I didn’t think all that much of it when Columbia University’s president called in police to break up a small sit-in a few days back. But the situation has since turned into a full-blown crisis, with even the White House forced to issue statements.
CNN (“Columbia University faces full-blown crisis as rabbi calls for Jewish students to ‘return home’“):
Columbia University is facing a full-blown crisis heading into Passover as a rabbi linked to the Ivy League school urged Jewish students to stay home and tense confrontations on campus sparked condemnation from the White House and New York officials.
The atmosphere is so charged that Columbia officials announced students can attend classes and even possibly take exams virtually starting Monday – the first day of Passover, a major Jewish holiday set to begin in the evening.
Tensions at Columbia, and many universities, have been high ever since the October 7 terror attack on Israel by Hamas. However, the situation at Columbia escalated in recent days after university officials testified before Congress last week about antisemitism on campus and pro-Palestinian protests on and near campus surged.
The latest crisis has opened Columbia President Minouche Shafik up to new attacks from her critics, with Republican US Rep. Elise Stefanik demanding she step down immediately because school leadership has “clearly lost control of its campus.”
Rep. Virginia Foxx, the Republican chair of the House Education Committee, sent a letter on Sunday to university leaders warning them of consequences if they do not rein in protests on campus.
“Columbia’s continued failure to restore order and safety promptly to campus constitutes a major breach of the University’s Title VI obligations, upon which federal financial assistance is contingent, and which must immediately be rectified,” Foxx wrote.
Underscoring concerns about student safety, Rabbi Elie Buechler, a rabbi associated with Columbia University’s Orthodox Union Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus, confirmed to CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday that he sent a WhatsApp message to a group of about 300 mostly Orthodox Jewish students “strongly” recommending they return home and remain there.
In his message, Buechler wrote that recent events at the university “have made it clear that Columbia University’s Public Safety and the NYPD cannot guarantee Jewish students’ safety.”
“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,” the message reads.
The situation at Columbia has even drawn the attention of the White House, joining local leaders in urging calm.
“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,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement shared with CNN on Sunday. The statement did not include examples of those incidents.
President Joe Biden similarly said Sunday, “Even in recent days, we’ve seen harassment and calls for violence against Jews. This blatant antisemitism is reprehensible and dangerous – and it has absolutely no place on college campuses, or anywhere in our country.”
In response, organizers of the protest — Columbia University Apartheid Divest and Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine — said in a statement, “We have been peaceful,” and distanced themselves from non-student protestors who have gathered outside the campus, calling them “inflammatory individuals who do not represent us.”
“We firmly reject any form of hate or bigotry and stand vigilant against non-students attempting to disrupt the solidarity being forged among students – Palestinian, Muslim, Arab, Jewish, Black and pro-Palestinian classmates and colleagues who represent the full diversity of our country,” the activists’ statement continued.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said on X that threatening Jewish students with violence is antisemitism. “The First Amendment protects the right to protest but students also have a right to learn in an environment free from harassment or violence,” the Democratic governor said.
In a statement, New York Mayor Eric Adams said the city’s police department has an “increased presence of officers” in the area around Columbia’s campus “to protect students and all New Yorkers on nearby public streets.”
The Democratic mayor said he was “horrified and disgusted with the antisemitism being spewed at and around the Columbia University campus.”
NYT (“Columbia University to Hold Classes Remotely After Weekend Protests“) adds:
Columbia University announced early Monday that it would hold classes remotely after a wave of agitated protests on campus over the weekend that drew widespread attention from city and national officials and raised safety concerns for some Jewish students.
The university’s president, Minouche Shafik, said in a letter to the Columbia community, “We need a reset,” adding that she felt sadness about how the university’s bonds had been severely tested in recent weeks. She urged students who do not live on campus not to travel there.
[…]
In the coming days, a working group of deans, university administrators and faculty members will work to bring the crisis to a resolution, Dr. Shafik said.
“That includes continuing discussions with the student protesters and identifying actions we can take as a community to enable us to peacefully complete the term and return to respectful engagement with each other,” she said.
There are competing claims here, with leaders of the pro-Palestine student protests claiming that the calls for violence against Jews are coming from other pro-Palestine activists unaffiliated with the university. And there are Jewish students who are part of the former.
It’s possible, likely even, that Buechler sees highlighting the dangers here as politically advantageous, as association with antisemitism serves to delegitimize the protests. But it’s clear that a significant number of Columbia’s Jewish student population (which reportedly numbers 5000, roughly 23% of the undergraduate population and 16% of the graduate student body) feel unsafe.
Granted that, almost by definition, student protestors are young and immature, the whole thing is just bizarre. I understand why people who would be outraged at the actions of the Israeli government in Gaza, where noncombatants are dying and suffering at an alarming rate. I even understand why they would be angry at the Biden administration for backing the Israeli war effort. But, surely, Jewish students at Columbia are not responsible for either set of policies.
Calls for divestiture of whatever investments the Columbia endowment has in Israel is, I suppose, a reasonable demand and grounds for protest. But that would be a hell of a lot more sympathetic without antisemitic rhetoric.
UPDATE: There is some skepticism in the comments about the nature of the threats to Jewish students. An article in the Columbia Spectator (“Rabbi advises Jewish students to ‘return home as soon as possible’ following reports of ‘extreme antisemitism’ on and around campus“) provides additional context.
