American universities: dueling lawsuits claim Title VI violations at Columbia

Note: Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect students' identities

It had been a long few days, and a long year, which may have explained why the philosophy major stood on a chair in a full-body cow costume singing with a Hassidic rabbi.

At tables and on a makeshift dance floor, scores of Columbia students late Monday night were jumping, clapping and bopping to a Hebrew rendition of Next Year In Jerusalem, the song that closes the penultimate section of the traditional Haggadah. Around the corner were bull-horned chants of kicking Jews out of Israel and burning Tel Aviv to the ground. You wouldn't know it from the energy in here. 

How I got to this Passover meal on New York City's 113th Street when most American Jews were in quiet homes or familiar hotels was a bit of a blur even to me. But its meaning -- as the campus seethed with division and anti-Jewish sentiment -- rippled through my soul.

STUDENTS HOLD a protest encampment in support of Palestinians on the Columbia University campus, in New York City, this week. (credit: CAITLIN OCHS/REUTERS)

I went to Columbia, but in a culturally earlier time, when if you took off your kippah or Star of David on campus it was because you were rebelling against your parents, not inoculating yourself from "Go Back to Poland" taunts.

My experience as a Jewish American was one of such easy tolerance you could forget it might be otherwise-- the balance point between an Ivy League history of intolerance and the moral-relativism-on-steroids that appears now to have made some students and faculty (I'm convinced it's not the majority ) think terrorists are the good guys. A golden time, in retrospect.

When concerns arose over how an official school event in a Catholic Church might make some traditional Jewish students feel, it was discussed privately, with administration and students quietly working out a solution, no protests, counter-protests or social media outrage in sight. I'm sure there was rancor over such issues. It was just not dominant or an end unto itself.

The situation at Columbia in the days leading up to Passover had upset me as a Jew but also as a person who still believes in the value of the campus experience. (Yeah, I'm the one.) Blissfully hanging out with Black, Muslim, Catholic, Hindu, Latino and Evangelical friends was a formative experience, a tonic for a childhood spent principally in Jewish institutions. The school had provided a sparkling chance both to explore and be forged by our global richness. Now that all seemed to be going up in smoke.  

Forget walking around Columbia with so many different types of people --now you might not be able to walk around Columbia, period. A WhatsApp note from an Orthodox rabbi a day earlier had encouraged Jewish students to go home for their safety; the night before that a group of visibly Jewish students had been intimidated by fellow students in a BDS encampment into leaving campus, where out on Broadway they were harassed and called slurs by non-student bullies. 

To see my youth so summarily extinguished wasn't just upsetting. It made me fear that this new Columbia generation -- not just the campus's 5,000 Jews, but all the people they'd interact with -- would miss out. The Jewish students would be unwilling to open themselves up to everyone around them (or just transfer). The idea plunged me into despair. And so here I was blowing off my family on the first night of Passover to spend it with a hundred Jewish kids of very different backgrounds in a Chabad House near the protests, hoping to see if there was, well, hope.

Outside the door a cop car and five burly men lingered in a kind of informal bouncer convention. A clever security strategy -- camouflaged enough not to invite confrontation, noticeable enough not to mess with. Inside, the rabbi, a compact and thoughtful thirtysomething named Yuda Drizin, stood on a chair and launched the proceedings on the parlor level of the aging brownstone, students seated on either end of several long tables below him. 

Tuning out the noise

"This will be the only time we mention what's happening out there," Drizin said, gesturing toward the door as he began the seder. "Matza is meant to be eaten without talking. It's a kind of meditation -- a way to tune out the noise. I want us at this seder to tune out the noise." We were just far enough away not to hear what was happening outside. Now Drizin wanted us not to think about it either.

On the tables, alongside the traditional seder plates and wine, were accouterments like toy frogs and cattle to mark the plagues, injecting Purim into Passover. Some students tried on toy sunglasses that had been placed on the table in homage to the darkness plague.

Anxiety was not obvious. But it was visible in small ways if you knew where to look -- in how one student casually described an uncomfortable walk near the encampment on the way to her dorm a few days earlier; in the tense looks up to the door when it swung open during the Haggadah reading. (It was a matzah-seeking Jewish neighbor. Or Elijah.) 

"It has been a long day. A very long day," a decidedly cool and confident junior named David sighed at one table. That morning he had chosen to put on a kippah for the first time since his bar mitzvah. As he walked down Broadway right outside Columbia's gates, a man on rollerblades approached him and said "What's up, k---?", using a slur. Before David knew it the person had bladed off, a rotating ball of hate right from a 1990's time machine. "I mean, rollerblades?" David said.

He wasn't just amused by the juxtaposition -- he found the quick exit a kind of cowardice. "If he hadn't left so fast I would have confronted him."

