Columbia antisemitism task force reports ‘crushing’ discrimination against Jewish, Israeli students

Jewish students at Columbia University have been driven out of their dorm rooms, chased off campus, compelled to hide their Jewish identity, ostracized by their peers and denigrated by faculty, according to a report released Friday by the university’s Task Force on Antisemitism.

The report, the second one released by the investigatory body made up of faculty, illustrated the breadth of anti-Jewish discrimination at the Ivy League campus. It also said that pervasive antisemitism on campus has “affected the entire university community.”

“The larger social compact is broken,” the report said. “University policy and individual practice must change.”

The task force also created its own definition of antisemitism, short-circuiting a combative debate over differing definitions created by varying coalitions and undercutting criticism that it had previously faced. The definition calls antisemitism “prejudice, discrimination, hate, or violence directed at Jews, including Jewish Israelis” but does not mention Zionism, a wedge in the broader debate, explicitly.

To compile the report, released just hours before the start of the Labor Day long weekend, the task force held listening sessions with close to 500 students last school year. The students testified about their experience around the campus, including in dorms, on social media, at student organizations and in class. They reported a pattern of discrimination that affected their social lives, studies and mental health.

“After October 7, numerous students reported that they no longer felt safe,” the report reads. “One student who had moved into her dorm room in September, told us she placed a mezuzah on her doorway as required by ritual law, as traditional Jews have done for centuries. In October, people began banging on her door at all hours of the night, demanding she explain Israel’s actions. She was forced to move out of the dorm.”

The report also details dozens of other antisemitic anecdotes and incidents on campus, including students wearing kippahs who were spit on and berated, a Jewish woman and her brother who were chased off campus at night, and classmates wearing keffiyehs who shoved Jewish students and shouted, “We don’t want no Zionists here.” 

Other incidents mentioned in the report include jokes about Adolf Hitler that were scrawled onto communal whiteboards in the dorms and a professor who called Jewish donors “white capitalists” guilty of dealing in “blood money” and referred to “so-called Israel” in a classroom exercise. Israeli students were “singled out for particularly terrible treatment,” according to the report.

“We heard about crushing encounters that have crippled students’ academic achievement. We heard about students being avoided and avoiding others, about exclusion from clubs and activities, isolation and even intimidation,” the task force said in the report.

“The painful and distressing incidents of antisemitism recounted in this report are completely unacceptable,” Columbia’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, said in a statement Friday. “Discrimination and harassment, including hate language, calls for violence, and the targeting of any individuals or groups based on their beliefs, ancestry, religion, gender identity, or any other identity or affiliation have no place at Columbia.”

Armstrong’s predecessor, Minouche Shafik, resigned earlier this month, citing the turmoil on campus in her decision. She had faced criticism from both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian voices over her handling of the protests.

The task force was formed in the weeks after Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, with the mandate of coming up with strategies to combat antisemitism at Columbia. It is one of several to be formed at elite universities nationwide. 

The Ivy League university in Manhattan’s Morningside Heights has been the site of heated activism around the Israel-Hamas war. The task force released its first report in March, which detailed “isolation and pain” experienced by Jewish students and said the university was not doing enough to discipline unauthorized protests. The task force is co-chaired by David M. Schizer, the former dean of the law school and the former CEO of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, and includes Columbia faculty from the law school, business school, school of public health and engineering school.

Friday’s report further detailed antisemitism on campus and issued recommendations for structural changes at the university. The task force recommended anti-bias and inclusion training for students and faculty, workshops about antisemitism and Islamophobia, and trainings in dispute resolution. The university should also establish a committee that links Columbia’s different schools to share information and coordinate trainings, the report said.

Other recommendations included restructuring the procedures for reporting discrimination, ensuring that student groups comply with anti-discrimination laws, and implementing customized training for incoming students.

The task force also lashed the university administration, saying the Jewish students’ testimonies “have made clear that the University community has not treated them with the standards of civility, respect, and fairness it promises to all its students.” 

Jewish students' reports get brushed aside

Students who reported antisemitic hostility to faculty were sometimes brushed aside, according to the report. Some Jewish students who reported discrimination to administrators were referred to counseling “which they correctly understood” meant that they needed to accept antisemitism, the report said.

The task force is recommending the use of its antisemitism definition, which says the prejudice can manifest in ethnic slurs or caricatures; stereotypes or antisemitic tropes; Holocaust denial; targeting Jews or Israelis for violence or celebrating violence against them; discrimination based on Jewish identity or ties to Israel; and double standards applied to Israel. 

Although the task force’s definition does not directly mention Zionism, the report notes that “Zionists” were often targeted and reported a “slippage that sometimes felt intentional” between the terms Zionist and Jew. New York University last week issued new hate speech guidelines that said students or faculty who target “Zionists” could be violating campus policy.

“Anti-Zionism, as it has been expressed in campus demonstrations during the past academic year, hews far more closely to antisemitism than to a simple critique of Israel,” the Columbia report said, adding that some anti-Zionist rhetoric, such as stickers that accused “Zionist donors” of controlling the university, echoed traditional antisemitic tropes.

“There is an urgent need to reshape everyday social norms across the campuses of Columbia University,” the task force said. “But we are a long way from there. The problems we found are serious and pervasive.”

In addition to pressure from Jewish students and alumni to take action against antisemitism, Columbia faces investigations by Congress and the Biden administration.