforts to combat Islamophobia, anti-Arab racism and other forms of intolerance.”
The task force released its report four days before the scheduled start of classes for Columbia’s fall semester.
Interim President Katrina Armstrong said the university has already taken steps to expand training and streamline its handling of harassment complaints, in line with the recommendations in the new report.
“This is an opportunity to acknowledge the damage that has been done and to pledge to make the changes needed to do better and to rededicate ourselves, as university leaders, as individuals, and as a community, to our core mission of teaching and research,” Armstrong said in a statement.
In an online bulletin, a coalition of student groups said they would continue protesting, demanding that the school divest from Israeli businesses and sever academic ties with Israeli institutions.
“There may be new students and new classes, but some things remain the same,” said the statement, attributed to Columbia University Apartheid Divest. It cited what it called the university’s “refusal to divest from its genocidal investments” and its “constant repression of pro-Palestinian protesters.”
The task force’s report comes two weeks after the resignation of Columbia University’s president Minouche Shafikwho came under heavy fire for her handling of protests and campus divisions over the war between Israel and Hamas at the Ivy League university.
Pro-Palestinian protesters first set up encampments on Columbia’s campus during Shafik’s congressional testimony in mid-April, where she condemned anti-Semitism but was criticized for her response to complaints from faculty and students. The school sent police to clearing the tents the next day, just for the students to return and get inspired a wave of similar protests on campuses across the country.
In the report, the task force cited incidents in which Jewish students were threatened or pushed, or exposed to outright anti-Semitic symbols such as swastikas.
But it also described a broader pattern of Jewish students feeling excluded by classmates they had once been friends with.
In one reported case, an Israeli student described feeling forced to quit her school’s dance team because she did not support the team’s decision to join Columbia University’s pro-Palestinian Apartheid Divest coalition.
“We heard of artists who hid their support for Israel to get cast in theater productions, and of writers who were fired from publications,” the task force report said. “Jewish students also stopped doing community service work targeting vulnerable populations in New York because the groups released statements blaming Israel for the brutal Hamas attacks on October 7.”
The task force said that in many cases Jewish students chose to leave groups because of an “uncomfortable” atmosphere, but in some cases they were told to leave.
The report is the second the task force has released in recent months. The first outlined rules for protests. An upcoming report will focus on “academic issues related to exclusion in the classroom and bias in the curriculum,” the university said.