While Some Universities Take Action, Columbia Continues to Face Scrutiny over Anti-Semitism
After months of watching anti-Semitic protests sweep across college campuses, a California public university is taking action. On Thursday, California State University announced its new policy that bans “tent encampments and overnight demonstrations,” as well as putting up “unauthorized barricades, fencing, and furniture” — all trademarks of the previous pro-Palestinian student mobs. Meanwhile, other universities are under scrutiny for “failing to discipline” the students promoting Jewish hatred on campus.
In a Monday press release, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), who serves as chairwoman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, emphasized that Columbia University failed “to discipline students who engaged in extreme conduct violations.” This failure, she contended, “is disgraceful and unacceptable.” Consequently, the Washington Examiner reported, the congresswoman “sent a subpoena to Columbia University on Wednesday, tightening the screws in [her committee’s] anti-Semitism investigation.”
“Columbia should be a partner in our efforts to ensure Jewish students have a safe learning environment on its campus,” Foxx stated. “[B]ut instead, university administrators have slow rolled the investigation, repeatedly failing to turn over necessary documents.” Over the course of the investigation, Foxx noted, “The information we have obtained points to a continued pattern of negligence towards anti-Semitism and a refusal to stand up to the radical students and faculty responsible for it.”
According to Foxx, “The goal of this investigation has always been to protect Jewish students and faculty, and if compulsory measures are necessary to obtain the documents the Committee requires, so be it.” In response to the pressure Foxx is putting on the university, a Columbia spokesperson shared with the Examiner, “Columbia is committed to combating anti-Semitism and all forms of discrimination.” They also claimed to have “provided thousands of documents over the past seven months in response to the committee’s dozens of ongoing requests, and we remain committed to cooperating with the committee.”
In addition to the committee’s investigation, Columbia is facing a decline in Jewish high school graduates who are wanting to apply to the university. The Ramaz School, located in the Upper East Side, shared with the New York Post, “For the first time in over 20 years, we will not have a Ramaz graduate enrolling in Columbia College.” And in a separate comment to the Post, a father of two Ramas graduates was able to help explain the decision-making process.
Rory Lancman, a Columbia Law School alumnus, said, “Jewish families are voting with their feet and choosing colleges and universities that take antisemitism seriously.” And he added that he “would not recommend [his] daughters to apply to Columbia or other colleges that aren’t committed to protect them as Jews.” As Meg Kilgannon, Family Research Council’s senior fellow for Education Studies, explained to The Washington Stand, unlike Columbia, “It is good to see that the California university system appears to be enforcing policies already on the books that protect students from harm while ensuring the right to free expression for protestors.”
She further emphasized, “These are goals that can be simultaneously accomplished in civil society and certainly in the United States of America.” And yet, “Columbia University in New York has failed to offer the same assurances to its students, faculty, donors and community.” Between the Jewish high school students avoiding the school and the unfolding congressional investigation, Kilgannon concluded, “[I] hope it inspires Columbia’s administration to protect students from the kinds of violent and anti-Semitic protests we saw earlier this year.”
Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.