Columbia University Haunted by Shameful Nazi Past

By Lieba Nesis

Columbia University’s current anti-Jew hate dates back to the 1930’s when the University showed it welcomed Jewish hate speech. Upon Nazism’s rise in December 1933, Columbia President Nicholas Murray Butler, who paradoxically received a 1931 Nobel Peace Prize, invited Nazi Germany’s ambassador to the United States, Dr. Hans Luther, to speak.  Jewish students collected 500 signatures to protest Luther and Nazism while President Butler remained steadfast in his choice declaring Luther, “a gentleman, honest and well mannered … as the diplomatic representative of a friendly people.” Butler’s antisemitism was well documented as he pioneered methods to reduce Jewish enrollment at Columbia and extolled Hitler’s expansionist designs. After Hitler assumed power, Butler ignored the boycott of German goods and encouraged Columbia to partake in academic exchanges with Nazi Germany. Luther’s Columbia speech was met with 1000 student protestors, as he denied the oppression and militarism of Nazi Germany with complete silence from the administration.

Fast forward to 2007 and Columbia’s President Lee Bollinger, a free speech and First Amendment legal scholar, invites genocidal Iran president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak despite Iran’s savage mistreatment of Jews and Mahmoud’s stated desire to repeat the Holocaust. Bollinger’s introduction calls Ahmadinejad a “petty and cruel dictator” and criticizes Mahmoud’s repeated Holocaust denials as well as his desire for Israel to be “wiped off the map.”  Bollinger’s phony attempts at whitewashing the horrific invitation under the guise of free speech didn’t go unnoticed.  Just as his predecessor Butler justified the invitation to Nazi’s Ambassador, Bollinger has longed masked his tolerance for antisemitism with powerful words and zero action-part of the Columbia handbook.  Who can forget October 1995’s Columbia Spectator article where president of the Black Student Organization, Sharod Baker, referred to Jews as “tricksters”, “devils” and “leeches sucking the blood from the Black community” while “disguising evilness under the skirts and costumes of the rabbis…as their yarmulkes contain the blood of billions of Africans weighing on their heads.”  As per Columbia’s custom, President George Rupp sent out a pathetically weak letter declaring the article “shameful and unacceptable” while allowing Baker to remain on campus without any repercussions.

The 79-year-old Lee Bollinger succeeded Rupp in 2002 through June 2023 and masked his anti-Jewishness with frequent diatribes against rising campus antisemitism along with repeatedly voting against divestment from Israel.  Yet, beneath Bollinger’s pro-Israel visage Jew hatred flourished under the guise of his diehard commitment to free speech. September 2019 was another black day in Columbia’s history as Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad who called Jews “hook-nosed” and claimed “Jews rule the world by proxy” was greeted with open arms by Bollinger who said he was “strongly resolved to insist the campus remain an open forum and protect the freedoms essential to our university community.”  This bullshit jargon was disproved as in 2006 Jim Gilchrist head of the anti-immigration group “The Minuteman Project” was bullied off stage by Columbia protestors and then canceled a year later without a word from Bollinger. More glaring was the barring of Nonie Darwish’s speech in November 2009 by Muslim activists, as the Egyptian American Nonie is an outspoken critic of Islam and supporter of Israel a no-no on Columbia’s campus.  Once again Bollinger remained silent despite being an ardent advocate of free speech. In 2018 Elizabeth Midlarsky, a professor at Teacher’s College at Columbia found large red swastikas on her wall with the words “YID” inscribed after a similar swastika incident in 2007 was accompanied by antisemitic fliers. Midlarsky’s work researching the Holocaust made her an obvious Columbia target. Yet, Bollinger did nothing to find the perpetrators as antisemitic incidents increased due to few safeguards enacted. In December 2019 a Columbia University student along with The Lawfare Project filed a Title 6 Civil Rights Act complaint alleging antisemitism claiming that Jewish students were “singled out and discriminated against under the guise of pro-Palestinian advocacy.”  Some examples cited were: vandalizing the offices of pro-Israel groups; Holocaust events interrupted by Students for Justice in Palestine screaming “intifada”; and “Israel Apartheid Week” on campus-a week of events decrying Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.  A paradigm of Columbia’s tolerance for antisemitism is the 2005 investigation of tenured Professor Joseph Massad who remarked the “Jewish state is a racist state that doesn’t have a right to exist.” In 2002 Massad asked an Israeli student, “how many Palestinians have you killed?”  Massad loved to call Palestinians the “New Jews” and Jews the “new Nazis”; and yet an ad-hoc Columbia committee cleared Massad of antisemitism charges in 2005 and gave him tenure in 2009 under Bollinger’s leadership.

Bollinger a huge proponent of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), invested $185 million to ensure faculty diversity. Under his leadership in 2010 Columbia launched its Center for Palestine Studies which is distinctly anti-Israel and expanded its postcolonial program in 2018 the year they opened the Center for the Study of Muslim Societies.  Columbia’s postcolonial programs have steadily pushed BDS, Islamist and anti-Israel narratives.  While Bollinger consistently voted against BDS his race based programs have paradoxically made Columbia’s Union Theological Seminary, the first private institution to divest.  Bollinger created the environment for unlawful campus protests by stating in 2018, the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam protests, that bringing police on campus in 1968 was “a serious breach of the ethos of the University.”

And so Bollinger while claiming to decry antisemitism has set up a university that gives tenure to antisemitic professors, encourages antisemitic hate speech and advocates for terrorist hate groups Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace.  On October 4th 2023 President Minouche Shafik took the reins of a school permeated by Jew hatred nurtured in the Middle Eastern South, Asian and African Studies Department (MESAAS).  The same Massad who taunted an IDF student and was granted tenure in 2009 praised the October 7th Hamas massacre as “astounding” and “amazing” while Columbia once again did nothing.  Shafik and her administration allowed dangerous protests calling for the murder of Jews and threatening Jewish students with death to continue as per her predecessor’s example.  As Jews became increasingly isolated in April a shelter in place order for Jewish students was enacted as antisemites took over the campus and Hamilton Hall.  Under the tutelage of George Rupp, and Lee Bollinger, Columbia continues its paralysis against antisemitism as hate organizations are suspended and reinstated a day later; antisemitism disguised as free speech continues to remain the paramount virtue as exhibited by the welcoming of the Nazi party in the 1930’s.