Coincidentally, a dean was walking by and saw what happened. He immediately came up and asked David if he was OK, offering support. Critics might eyeroll; where was the dean when Columbia was developing a reputation that made such bigots feel comfortable in the first place? But David appreciated the gesture. "He totally didn't have to do any of that," he said.

A grab-bag of ideologies

The rabbi moved the seder along, invoking a grab-bag of ideologies. He gave a little Hassidic homily. "The matzah has to be handmade, not machine-made, because liberation can't be automated -- you can't use AI to attain freedom." He passed out scallion stalks and asked students to play-hit each other to simulate slavery. (A woman of Persian heritage explained to her tablemates that this was the Farsi custom during the song of Dayenu. "But only during the chorus -- unless you really don't like someone.") 

Bananas and chocolate spread adjoined the more typical parsley and saltwater. "The point is to do things differently enough to make people ask, and bananas and chocolate make people ask," Drizin said. A little while later he upped that ante when he had several students, including David, dress up in cow and tiger costumes and run mischievously through the room to mark the animal plagues.

For swaths of the seder politics seemed far away. Students -- many of whom did not know each other -- traded familiar undergrad table chatter: where they were from, where they wanted to live after graduation, a tai-chi class that was life-changing. Bottles of wine were smuggled in; some applauded (or ribbed) other students' readings of Haggadah passages.

These were Jewish students from Boston to Seattle, Bergen County to the San Fernando Valley. There were Black Jews and Yemeni Jews and Jews from Belgium and Jews from Miami Beach. "Shouldn't you have returned to the Jewish homeland for Passover?" one wag asked the Floridian. "I'm a rebel," he answered.

A Passover night different from all over Passover nights

But there was no escaping that this was a Passover night different from all other Passover nights.

When the line in Dayenu was read thanking God for delivering the Jews to the Land of Israel, one student sang "The Land of Israel" more loudly, with pointed emphasis. 

Another talked about regularly bringing dozens of members of his campus running club to Caffe Aronne, the coffee shop on the Upper East Side that shortly after Oct 7 became a political flashpoint when several employees quit over the owner's support of Israel. (Hundreds of Israel supporters soon showed up to buy coffee.)

The student said he would be at the BDS encampment the next day. When the person sitting next to him, a nose-ringed junior named Deborah, raised her eyebrows, the runner smiled and said "I'm joking, I just have a class near there, that's not me," as he reached inside his shirt to pull out a dog tag proclaiming his support of the Israeli hostages.

David mentioned Shai Davidai, the business-school professor and pro-Israel provocateur who has described the campus environment as "1938" and called for the resignation of university brass. "I don't get the point -- he's not convincing anybody," he said. 

Another cited embattled president Dr. Minouche Shafik, whose testimony to Congress last week about the measures to control antisemitism now feels like it was given during the Pharaonic Period. "She tried to use Columbia-JTS as cover," said a student enrolled in one of those joint Jewish Theological Seminary programs. "And Stefanik was awesome, she wasn't having it."

Drizin himself violated his no-outside-world rule a few times.

Describing Jewish tradition's preference for round matzah over square, he said, "There's an important lesson here: liberation can't have sharp corners, it can't be edgy. It has to be done with a sense of completeness," in what seemed like both a riposte to the angry chants outside and a call for a more zen response in the room.

And when the service came to the Haggadah's famous line of, "In every generation they stand against us to destroy us and God saves us from their hands," Drizin couldn't resist a nod. "This is a message for the present," he said, as a number of students murmured their agreement.

A pointed rebuttal to the protests outside

Then they moved along -- to singing, to ritual foods like maror and haroset, to a meal that stretched on. 

By the time the students came to the post-meal chanting of the Hallel and the singing of Next Year in Jerusalem -- and a cow-clad David had jumped on a chair to sing with Drizin -- the seder had both sidelined politics and served as a pointed rebuttal to it. If campus out there was making Jews feel uncomfortable, in here flowed evocations of what gave Jews comfort; if the outside world kept dredging up a painful history of antisemitism, these proceedings reminded of the rituals that over the centuries had eased that pain. After all, they were here, a hundred young joyous Jews, freely celebrating Passover. 

 The tendency from outside a hotbed is to think in all-or-nothing ways -- either people are paralyzed by fear or they are bravely putting it behind them. But of course that's not how it works. Both can be true. For these Columbia Jews everything was fine and not fine. This was their normal lives and entirely abnormal terrain.

As the seder wound down, a sophomore named Gila, a human-rights major, told me a few of her classes focused on the Middle East. I asked her how it was going.

