Columbia Anti-Semitism Task Force Reveals That a Professor Told His Class The Mainstream Media Is ‘Owned By the Jews’
(AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)
A new report from Haaretz on Columbia University’s Task Force on Antisemitism has shed light on just how hostile an environment the Ivy League school was for Jewish students this year.
According to the report, the task force found that one professor grilled a student with a “Jewish-sounding surname” about their view on the war between Israel and Hamas in front of their peers and another urged his class to avoid the mainstream media because “it is owned by Jews.” Other professors, meanwhile, moved “their classes and office hours into the encampment where ‘Zionists were not welcome,'” per Professor Gil Zussman, a member of the task force.
“Only when we talked to the students did we realize how serious the problem is. Unfortunately, there are still many faculty members who do not believe that there is antisemitism on campus, and some claim that antisemitism is being weaponized to protect pro-Israel views,” task force co-chair and Professor David Schizer told Haaretz.
His fellow co-chair, Professor Ester Fuchs said that the task force “heard from students who feel their identity, values and very existence on campus have been under attack.”
“My heart was broken listening to these students and what they were being forced to deal with,” she added.
Professor Nicholas Lemann, another co-chair, observed that “Jewish and Israeli students are feeling very targeted and ostracized” because of some of their peers’ rhetoric about “Zionists.”
From the Haaretz report:
One of the key points emphasized by task force members is that, unlike past protests at Columbia, which were directed at the establishment and the university itself, this protest has in many ways been aimed at students who lack the tools to cope with the intensity of the anger directed against them.
Student protesters targeting other students “are causing pain and isolation in a way I have never seen before on campus,” Schizer says.
Fuchs adds that one of the task force’s observations is that “the burden of dealing with these situations of harassment, intimidation, discrimination and exclusion has primarily been on the students. We can’t allow it.”
Zussman predicted that if it continues to go unaddressed, poor treatment of “Zionists” on campus would “eventually fracture the university.”
Columbia was thrust into the national spotlight this spring when anti-Israel protesters occupied a portion of campus and were eventually removed by authorities.
