I’m grateful Columbia deans were disciplined for their antisemitic texts, but it’s far from enough
Students occupy the campus ground of Columbia University in support of Palestinians April 19. Officers cleared out a pro-Palestinian campus demonstration on April 18, a day after university officials testified about antisemitism before Congress. Photo by Alex Kent/AFP via Getty Images
Over the last few months, it’s felt like my alma mater Columbia has generated more scandals than degrees. Its latest: “Textgate,” in which administrators entrusted with protecting students’ well-being were caught exchanging texts filled with antisemitic tropes, quite literally during a hearing about campus antisemitism. [A current Forward intern and Columbia student, Rebecca Massel, was a participant on stage during this hearing in her role as deputy news editor at Columbia Daily Spectator.] The three administrators, formerly the dean of undergraduate student life, the associate dean for student and family support, and the vice dean and chief administrative officer, were removed from their positions and placed on indefinite leave this week.
The revelations that individuals whose job was to care for students mocked and indulged in antisemitic tropes was not news to me, nor to many other Jewish students and faculty. Since the outbreak of war on Oct. 7, Israeli and Jewish students have compiled mountains of evidence, not merely of anti-Zionist, but of blatant antisemitic harassment we’ve suffered.
With the exposure of the text messages, and Columbia’s subsequent response, we were given simultaneous proof that while Columbia is certainly showing a willingness to tackle this ancient form of hate, it still has a long way to go.
Antisemitism is the canary in the coal mine. As alarming as what “Textgate” portends for Israeli and Jewish students, it is just as frightening to consider the ways other vulnerable groups are treated, or not treated. This time around, justice was served to the offending administrators — but that’s not always been the case at Columbia University.
The protests and encampments might have come about as a response to the current tragedy unfolding in Gaza, but they included the same harmful rhetoric Jewish students have been suffering on campus since well before the war, and so cannot be tethered only to it. To illustrate, the Columbia chapter of the group Students Supporting Israel shared with me a 2020 document they had submitted to Columbia deans and administrators, offering written and photographic evidence of discrimination and harassment of Jewish and Israeli students, including hate mail and physical threats.
The group told me they had never received an adequate response from administrators — just as nothing appears to have been done when swastikas were graffitied on a Columbia Holocaust researcher’s office in 2018, or more recently, when a student protester told Columbia administrators during a disciplinary hearing in January: “Be grateful I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.” (The student was only barred from campus after his comments were made public months later.)
It must be made clear that criticism of Israel does not automatically constitute antisemitism. However, much of what occurred on campus in recent years has blurred the lines between the two. While simultaneously desecrating the students’ right to free speech and to protest against the horrors of war, Columbia has failed to arrest its community’s slide down this slippery slope, with antisemitism distorting righteous criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza.
The conclusion is clear: Columbia palpably harbors the disease of antisemitism. To anyone familiar with the institution’s history, this is not news.
I’m an alumna of Columbia’s School of General Studies, and am proud to have completed my undergraduate degree in this program designed for students of untraditional paths. During my studies, I enjoyed the company of other adult learners pursuing academic excellence after serving in the military, performing at the pinnacle of the athletic or professional worlds, or even after having served time in prison. What other Ivy League school so generously grants the formerly incarcerated such a superlative opportunity?
Yet my pride in having attended GS doesn’t blind me to the fact that the school began as a segregated institution for Jewish students. Originally named Seth Low Junior College, it was a night school in Brooklyn for Jewish students during the early 20th century, when Columbia wouldn’t allow more than a handful of the so-called right kind of Jew, primarily of Germanic origins, on its Upper West Side campus. Columbia, in a word, was delighted to charge my people tuition, to take advantage of and take credit for the prodigious talents of the likes of Isaac Asimov, but wouldn’t allow us to tarnish its actual campus with our presence.
The same GS founded in disregard for Jews shielded in 2019 then-GS dean of students Tom Harford from student sexual harassment allegations so severe that the student had no choice but to file a $50 million lawsuit against both Harford and Columbia. Similarly, Columbia covered up sexual abuse crimes by its leading OB-GYN, Robert Haden, for decades. Columbia also barely disciplined student Julian von Abele who followed and berated a group of primarily Black students on campus while shouting white supremacist and racist slogans.
The same Columbia that appeared annoyed less by calls for Israel’s erasure, and more by the calls’ airing in a way that obstructed foot traffic, is the same Columbia that seems to have barely followed up on the possibility that student protestors were sprayed with chemical weapons on campus.
I’m happy, then, that “Textgate” ended with my community being served a morsel of justice after decades of discrimination. But with antisemitism a symptom of greater diseases, my advocacy cannot end with only my people’s interests.
True, Jews aren’t safe on campus, but neither are so many other members of equally vulnerable communities. I thus encourage Columbia, an institution that for long has primarily centered the concerns of its white male Christian members, to devote itself with equal vigor to protecting members of all other ethnicities, religions and backgrounds. If Columbia’s culture of covering up faculty, administrators’ and staff’s harmful, and indeed criminal behavior continues, then none of us on campus are truly safe.
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