"We were studying the concept of genocide and there's a very clear definition, and I don't believe what's happening in Gaza meets it. But I could never say that in class -- everyone thinks it does, including the professor. And it wouldn't go well if I disagreed."

She continued,  "No one is asking questions because they already know all the answers." 

Yet she said she wasn't considering switching her major. "I really like it. And I can still learn a ton."

David had a sister in high school who recently got into Columbia, and he was going to encourage her to come despite everything. "There are some terrible people here. But," he shrugged, "there are some terrible people out there in the world too."

I felt a sense of reassurance, tinged only with a little sadness. My fear of a future Columbia bereft of Jews was unfounded; no one here was going anywhere. Even if the overall numbers in the next few years dropped, my alma mater -- which had provided me and so many other Jews with so much -- would continue giving plenty. It would just be a little harder, require a few more tradeoffs, mean a little more holding of the tongue. 

Maybe for some Jewish students that wasn't worth it, or even objectionable. I wouldn't judge them. But for Gila and many others, that wasn't the case. Times wouldn't be as golden as they once were. But they'd still be pretty good. And they'd be good for this reason: because the Jewish students here would find a way around the institution's problems. Jews have found their way around much worse.

As the seder ended and students began to get their coats, Drizin called out to ask if anyone wanted a security escort home. Some people would be walking right through the protests. The security people were here, he explained, to accompany anyone who felt unsafe. To a person, the students shook their heads and said they'd be fine on their own. 

Then they began streaming out, chattering with each other about classes and finals and Passover, saying they'd see each other around campus or back here, later in the holiday.

A proud Columbia alum, Steven Zeitchik left The Washington Post last year to launch Mind and Iron, a humanist look at the future of technology.

The governor of Texas cheered on the arrests of dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Texas this week, as clashes with authorities broke out on campuses from Austin to Boston, Los Angeles, Atlanta, the Twin Cities and beyond.

At some schools, students took over campus buildings, while others were seeing protest encampments spring up for the first time. Hundreds of people have been arrested as police and campus authorities have cracked down on the student protests in a growing number of places.

Meanwhile, the University of Southern California announced Thursday that it was canceling its graduation ceremony altogether, shortly after it barred its valedictorian from speaking after pro-Israel groups raised alarm about her social media profile.

The latest incidents come a week after mass arrests, suspensions and evictions of pro-Palestinian students at Columbia University, inspiring copycat protests at other colleges that have flummoxed administrators in many cases. The sight of armed police officers sometimes violently disrupting so-called “Gaza solidarity encampments” has drawn comparisons to similar crackdowns on Vietnam War-era campus protests, particularly at Kent State University, where members of the National Guard killed four protesters and wounded nine more in 1970.

Three of the murdered Kent State students were Jewish, including Allison Krause. On Wednesday, her sister Laurel condemned Columbia’s president, and other university heads, for their handling of the Gaza protests, urging them to allow student protests without the prospect of police intervention.

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Palestine Legal, an organization that describes its mission as "challenging efforts to threaten, harass and legally bully activists into silence and inaction," filed a 37-page civil lawsuit against Columbia University on Thursday asserting that the school had discriminated against Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students, and in doing so violated its obligation under the 1964 Civil Rights Act. 

The lawsuit alleges "targeted and pervasive harassment of Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, and groups associated with Palestinians on campus on the basis of ethnicity[,] national origin[,] or perceived national origin."

It lists as examples "discrimination, stereotyping, different treatment, harassment, and threats," which it calls "the product of both a deep-rooted, dehumanizing bigotry against Palestinians, as well as organized campaigns by anti-Palestinian groups and government officials to suppress speech." 

The action makes eleven demands, including that Columbia reverse suspensions imposed on students for actions related to the encampments, drop any related civil charges, expunge those students' records, and offer to pay for their psychotherapy.

It also demands that Columbia grant a full scholarship to "students who have suffered from Columbia's anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and Islamophobic environment," and that the school "not adopt, enforce, or rely on" the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, which includes examples related to the demonization or delegitimization of the State of Israel. 

Columbia is already facing several lawsuits from Jewish students alleging that the school has failed to protect them from antisemitic discrimination in the months since October 7. 

"Anti-Israel and antisemitic protests on too many college campuses have included threats and harassment of Jewish students and faculty," said the Jewish Federations of North America in a statement on Thursday. "This behavior is a clear violation of their civil rights and must stop immediately."

The Federations called on every college and university to adopt a zero tolerance policy for threats and harassment, "with appropriate punishment for violators, including expulsion and referrals to law enforcement." The Federations also demanded that schools "ensure that non-campus actors are excluded from all campus protest activity," and that they "prevent protests from targeting known Jewish locations, student groups."

