‘Columbia should be more worried than I am,’ many thinking of transferring, Jewish student says

“Our staff, at risk to their own personal safety, remained in the Milstein lobby, urging the masked disrupters to take the threat seriously,” stated Laura Rosenbury, Barnard’s president. “Even when the college activated the fire alarm, the masked protesters put our entire campus at risk by refusing to leave.”

“The safety of our campus—and every single person on our campus—must be protected above all else,” she added. “The moment we received the bomb threat, we had to clear the Milstein Center and inform the authorities.”

The New York City Police Department told JNS that nine people were taken into custody and charged with obstructing governmental administration, trespassing and disorderly conduct.

Orri Zussman, 20, a freshman studying mechanical engineering at Columbia University, told JNS that it was “always kind of my dream” to attend the university.

“But honestly, Columbia should be more worried than I am about the next four years because there’s not a single student I’ve talked to, Jewish or not, who hasn’t considered transferring over the last few months because of this absurdity,” he said.

“It was the most extreme, the most chaotic and the most blatantly antisemitic I’ve seen at Columbia,” he told JNS of Wednesday’s protest. “There used to be a kind of a barrier, and you couldn’t fully outright support terrorists, so people took a roundabout way. But now we are starting to see a breakdown.”

Zussman was attending a modern Israeli history course when he saw people handing out flyers depicting a boot stepping on a Star of David.

“That kind of extremism is continuing,” he told JNS of Wednesday’s events, noting that protesters handed out stickers depicting former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, as well as “pamphlets from the Hamas media group explaining their narrative of ‘Al-Aqsa Flood.’”

“Being at a Columbia institution and seeing straight up the materials and propaganda of people who are trying to kill me—it was kind of a breaking point,” he said. “Columbia needs to stop and ask itself, ‘Do we let this keep happening? ‘Do we let terrorist supporters be the ones attending our university?’ ‘Or do we protect the rest of our students?’”

“They can’t have both,” he said.

Ari Shrage, the head of Columbia’s Jewish Alumni Association, told JNS that the university’s lack of commitment to taking disciplinary action ensures that protests will continue to happen.

“How can anyone be surprised that students took over another building when they weren’t punished for doing the same thing last week?” he said. “When will the university start enforcing rules instead of letting masked students run wild?”

“It’s time for the government to send in the National Guard, so the students who paid $70,000 for an education can simply go to class,” he added.

Barnard and Columbia University have a historic connection, per the university’s website. The two are “separate institutions but for students, they’re essentially the same,” Zussman told JNS.

“As long as you have a Columbia ID, you can go to Barnard, and if you have a Barnard ID, you can go to Columbia,” he said. “Columbia students take Barnard classes, so for students’ purposes, it’s the same campus.”

‘Enough’

The House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which has been probing campus Jew-hatred, condemned the protesters for distributing flyers from the Hamas media office.

“Horrible, horrible behavior,” the House panel stated. “These students are supporting terrorist hatred for their Jewish peers. Leaders on campus need to do something to hold these students accountable, or be held accountable themselves for their failure.”

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), former chair of the committee, said that the protest is evidence of the university’s ongoing issues with Jew-hatred.

“Columbia is infested with antisemitism,” she stated. “The university’s administration is filled to the brim with mealy-mouthed invertebrates, who cave to the mob.”

“Enough,” she said.

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) said Barnard should expel students for endangering the safety of the campus.

“The pro-Hamas agitators, who were proudly distributing pro-Hamas propaganda in defense of Oct. 7, not only orchestrated a hostile takeover of Barnard College but also subsequently kept the administrators from evacuating the building in the midst of a bomb threat,” he said.