Pro-Israel counterprotesters stood on the Sundial on Saturday evening waving Israeli and U.S. flags and playing Israeli and Jewish music and the U.S. national anthem from a loudspeaker. In front of the Sundial, an individual held a sign reading “Al-Qasam’s Next Targets” with an arrow pointing at the protesters. Al-Qassam is the military wing of Hamas.
Other individuals at the Sundial referred to the Israeli flags as “Nazi flags,” according to another video.
“What’s funny about Hamas killing Jews? What’s funny about it?” Rachel Freilich, CC ’27, one of the students on the Sundial, asked a student who was laughing and taking pictures or recording on his phone, according to another video.
“It had me wondering if someone on my campus not only is just going to glorify and justify Hamas’ terror attacks, call on them to come and kill me next, and then laugh about it, like why should I stay here, at a place that seems to be failing to protect me and calling on terrorists to come into the University and kill me?” Freilich told Spectator.
In another video from Saturday night, individuals at the Sundial shouted at the pro-Israel protesters, “Go back to Europe” and “All you do is colonize.”
[…]
According to a video taken Saturday reviewed by Spectator, a pro-Palestinian protester on campus near the 116th Street and Amsterdam Avenue gates tried to burn an Israeli flag, and another individual appeared to throw an object at the head of Jonathan Lederer, CC ’26, who was part of a group of counterprotesters.
“You have blood on your hands,” one person shouted. “You’re a genocidal maniac,” another said.
Lederer said in an interview with Spectator that “there was no Public Safety to be seen while I was absolutely assaulted.”
“Two people threw some heavy-weighted bag at my face, and I felt totally vulnerable in that moment,” Lederer said. “I assumed that at a protest like that there would be Public Safety standing around, NYPD standing around. No one could be seen.”
As the students were exiting campus from the 116th Street and Amsterdam Avenue gates on Saturday night, there were calls from individuals outside of campus of “Yehudim [Jews], yehudi [Jew], fuck you,” “Stop killing children,” and “Go back to Poland, go back to Belarus,” according to a video reviewed by Spectator.
David Lederer, SEAS ’26, told Spectator he felt “unsafe.”
“For the last six months, they’ve been chanting, ‘We don’t want no Zionists here.’ Now they’re openly saying, ‘Go back to the gas chambers,’” Lederer said.
He said that when the group left campus, they asked both Public Safety to escort them back to their dorms and the New York Police Department to check on their safety, but that neither did.
On Broadway near the 116th Street subway station, protesters chanted, “We say justice, you say how? Burn Tel Aviv to the ground,” according to a video posted by Students Supporting Israel President Eden Yadegar, GS/JTS ’25, on Instagram on Saturday night.
One Columbia College senior, who spoke on condition of anonymity citing safety concerns, said that while she was walking with a friend while wearing a Star of David necklace on Saturday evening on campus near Earl Hall, someone turned to them and said, “Fuck you.”
The student said she left campus “as soon as I could” because of the experience.
Parker De Dekér, CC ’27, told Spectator that on Wednesday night, when he was walking by Lerner Hall wearing a yarmulke, someone sitting at the tables outside of Lerner shouted, “You keep on testifying, you fucking Jew.” When he exited campus, he removed his yarmulke.
“That was an emotional thing because I never would consider having to take off my religious symbolism as a means of safety,” De Dekér said.
De Dekér continued that as he was helping a friend move his luggage through Lerner Hall on Thursday evening while wearing a yarmulke, one individual said, “We are so happy that you Zionists are finally leaving campus,” and another said, “You wouldn’t have to leave if you weren’t a supporter of genocide.”
On Friday afternoon, De Dekér said that while leaving campus and getting into an Uber, an individual on Amsterdam Avenue shouted an antisemitic slur at him, telling him to “Keep on walking.” De Dekér has since decided to leave campus for the time being and is staying with a friend outside of New York state.
De Dekér said that he does not classify the encampment itself as antisemitism.
“Them sitting there and sharing their rights to free speech and advocating for peace in the Middle East is not antisemitism. I want to make that very clear,” he said. “What is antisemitism, though, is the numerous experiences of which I have had experience.”
[…]
On Thursday afternoon, during a protest of the NYPD encampment sweep at South Lawn, one onlooker outside Butler Library held up a sign that read, “Google ‘Dancing Israelis,’” which refers to a conspiracy theory that the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad orchestrated the attacks on the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001.
“‘Dancing Israelis?’ That’s antisemitic,” someone said, according to a video. “I support Palestine. That’s antisemitic. Get that shit out of here.”
“I speak for myself,” the protester later said. “So fuck yourself. The fact that someone gets offended by something doesn’t make it not true.”
Elisha Baker, CC ’26, said in an interview with Spectator that the poster “falls into a pattern, an age-old pattern of antisemitism being manifested as Jew haters blaming the Jews for the world’s problems.”
As three Jewish students were speaking to the NYPD outside the campus gates at 116th Street and Amsterdam Avenue on Thursday night, someone shouted, “Remember the seventh of October,” according to a video reviewed by Spectator. Another added, “Never forget the seventh of October.”
“That will happen not one more time, not five more times, not 10 more times, not 100 more times, not 1,000 more times, but 10,000 times,” someone shouted.
“The seventh of October is about to be every day,” another person shouted.
Protesters then chanted, “Nazi bitches.”