In the statement, the Federations also called on the Department of Education to expedite the processing of civil rights complaints related to antisemitism, and for the passage of the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which would make the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of antisemitism, which includes examples relating to the demonization or delegitimization of the State of Israel, the official definition of antisemitism when applying US policy.  That bill has been introduced in the House and the Senate and is awaiting further consideration. 

Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota visited the student encampment at Columbia University on Thursday. The demonstration, demanding that Columbia sever its ties with Israel, has drawn condemnation from across the political spectrum for statements made by leaders and participants in support of Hamas and other proscribed terrorist groups.

"Contrary to right-wing attacks, these students are joyfully protesting for peace and an end to the genocide taking place in Gaza," Omar wrote on X, along with a video, in which she could be seen shaking hands with visibly Jewish students involved in the encampment. "I'm in awe of their bravery and courage." 

I had the honor of seeing the Columbia University anti-war encampment firsthand.

Contrary to right-wing attacks, these students are joyfully protesting for peace and an end to the genocide taking place in Gaza.

I’m in awe of their bravery and courage. pic.twitter.com/yC6hcBMwCP

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) April 25, 2024

In an interview on Wednesday evening with local news station WABC 7, New York City Mayor Eric Adams slammed pro-Hamas protesters in his city.

There is "no room for hate in our city to praise Hamas, which is a terrorist and must be destroyed and dismantled," Adams said.

Adams added that the "disgusting" terms he's heard and some of the flyers he's seen are "not who we are."

He made clear his support for Israel is unwavering. 

Adams denounces Hamas support

"No one wants to see innocent lives lost in Palestine, but we have to bring home the hostages, and we have to dismantle and destroy Hamas," the NYC mayor said.

Demonstrators sit in an encampment as they protest in solidarity with Pro-Palestinian organizers on the Columbia University campus, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in New York City, US. April 19, 2024. (credit: CAITLIN OCHS/REUTERS)

Initially, the interviewers labeled the protests "anti-war" but said they had a different tone than typical anti-war protests in New York's history.

The interviewer specified that the protests have shifted from anti-war protests in support of Gazan civilians to demonstrations supporting Hamas, also arguing that the "vitriol" within the protests is focused on Jewish people in New York rather than on Israel. 

Adams argued that freedom of speech is constitutionally protected, but it is "immoral to see some of the terminology that has been used." 

Adams called for those who want to peacefully protest to "police themselves" to avoid hate speech and hate terminology. 

"We should not be lifting up a terrorist [group] that participated in October 7 and other atrocities," he said.

Earlier in April, Adams declared that New York City "unequivocally stands with the State of Israel" in the face of Iran's direct attack.

The New York City mayor has consistently called for the release of hostages since October. He has taken a firm stance in support of the city's Jewish community amid increasing calls for a ceasefire and increasing support for Hamas in the city.

If you think we had it bad with antisemitism on college campuses in the US till now—guess what? It’s just going to get worse.

The wave of hostility toward Israel and Jews that swept across elite colleges after the October 7 Hamas attacks isn't a passing storm. It's a full-on hurricane. Jewish families are pulling their kids out of the Ivies faster than you can say, "Free Palestine." They're opting for safety over prestige because who wants their kid to end up in a place where it's safer to be a TikTok troll than a Jewish student?

Take Merav and her daughter, Anna. They had their eyes on the big-name schools, which make you feel like you've made it even if you're just visiting the campus bookstore. But after October 7, when the war with Hamas exploded, they ditched the dream of the Ivy League. "I didn't think I'd have to readjust a college list based on concern for the safety of Jewish students," Merav told CNN. "Our priorities have shifted significantly." Unfortunately, Merav, you're not alone.

It will only get worse; we need to take a stand now

Then there's my friend, journalist, and author Liel Leibowitz. This guy, an Israeli who immigrated to the US, thought he had made it at NYU, tenure and all. But when he tried to join a forum discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he was told his views were "outside the legitimate boundaries." Ouch. Talk about a rude awakening. NYU canceled his tenure, and Leibowitz had to rethink everything, leading him to shift toward a more religious and conservative Jewish identity. "No one wants to schlep to shul to be lectured endlessly about white supremacy or gender spectrums," he wrote in his essay “Us and Them.” Well, he’s got a point.

And don't get me started on the chaos over at Harvard. Another friend, Barak Sella, is studying at the Kennedy School, which should've been a golden opportunity. But the war and its aftermath have turned it into a social minefield. Sella said every conversation with him was "an active choice to engage in discussion about the war." Who wants that baggage when you're just trying to get through a day of classes and grab a coffee without starting a shouting match?

