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(JNS) Hundreds of Jewish and Israeli students at Columbia think that the Ivy League school “has not treated them with the standards of civility, respect and fairness it promises to all its students,” according to a report from Columbia’s task force on antisemitism released on Friday.
The 91-page report, which draws on interviews with almost 500 students, found that Jew-hatred on campus is “serious and pervasive.”
Breaking: An Israeli student at Columbia who went to see health services, was not seen as the healthcare workers stated they would not treat her because she was Israeli.
Columbia University has truly been infiltrated with radicalism and terror ideology at every level. pic.twitter.com/Pp4TgffKL2
— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) August 30, 2024
“These student stories are heartbreaking, and make clear that the university has an obligation to act,” the task force’s report states. (It wasn’t clear from the report how many of the 500 students were Jewish or Israeli.)
The Columbia antisemitism support suggests a deeply flawed campus culture: “One student captured more than 750 antisemitic online posts written by Columbia students and organizations.”
“Students reported being told ‘Kill your fucking self. And I’ll fucking kill you.’” pic.twitter.com/NLghbPkNZN— KC Johnson (@kcjohnson9) August 30, 2024
“Unfortunately, some members of the Columbia community have been unwilling to acknowledge the antisemitism many students have experienced—the way repeated violations of university policy and norms have affected them and the compliance issues this climate has created with respect to federal, state and local anti-discrimination law,” the report states.
“Many of the events reported in the testimonials took place well before the establishment of the encampments and the takeover of Hamilton Hall,” it adds. “The experiences reported during that period were even more extreme.”
If you say you’re experiencing antisemitism, no you’re not. You’re just mentally ill. –@Columbia pic.twitter.com/wLteGsKqdy
— Ben B@dejo (@BenTelAviv) August 30, 2024
Students, who often didn’t know how to report Jew-hatred to Columbia, found that “some faculty and staff responded with compassion and determination,” but “others minimized the concerns of these students, reacting sluggishly and ineffectively even to the most clear-cut violations,” the report states. “Even students who had successfully reported an incident spoke of a recurring lack of enforcement of existing university rules and policies.”
The task force suggested its own working definition of Jew-hatred for Columbia to use, and recommended “in-person workshops about antisemitism and Islamophobia, as well as a range of optional training and workshops for others in our community, including on implicit bias and stereotypes, bystander interventions and having difficult conversations.”
If you say you’re experiencing antisemitism, no you’re not. You’re just mentally ill. –@Columbia pic.twitter.com/wLteGsKqdy
— Ben B@dejo (@BenTelAviv) August 30, 2024
“Many Jewish students said they now avoid walking alone on campus,” the report states. It quotes a student who said that walking on campus with a visible Star of David or wearing a kippah “could start World War III.”
“The experiences of these students demonstrated that there is an urgent need to reshape everyday social norms across the campuses of Columbia University,” per the report. “We need to promote a richer ethic of pluralism, which would encourage greater tolerance of and respect for differences in religion, culture and national origin.”
“If we were really to succeed in promoting tolerance, students would come to understand and value these differences,” it added.
