By: Fern Sidman-Jewish Voice News

Columbia University’s long-awaited final report from its antisemitism task force, released on Tuesday, represents the most forceful institutional acknowledgment to date of what Jewish and Israeli students have described for years as a suffocating atmosphere of ideological coercion, academic discrimination, and unchecked hostility toward any expression of Jewish identity connected to Israel. The report—described by The Times of Israel on Wednesday as the most candid internal reckoning yet—goes beyond documenting isolated incidents. It depicts a university in which anti-Zionist dogma has fully permeated classroom instruction, faculty culture, and even curricular design, allowing discrimination against Jewish students to masquerade as political critique.

The task force, in its fourth and final publication, confirms what Jewish students have been reporting since long before the October 7 Hamas massacre: that they were singled out, humiliated, and in some cases directly threatened—not by fringe demonstrators on campus lawns, but by professors entrusted to educate them. As The Times of Israel report noted, the 70-page document details classroom environments that often crossed the line from spirited debate into ethnic targeting, with professors elevating anti-Israel activism at the expense of both academic integrity and student safety.

The task force was established last year amid escalating national scrutiny of elite American universities, many of which have struggled to confront the explosion of antisemitic rhetoric and behavior following Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel. Columbia, which became the epicenter of anti-Israel encampments and faculty walkouts in early 2024, faced particular pressure. This final report, unlike prior interim statements, offers unambiguous confirmation that Columbia’s crisis was not merely a problem of unruly activists or external agitators—it was internal, endemic, and systemic.

The report’s findings are as unsettling as they are extensive. According to the information provided in The Times of Israel report, Jewish and Israeli students interviewed by the task force described an academic environment in which anti-Israel animus was treated as a prerequisite for intellectual legitimacy, while dissenting views—particularly those grounded in Jewish identity—were dismissed, mocked, or punished.

Among the incidents Columbia now officially acknowledges:

• Israeli students were publicly labeled “murderers” during class discussions.

At least one professor reportedly singled out Israeli students, identifying them as responsible for the policies of the Israeli government and holding them personally accountable for the Gaza war.

• Jewish students were told that the Holocaust’s survivors “learned nothing” and merely lived to “commit genocide.”

As The Times of Israel reportrecounted, a faculty member used class time to suggest that post-war Jewish survival was morally hollow because the Jewish state had become, in his view, an oppressor.

• A rare class offering a balanced study of Zionism was disrupted by students who objected to its insufficient hostility toward Israel.

Rather than defend academic rigor, faculty reportedly allowed the disruption to stand.

• Professors read private emails from Jewish students aloud to their classmates as a form of public shaming.

One Israeli student told task-force investigators this was done explicitly to ridicule their perspective.

• Entire classes were canceled so students could attend anti-Israel protests, some described as “Zionist-free zones.”

Administrators offered no disciplinary consequences for professors who encouraged political attendance as an academic requirement.

• A required lecture course with more than 400 students included a segment calling Israel “so-called Israel” and accusing Jewish donors of “laundering blood money.”

• A professor in a class on advocacy denied Hamas’s documented use of sexual violence on October 7, telling students that widely reported atrocities were “exaggerated or fabricated.”

• Graduate instructors were told they were expected to “teach for Palestine” regardless of course content.

As The Times of Israel report emphasized, even departments such as astronomy, architecture, and nonprofit management were reported to be infused with anti-Israel messaging.

• A professor asserted that Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, was an antisemite, and that Eastern European Jews were “not really Jewish.”

The task force noted—and The Times of Israel report highlighted—that substituting the word “Zionist” for “Jew” does not make the hostility less discriminatory. The report affirms that anti-Zionist rhetoric has been routinely deployed as a sanitized proxy for antisemitic tropes, allowing faculty and students to evade accountability while inflicting profound harm on their Jewish peers.

Perhaps the most explosive finding is that Columbia currently lacks a single full-time faculty member in Middle East studies who is not explicitly anti-Zionist. This ideological uniformity, the task force argues, is incompatible with academic standards that require intellectual pluralism and rigorous debate.

The report frames this absence not merely as an imbalance of scholarly opinion but as a structural problem that has facilitated discrimination. Faculty hiring processes, departmental cultures, and administrative oversight have all contributed to an environment where anti-Israel dogma is treated as prerequisite and deviation as dangerous.

The task force stops short of recommending specific personnel actions but notes that meaningful reform is impossible without broadening scholarly representation and decoupling academic inquiry from political activism.

In its concluding recommendations, the task force attempts to navigate what it calls the “necessary tension” between academic freedom and nondiscrimination. Echoing The Times of Israel’s summary, the report states: “We urge the University to protect freedom of expression to the maximum extent possible while also complying with antidiscrimination laws. Censorship has no place at Columbia. Neither does discrimination.”

It is a statement at once principled and paradoxical. As Jewish students have repeatedly noted—and as The Times of Israel reported throughout the year—anti-Israel activism on campus often manifests as direct hostility toward Jewish identity. The challenge for the university, therefore, is not simply to balance free speech and safety but to acknowledge that anti-Zionist faculty practices have already undermined both.

For many Jewish students and communal leaders, the report is not a blueprint for reform but a confession of institutional failure. As one summary circulating among alumni put it: “Columbia engineered a campus-wide assault on Jewish identity and called it education.”

Notably, the report does not indicate that any of the professors named in student testimonies will face discipline. Nor does it commit to structural changes in hiring, departmental governance, or curricular oversight. Faculty involved in some of the most egregious episodes remain employed, with no public sign of accountability.

That reality, as The Times of Israel report pointed out, has already fueled skepticism among parents and donors, many of whom regard the task force’s work as too little, too late.

Columbia’s crisis cannot be divorced from the broader national moment. Since Hamas’s massacre on October 7, antisemitic incidents have surged on American campuses at levels not seen in modern memory. Columbia became a symbol of that shift: anti-Israel encampments occupying central quads, faculty leading walkouts, students chanting slogans advocating violence, and administrators unable—or unwilling—to respond decisively.

The task force’s report, though sober and meticulously documented, implicitly acknowledges that October 7 did not create Columbia’s antisemitism problem; it merely exposed it. The ideological infrastructure that allowed anti-Jewish hostility to flourish was built long before that day.

The release of the final report places Columbia at a crossroads. The administration now faces pressure from Congress, alumni, major donors, and civil-rights organizations to implement meaningful reforms. Yet it must do so within a faculty ecosystem where anti-Zionist activism is not fringe but deeply entrenched, institutionally protected, and widely celebrated.

As The Times of Israel report noted, the task force’s findings represent a rare moment of institutional honesty in a sector where universities have often minimized or deflected criticism of antisemitism. But honesty without action, Jewish leaders warn, risks normalizing the very abuses the report exposes.

Columbia’s administration has promised to review the task force’s recommendations. Whether it will confront the entrenched ideological structures identified in the report remains uncertain.

What is no longer uncertain is that Jewish and Israeli students were subjected to discriminatory treatment under the guise of pedagogy—and that Columbia, by its own admission, allowed it to happen.