Manifestación anti-Israel en la Universidad de Harvard. Es hora de que la comunidad judía local y los ex alumnos judíos de Harvard mostremos nuestra fuerza (credit: Rick Friedman/Polaris - Newscom)

It's not just about social discomfort. This issue gets dangerous. Gabe Cohen, a CNN journalist, talks about families who are so freaked out by antisemitism that they're revamping their college lists to avoid the toxic campuses. Christopher Rim from Command Education, a consultancy that helps students apply to top-tier colleges, mentioned that some of his Jewish clients were removing schools like Cornell and Columbia because of the antisemitism. Rim said some students were also steering away from UPenn, Harvard, and MIT, especially after the Capitol Hill testimony where their presidents tripped over themselves trying not to say that calling for genocide against Jews is against campus rules.

Manfred Gerstenfeld, a veteran Israeli researcher, addressed these issues years ago. His 2008 study was one of the first to warn about academic boycotts against Israel. He highlighted how these boycotts often hid behind the guise of anti-Zionism but were just good old-fashioned antisemitism. He also laid out strategies for fighting back, emphasizing the need for solid and centralized responses to academic discrimination. Fast-forward to today, and it feels like we've gone back to square one, just with many more hashtags and much less patience for dissenting voices.

There is also Yaron Gamburg's article for INSS, which paints a grim picture of the state of antisemitism in the US. He talks about the spread of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and other radical ideologies that have taken over American educational institutions, fueling antisemitism. He mentioned that after the October 7 massacre, there was a significant surge in antisemitism and hatred toward Israel in the US. It's all tied to this growing ideological shift that's seeped into the public and higher education systems, warping the minds of the younger generation to the point where they see Israel as the bad guy and Hamas as some kind of freedom fighter.

Here's the thing: if we don't stand up to this now, it will only get worse. It’s time to stop pretending that ignoring the problem will make it go away. It’s time for Jewish families, institutions, and anyone who values decency and safety on campus to push back hard. Let's call out the hypocrites who refuse to see antisemitism for what it is. Let's challenge the university administrators who think a half-hearted statement is enough to combat hatred. And let's make sure that our kids can go to school without wondering if they'll be the next target of a violent protest.

We can’t afford to stay silent anymore. If you've got a voice, use it. If you've got influence, leverage it. If you're a parent, a student, or just someone who cares about the future of education in this country, it's time to make some noise. Because if we let this continue, we're not just giving up on a safe college experience; we're letting antisemitism win. And that’s a price none of us should be willing to pay.

What if we fail?

That said, if American academic institutions continue to falter in addressing antisemitism on their campuses, perhaps it's time to revive a bit of our history. In the early 20th century, universities like Harvard, Yale, and Columbia set quotas to limit the number of admitted Jewish students. They effectively shut the door on Jews who were seeking education and opportunity. Harvard's president, Abbott Lawrence Lowell, famously complained about a "Jewish problem" when Jewish enrollment grew from six percent to twenty-two percent between 1908 and 1922. His solution? "Limit the number of them who later be admitted to the university." Yale’s dean was even more specific—only five Jews allowed, no black students, and maybe a couple of Italian Catholics if they were feeling generous.

Richard Feynman (credit: WIKIPEDIA)

What did the Jews do in response to this discrimination? They built their path. Jonas Salk, Richard Feynman, and countless others found success at institutions that valued their merit, even if the Ivy League did not. They created a community where they could thrive despite being shunned by the academic elite. It may be time for us to consider a similar approach. Suppose the top-tier schools are going to continue turning a blind eye to antisemitism and punishing those who speak out. Why not create our academic institutions free from the bias and bigotry that have infected these legacy universities?

It's a bold move, sure. But if the choice is between sending our children to schools where they're at risk for being Jewish or building new institutions that respect and protect them, I'll take the latter every time. We’ve done it before, and we can do it again. After all, Jews have always thrived when they’ve had to carve out their own space. Let's stop trying to fit into a system that doesn't want us and create one that does. Because when it comes to the safety and education of our kids, we can't afford to settle for anything less.

Starting April 17, pro-Palestinian students at Columbia University established the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, launching a campaign demanding that the university divest from Israel. The New York-based Ivy League school joins universities across the United States, such as Emerson, Vanderbilt, Yale, and the University of California, Berkeley that have seen similar protests, along with a rise in reported antisemitic incidents.

The Media Line spoke to former Israeli Ambassador to the US and Columbia alumnus Michael Oren, who expressed deep concern over the situation. He described the current campus climate as "intolerable, unacceptable, and exceedingly dangerous," impacting not only Jews but also the broader Western society. Oren traced the origins of these sentiments back to the 1960s youth revolutions. 

