Yesterday Columbia University's Anti-Semitism Task Force released its second report on conditions at the school. The task force was formed last November in the wake of the 10/7 attack on Israel. In June it released its preliminary findings minus any specific recommendation for dealing with the problem. The report released yesterday is about 90 pages and now includes recommendations.

The publication of this report comes just a few weeks after President Minouche Shafik resigned, making me wonder if reading an advance version of this report is what motivated her to leave. The report leaves little doubt that not enough was done to address the situation on campus last year. In fact, the authors say they explicitly want to counter those who have tried to minimize the seriousness of the wave of anti-Semitism which swept the campus.

Not having had the benefit of the listening sessions, some members of the Columbia community have expressed skepticism that students are experiencing discrimination. To the degree that they are, the skeptics say, such experiences are rare or not serious. Many wish to challenge the identification of these incidents as antisemitic. Our intention is to report these incidents as they were reported to us and to share evidence, provided here by our students, of Jews being singled out in ways that would be considered intolerable in any other context.

What follows is several pages of examples, testimony really, from the students themselves.

One student who had moved into her dorm room in September, told us she placed a mezuzah on her doorway as required by ritual law, as traditional Jews have done for centuries. In October, people began banging on her door at all hours of the night, demanding she explain Israel’s actions. She was forced to move out of the dorm. 

Visibly observant students, like ones who wear traditional head coverings, have been frequently met with extreme hostility. “On campus, my friends have been spit on, been called like terrible, terrible names, a very close friend of mine was called, a lover of genocide and then a lover of baby killing. This was only a couple of days after October seventh.” A student told us she had been chased off campus with her brother one night.5 In many cases, episodes like these have led to efforts to hide markers of Jewish identity: while some students felt that they could previously “wear our Jewish identity,” now they don’t want their peers to know that they are Jewish. The fear of consequences permeated the atmosphere of campus during these months. One student put it this way: “If I walk on campus right now with my star out or kippah or say ‘am Yisrael chai’ [“the people of Israel live,” a traditional song], I could start World War III.” Many Jewish students said they now avoid walking alone on campus.

Students have reported having necklaces ripped off their necks and being pinned against walls, while walking back to their dorms on Friday afternoon and when they were on their way to synagogue. There were also multiple reports of visibly Jewish individuals simply walking past 116th Street who have been followed, stalked, and subjected to ethnic slurs and hateful statements, like “go back to Poland” and “I hope you guys suffer. You guys think it’s okay to kill innocent babies and bomb hospitals. Yes, Habibi, I’m talking to you,” and, when the hecklers saw that the student was filming them, one said to send the video “to all your Israelis.”

Columbia also has a private online forum called Sidechat where anti-Semitisim was running rampant.

Many students reported that Sidechat, an anonymous online platform accessible only to Columbia students, is suffused with hatred toward Jews and Zionists. In one instance, a user posted, “All you Zionists out there? You are the modern day Hitler.” In another instance a user posted, “If you support Israel, you are piece of filth not even worthy of being called human… I wish you enormous pain and suffering.”14 Another posted, “I sincerely hope any IDF veterans here (and this includes [student X], currently ‘proudly’ serving) die a slow death.”15 By targeting Israelis, these threats and stereotypes can constitute discrimination based on national origin under Title VI. Discrimination against military veterans also violates Columbia’s rules. Military service is mandatory for most Israelis. The claim that someone who has served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is by definition threatening, a sentiment that was openly expressed by both faculty and students this spring, makes the campus a hostile place for virtually all Israelis. 

One student captured more than 750 antisemitic online posts written by Columbia students and organizations, 16 although many of these do not rise to the level of legal violation, they are nevertheless deeply troubling, and would be attracting universal opprobrium if directed against other groups or countries.

Even in classroom settings, students were not free from this anti-Zionist fervor. The report recounts a Masters of Public Health class where a professor gave a rant attacking Jewish donors for whom the school itself and buildings on campus were named.

In the first session, the professor extensively discussed, by name, Jewish donors to Columbia University, one for whom the school is named and another for whom one of the school’s buildings is named; the faculty member called these Jewish men “wealthy white capitalists” who “laundered” “dirty money” and “blood money” at Columbia.

An Israeli student was called a murderer by a faculty member.

An Israeli female student who served in the IDF was harassed in the classroom by a faculty member teaching a class that included material about the conflict. According to the student, conversations were consistently one-sided and often included inaccuracies. The IDF was portrayed as an “army of murderers.” The faculty member reportedly told the student that as a former IDF member, she too should be considered a murderer.

And of course there was the protest camp in the center of campus.

Students witnessed and sometimes experienced threats of violence or actual violence in these settings. Several recalled being assaulted while holding Israeli flags, which in at least one case protesters attempted to burn. One recounted having seen a student holding up a sign reading “AlQassam Brigade’s next target” standing in front of a Jewish student peacefully singing the Israeli National anthem. Students told us about chants such as, “Al-Qassam you make us proud, kill another soldier now,” “Yes Hamas, we love you, we support your rockets too,” or “We say justice you say how, burn Tel Aviv to the ground.”...

The hatred toward Israelis has reached alarming levels on campus. While hanging signs with pictures of hostages captured on October 7, an Israeli student was physically attacked.53 Following the attack, he had to deal with a false complaint that was submitted about him to Columbia (and was eventually dismissed).54 False complaints targeting Israeli students increased during the spring of 2024...

Protesters called for violence against Israel. “There is no safe place, death to the Zionist state,” “From the River to the Sea Palestine will be Arab” (in Arabic), and “We don’t want two states, we want all of it.” As another example, an Israeli student encountered a demonstrator who showed her a phone adorned with a Hamas flag and indicated “we will follow you to Israel and burn your family.”

The conclusion of pro-Israel students was that the Columbia administration was doing nothing to stop this and was in fact legitimizing it by agreeing to hold negotiations with the pro-Palestinian students responsible. If I had to guess why President Shafik resigned just in advance of this report, I'd say it was this summary of the school's handling of the situation.

Overall, these Israeli student experiences underscore a feeling of having been abandoned by the University administration. They see the University’s failure to enforce rules, as well as the University’s negotiations with leaders who called for the death of Zionists and the destruction of Israel as legitimizing the hatred directed at Israeli students. As one student respondent in a survey of Israeli students noted, Columbia “not only failed to keep its students safe, it allowed discrimination from both students and faculty.” Another Israeli student wondered why some Columbia faculty would consider calls for violence and terror as a free speech right, allowing this speech on campus and inside academic buildings. “Globalize the intifada,” “all IDF soldiers deserve to die,” “Glory to the Hamas militants,” “Death to Zionists,” “F** the Jews,” are examples of the hate speech that Israeli students reported. As one student in the survey sadly concluded, “Israeli students’ dreams of attending Columbia, a rigorous educational institution devoted to debate and discovery, have been shattered, as we feel the administration has normalized antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment.”

I think she didn't want to be called back before Congress and have that read aloud to her in a hearing room. It's just a guess, but this report definitely doesn't make the administration look very good.

There's a lot more to the report, including all of the recommendations which include mandatory anti-Semitism training, not just for incoming freshmen but for " teaching assistants, residence assistants, faculty, senior administrators, and student- facing staff." That gives you a pretty clear idea that the anti-Semitism problem at Columbia goes well beyond a few student activists.