Jewish students at Columbia are fighting back against the university administrators who have allowed a climate of antisemitism to flourish, unpunished, on their campus. They are suing the university, which means that if their charges are proven, not only will Columbia look very bad in the eyes of the public, but it may have to pay damages to those students who were harmed by its failure to crack down on antisemitism. Furthermore, the mere fact that the suit is being brought should make deep-pocketed Jewish alumni rethink any gifts that they might have contemplated giving to the university. Jewish high school students may decide Columbia is not for them, and so will some non-Jewish students disinclined to study at such a morally obtuse school, that only began to address the problem of antisemitism when lawsuits were threatened, and the congressional Committee on Education and the Workforce started hearings on antisemitism on college campuses.
More on the Columbia students’ lawsuit can be found here: “Jewish students sue Columbia University over ‘severe and pervasive’ antisemitism,” by Katherine Donlevy, New York Post, February 21, 2024:
Jewish students hit Columbia University with another lawsuit Wednesday over claims the prestigious school has allowed “rampant antisemitism” to flourish amid the ongoing Hamas-Israel conflict.
The suit — filed by five students and two nonprofits — alleges that Columbia has not substantially intervened as Jewish hate intensified on campus in the months since the Middle Eastern war broke out.
Columbia, one of America’s leading universities, has for decades been one of the worst centers of academic antisemitism in the United States,” documents filed in Manhattan federal court states….
Columbia has a very active Middle Eastern Studies faculty, including Rashid Khalidi, Hamid Dabashi, and Joseph Massad, who have been spreading their anti-Israel animus for decades in the classroom, and on the campus. Massad wrote a piece on October 8 praising to the skies the Hamas attack that took place the day before; a petition by alumni asking that he be fired for lauding the atrocities now has more than 60,000 signatures.
One example included in the 114-page lawsuit detailed a November rally in which pro-Palestinian marchers shouted “death to Jews” and “f–k Israel” during the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the 1938 night Nazi soldiers killed almost 100 [sic —the real number is many hundreds] Jewish Germans….
More than 100 faculty members at Columbia — including 33 at Barnard — signed a letter defending Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre as a “military action.”
School administrators’ alleged silence on the rampant hate has created a vacuum that has since been filled with antisemitism.
“Columbia must now be compelled to implement institutional, far-reaching, and concrete remedial measures. Columbia must also pay damages to plaintiffs — who have been robbed of their college and graduate school experience — to compensate them for the hostility they have been forced to endure as a consequence of Columbia’s unlawful conduct,” the documents state….
Oh dear. Columbia may have to “pay damages” to those suing students That’s the only language the college’s administrators understand. Money to be paid out to the plaintiffs. Money to pay for a PR campaign to burnish Columbia’s badly damaged image. Money that won’t be coming from alumni, both Jewish and non-Jewish, who have lost interest in supporting an institution that has tolerated antisemitism, failed to protect Jewish students, and even now has started to recognize the seriousness of the problem only because of alumni outcries, student lawsuits, and a congressional committee that is determined to read these universities, including Columbia, the riot act about their toleration of antisemitism.
The lawsuit is the second of its kind to be filed against the prestigious university this month — last week, a Jewish graduate student claimed the campus experienced an “explosion” of antisemitism since Oct. 7.
Both suits come on the heels of the House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce expanding its investigation of antisemitism in higher education to include Columbia and Barnard, along with Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The whole country knows the consequences of that quarrelsome hearing with the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania, who could not give a straight answer to Representative Elise Stefanik’s question: “Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate your school’s Code of Conduct?” They all answered that “it depends on the context.” This incensed the Congresswoman and many others, both in Congress and in the general public. The upshot was that both the Harvard president, Claudine Gay (who also turned out to be a serial plagiarist) and the UPenn president (Elizabeth Magill) were forced to resign.
The US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights last November opened an investigation into antisemitism or Islamophobia at three New York Schools — Columbia, Cornell and Cooper Union….
Columbia’s administrators must feel like a bunch of St. Sebastians, with arrows coming from all directions and piercing them in every side. Undergraduate students are now suing the university for tolerating a “pervasive antisemitism” on the campus. Columbia alumni have launched a p.r. campaign on social media to pressure Columbia to “aggressively address antisemitism.” Big alumni donors, including billionaire Leon Cooperman, have announced that in light of Columbia’s tepid response to the October 7 Hamas atrocities, they would no longer be contributing to Columbia. And at the same time, the Congressional Committee on Education and the Workforce has demanded that Columbia administrators appear before it, to discuss the problem of antisemitism on campus, and explain what they intend to do about it.
Columbia, like Harvard, now faces a world of woe.
JK says
I sure hope they are able to find a lawyer
Blougeoisie says
If it’s a legitimate military action and Hamas is fighting out of uniform…..what does that allow under the rules of war?
For academics, they aren’t too bright
Keith O says
I can see this ending VERY badly for not only Columbia but also a lot of other universities who have allowed/encouraged antisemitism.
The heads of these universities don’t listen to fact, common sense nor common decency so now maybe they will listen to the screams of their bank accounts?
maria says
Columbia university and all other universities that are pro muslims must be closed, those “professors” who are either muslims or pro muslims must be fired and the muslim “students” must be sent to their countries.
All universities must get new professors and teachers and no muslims must be allowed to study in any university
James Lincoln says
Should have all of their tuition money for all the time they had spent at Columbia – refunded.
After all, the degree now is not going to be worth much.
Rick Olsha says
AM ISRAEL CHAI !!!!!!!
OLD GUY says
Their lawyers should take a hard look at who and where the contributions to the schools endowment fund come from. Columbia as well as other Universities seem to have an overly large amount of money coming from Islamic countries. Those dollars have a heavy influence on their decisions.