After their initial failure, he said, these movements embedded themselves in academia, subtly promoting anti-establishment ideologies over decades. “They went back into the campus and spent 50 years instilling their ideas into students and professors to inspire government officials and corporate executives on this particular set of self-declared anti-establishment ideas as trojan horses for antisemitism.” 

Anti-war protests of today are actually pro-war

Oren drew parallels between the 1968 anti-war riots and today's campus movements, which he views as pro-war due to their exclusion of Israel.

This shift has notably affected disciplines like American Studies, which have become distinctly anti-American, Oren continued. He also pointed out that even some Jewish academics have joined the anti-Israel chorus, failing to recognize the potential negative consequences for themselves. “They fail to see that this path also ends badly for them.”

Demonstrators pray outside an entrance to the Columbia University campus as they protest in solidarity with Pro-Palestinian organizers, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in New York City, US, April 18, 2024. (credit: REUTERS/CAITLIN OCHS)

Reflecting on Passover, Oren cited the Haggadah's story of the Wicked Son, which he believes mirrors the stance of those who don’t identify with their own people and criticize Israel's defenders. “It's the best image for these people who keep saying that if you defend Israel, you’re a bad Jew. Eventually, they’ll become one of the bad Jews themselves. This movement is a deep-seated cultural trend that has taken decades to evolve, and undoing it may also take decades,” said Oren.

Oren criticized university administrators for not taking a firmer stand earlier. “These demonstrations are orchestrated and funded from outside. These aren’t spontaneous demonstrations,” he said. He called for an FBI investigation into the protests' origins, emphasizing the threat they pose to campus safety. “Jewish students, professors, and staff can’t go on campus. 

Oren stressed the limits of free speech, particularly when it incites violence or supports terrorism, “which, by the way, is illegal in America,” he said.

“These people need to be prosecuted, but in the end, this isn’t a job for local police. This requires federal agencies to stop foreign agents from sewing chaos in America and its allies,” concluded the former ambassador.

Ariel Beery, a 2005 Columbia graduate, echoed Oren's sentiments about the long-term origins of these antisemitic trends. Beery discussed the strategy of Israel's enemies, who, unable to defeat Israel militarily, have turned to soft power and funding guerrilla groups to challenge Israel. "These protests represent the soft-power strategy of Israel's enemies," he stated.

“Anti-Western interests recognized that the leverage point was students and professors,” he said. “Many of these academics would shape many minds, so even if a small percentage of those students remain anti-Zionist years after flirting with the idea, the compounding effect becomes significant.”

Anti-Western values are prolific

Beery also highlighted the influence of certain academic and financial practices at Columbia during his time there. “As a student at Columbia from 2002 to 2005, I worked at the Middle East Institute as a research assistant. One of my regular duties was to type up and send thank you notes from the director to various donors, most of whom were oil companies or their proxy organizations and foundations. Nearly none of these were reported by the university at the time,” he said. 

“Many donations,” he asserted, “are made just below the legal reporting requirement.”

“As a research assistant at the Middle East Institute, I observed how donations just below the legal reporting requirement influenced the curriculum," he revealed. According to Beery, these contributions supported courses in local high schools that presented a curriculum biased against Israel, perpetuating negative perceptions among young students.

“One day, the new director, Rashid Khalidi, who sat on a newly donated Edward Said Chair, asked me to send a letter he wrote to Saudi Aramco,” shared Ariel.

“In the letter, he thanked them for their generous donation to enable professors from the institute to teach a course on Middle East studies in local high schools using a curriculum not friendly toward Israel. Courses such as that one have persisted for decades. This is one reason hundreds of high school students in New York find the motivation to protest Israel and target their teachers. Such programs were regularly sponsored, a visible example of how Israel’s enemies worked first to capture academic departments and then to propagate messages throughout the next generation of politicians, business, and community leaders,” Ariel concluded.

American police and anti-Israel encampment activists clashed at multiple colleges and universities on Wednesday, even as students occupied new campuses across the United States and beyond.

Texas State troopers marched and rode on horses into University of Texas Austin on Wednesday to arrest and disperse anti-Israel activists attempting to set up an encampment in the emulation of Columbia University. Thirty-four people were arrested in response to the Austin arm of the National Students for Justice in Palestine endeavor to seize campuses and force the adoption of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions policies.

Governor Greg Abbott responded to the encampment by sending the state troopers, who, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety, had been deployed "to prevent any unlawful assembly and to support UT Police in maintaining the peace by arresting anyone engaging in any sort of criminal activity, including criminal trespass."

"These protesters belong in jail," Abbot said on social media on Wednesday. "Antisemitism will not be tolerated in Texas. Period. Students joining in hate-filled, antisemitic protests at any public college or university in Texas should be expelled."

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A post shared by Palestinian Youth Movement (@palestinianyouthmovement)

Palestine Solidarity Committee Austin Texas said that the arrests were a "horrific act of violent repression" and a violation of first amendment rights. The anti-Israel group said that they would continue to hold protests on Thursday.

"[UT President] Jay Hartzell, Greg Abbott, and our local and university officials have made it clear that they DO NOT care about the principles of free speech they so proudly uplift at every given opportunity and they especially don’t care about any of their students, let alone their Palestinian, Arab and Muslim students," said PSC. "We join our faculty’s call to continue to protest in the face of oppression! We call on our community to resist the draconian tactics of intimidation employed by our university and to reaffirm our demands tomorrow."

Arrests at the University of Southern California and Emerson College

The same day, ninety-three protesters were arrested for trespassing at the University of Southern California by the Los Angeles Police Department. The LAPD said that patrols would remain on campus into Thursday.

USC had called on student activists to disperse, warning that the LAPD would arrest those who refused. The school also warned that the campus had been closed because of the encampment. USC Students for Justice in Palestine responded to the attempts to close down the encampment by calling for reinforcements.

Early Thursday morning, SJP Emerson College said that the Boston Police Department had broken into their encampment and arrested at least 50 students.

BARRICADES UP AT EMERSON COLLEGE IN BOSTON 🚨 pic.twitter.com/L93VZPAKJ8

— Calla (@CallaWalsh) April 25, 2024

Emerson College President Jay Bernhardt said in a Wednesday statement that the BPD and the Boston Fire Department had notified him that protesters were in violation of city ordinances by occupying Boylston Place Alley, which is not solely owned by the school. In addition to blocking public pedestrian access, there were noise violations and fire hazards.

"Of additional concern, Emerson has received credible reports that some protestors are engaging in targeted harassment and intimidation of Jewish supporters of Israel and students, staff, faculty, and neighbors seeking to pass through the alley," said Bernhardt. "This type of behavior is unacceptable on our campus. To ensure the safety of our community, Emerson has placed members of the Windwalker Security staff at the Boylston Place alley to ensure safe and consistent access to the alley as required by law.'

California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, has seen activists occupying buildings barricade themselves against police intrusions over recent days, and New York University saw police arrest and remove protesters from Gould Plaza on Monday.

NYU encampments

"The NYPD will always protect the rights to protest and free speech while ensuring the safety of all New Yorkers," said NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Operations Kaz Daughtry. "Our officers are professionals who will continue to be firm but fair when it comes to public safety."

The situation at NYU tonight was unreal #nyu4palestine pic.twitter.com/rDw5sPWNya

— Liz (@lzreads) April 23, 2024

NYU Palestine Solidarity Coalition said that over 140 arrests were made. NYU Presiden Linda Mills said in a statement that they had set up barriers to ensure safety and not to allow further activists to join, but the situation had escalated.

"We made no move to clear the plaza at that point because high among the University's aims was to avoid any escalation or violence. So, the University was deeply disturbed when, early this afternoon, additional protesters — many of whom we believe are not affiliated with the University — suddenly breached the barriers that had been put in place at the north side of the plaza and joined the others already on the plaza," said Mills." Many refused to leave. We also learned that there were intimidating chants and several antisemitic incidents reported. Given the foregoing and the safety issues raised by the breach, we asked for assistance from the NYPD. The police urged those on the plaza to leave peacefully but ultimately made a number of arrests."

NYU SPC said Wednesday that the walls were set up to prevent expression of free speech, and there was no breach but an orderly entry of people into the campus. They accused the administration of weaponizing Judaism and student safety to conceal Israeli "apartheid, occupation, and genocide in Gaza" and to "please its cowardly zionist donors and trustees."

Pictures and videos published by NYU SJP on Wednesday seem to indicate that while the encampment had been cleared, protests in front of the campus continued under heavy NYPD supervision.

"NYPD has destroyed our liberated zone and arrested students and faculty," NYU SJP said on Instagram Monday.

Protests at Harvard

Harvard University became one of the latest campuses to be host to an encampment on Wednesday, as a Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee video showed, with students screaming and rushing onto a lawn to quickly set up tents. The encampment came less than a day after PSC was suspended from the campus.

Incredible video from @HarvardPSC

Just yesterday, Harvard University placed the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) under suspension. Less than 24 hours later, students launched a Gaza solidarity encampment.

THE MORE THEY TRY TO SILENCE US THE LOUDER WE WILL BE pic.twitter.com/SnWTuiAan7

— National Students for Justice in Palestine (@NationalSJP) April 24, 2024

"There is only one solution: Intifada, revolution," the protesters chanted in a video posted by Harvard Chabad.

Harvard Chabad Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi called on the university to remove the "Jew haters and Hamas lovers" violating the campus code of conduct.

"I’m hearing from first-year students who, while studying for exams in their dorm room, are being confronted with terrifying chants of globalize the Intifada - a call for the murder of Jews," said Zarchi in a post on X last Wednesday. "I’m now receiving calls from their parents who are frightened to learn that Hamas supporters are being allowed to camp out in Harvard Yard - in brazen defiance to the university’s explicit guidelines - and chant in support of terrorism and call for the murder of Jews."

Activists also continued to call for revolution in front of Columbia University, according to a Within Our Lifetime video chanting, "New York to Gaza, long live the Intifada."

New York City Councilwoman Inna Vernikov posted a video on Wednesday of a protester outside of the campus carrying a sign with a picture of Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades member Zarakia Zubeidi, who had been involved in multiple shooting attacks on civilians.

Journalist Leeroy Johnson published a video on Monday of a protester leading Columbia activists in a chant that meant, "Mother of the Shahid, I wish my mother was in your place."

"This terrifies because they realize they can't do S**t to us," explained the protester.

WOL leader Nerdeen Kiswani was also present in the video, leading a chant calling for an intifada. On Wednesday, Kiswani shared on social media a Monday letter from Columbia warning her that she was persona non grata on all Columbia property "due to alarming and concerning behavior."

While American police action removed several encampments to join the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Washington University in St. Louis for having cleared campuses, the National SJP call to action last Wednesday continued to spread onto new campuses on Thursday.

On Wednesday, encampments were established at the University of New Mexico and Evergreen State College. Pro-Palestinian organizations said they would set up an encampment at Seattle's University of Washington.

On Thursday, another Australian encampment was established at the University of Melbourne to join the camp at Sydney University. The international expansion also included a Sciences Po Paris encampment on Wednesday. Canada also has an encampment at the University of Alberta.

The new encampments join campus occupations at Yale University, MIT, Tufts University, The New School, the University of Michigan, the University of Rochester, UC Berkeley, and the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. 

Kraft Group CEO and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft argued that "radical professors" at Columbia University are "poisoning young minds" in an opinion article he wrote, which was published Wednesday in the New York Post.

The article published the same day that Columbia University pushed off a deadline for negotiations with the leaders of the anti-Israel encampment on campus, tells of Kraft's time as a student there when he received a full academic scholarship.

He said that it allowed him "to grow, learn, and be successful" as he "set out into the world." He described the professors at the time as having "encouraged students to cultivate independent thought and the ability to engage critically with diverse viewpoints."

He said that this poses a stark contrast to the professors at the university today. Indeed, he explains that while the focus has largely been on the student body among those protesting and situated in the anti-Israel encampment, "the students have been taught and empowered by faculty more focused on politics than they are on education."

He repeated some of the horrific antisemitic sentiments expressed at these protests, including calls for Jews to return to Poland and chants calling to kill Jews, and he said, "I do not recognize my alma mater."

A counter protestor talks into a microphone as people gather outside of Columbia University to demand a ceasefire and the end of Israeli attacks on Gaza, during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, during a protest in New York, US, April 20, 2024. (credit: Reuters/Adam Gray)

Kraft highlighted that the professors that had joined the protests "use the classroom and the campus as a bully pulpit to promote their personal political viewpoints as opposed to fostering critical thinking — they preach eliminationist rhetoric championed by unchecked and dangerous activist groups."

Jewish students left fearful on campus

Kraft, who founded the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism in 2019, highlighted the fear that has struck Jewish students on campus.

While Kraft insisted that freedom of speech is crucial and that it is an important principle to him, he noted that freedom of speech "is not calling for physical violence with your face hidden behind masks and coverings — that’s cowardice."

Finally, he highlighted the fact that if the presidents or the boards of the universities do not hold students accountable for breaking their codes of conduct—and, indeed, Columbia University President Minouche Shafik confirmed last week that calling for violence against Jews goes against the university's code of conduct—then the university is teaching its students that there is no accountability for their actions.

He called for the universities, then, to "start stripping tenure" away from professors who encourage and attend these anti-Israel events, "regardless of the legal fights they may face... The job of administrators is to manage the faculty, not to stand idly by as their campuses are taken over by a minority of students or to compromise with or negotiate with those violating the rules.

He also noted, "In an era marked by a growing divisiveness across the country, colleges and universities should not be breeding grounds for hate and polarization. Rather, colleges and universities — places that allow for exposure to diverse cultures, experiences, and viewpoints — have a unique opportunity to promote and cultivate understanding and respect for one another."

Indeed, Kraft announced that he is ceasing his donations to his alma mater earlier this week, stating that he is "no longer confident that Columbia can protect its students and staff."