I remember how it was -- JR
Jewish Columbia students slam university’s ‘inaction’ against antisemitism: ‘I don’t feel safe’
Around 20 Jewish students from Columbia University and Barnard College spoke Monday to denounce the university’s “inaction against antisemitism” in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack.
Students clad in yarmulkes, necklaces with the Star of David, and blue and white wristbands with the phrase “you are not alone,” said they found it “incredibly disheartening” that the university has not had a “meaningful” response to incidents including the attack of a Jewish student, online death threats and hate graffiti scrawled on the campus of the elite university.
The protest at the Morningside Heights, Manhattan, campus came hours after more than 100 professors signed a letter defending students who support the terror group’s “military action,” which killed 1,400 Israelis.
Second-year law student Eli Shmidman, 26, from Queens, was the victim of antisemitism on campus on Oct. 19 when a student yelled “f–k the Jews” at him. The university has apparently identified the student in question but not yet taken any action.
“‘F–k the Jews’. Those words were not said here on Amsterdam, not on Broadway, those words were said in Jerome Greene Hall — Columbia’s law school building,” Shmidman said.
“I know this incident occurred because it happened to me. I was the one who the antisemite chose to direct that message to. But this was an attack on me, he said ‘f–k the Jews’, it was an attack on all Jews.
“How did we get to a point where an individual felt emboldened to walk into the law school building at 2.30 in the afternoon, stare at an individual wearing a kippah [yarmulke] and say [that]?
“We got here because after the horrifying terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 20-plus student groups signed a statement that said, ‘the weight of responsibility for the war and casualties undeniably lies with the Israeli extremist government’. Not only did the statement not condemn Hamas’ barbaric attack, it justified it based on lies.
“What did the Columbia administration do in response to this statement? Nothing,” he said.
“Students chant, ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free’, which is a call for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Israel. What did the Columbia administration do in response to that antisemitic rhetoric? Nothing.”
In the wake of Hamas’ terror attacks, University president Minouche Shafik said she was “devastated by the horrific attack on Israel this weekend,” on October 9, but did not mention Hamas or terrorism.
A day earlier politics and history teacher Joseph Massad wrote an article online in which he praised Hamas’ terror attacks, calling it “astonishing,” “astounding,” and “incredible” as well as a “stunning victory of the Palestinian resistance” against “cruel colonizers.”
The university has yet to take any action or comment on his stance.
Barnard College psychology student Jessica Brenner, 20, said she is now anxious simply attending classes.
“I feel walking on campus many people just want me to die,” Brenner said.
“I have to walk around and go to my class and see someone and think they might want me to not exist or not want my people to exist — I don’t take a step without thinking about that.
“When I’m asked ‘do you feel safe at Columbia University?’, I say ‘no. I don’t feel safe,'” Brenner said.
“When I see my fellow students turn a blind eye to the blatant antisemitism on campus, I do not feel safe.
“Now I get it, I actually understand how the Holocaust happened. When Columbia professors band together and sign a letter that basically justifies Hamas’ actions, I do not feel safe.”
Noah Fay, 22, a Barnard and Columbia School of International and Public Affairs student, agreed with Brenner and said anti-Jewish propaganda is rife at Columbia.
“It was always hard for my generation to comprehend how the Nazis could have mobilized — how did the gentile bystanders fall victim to propaganda so effectively they quickly became the perpetrators themselves?,” Fay asked.
“The saturation of anti-Israel propaganda on campus has convinced the majority of the student body of the same insidious theories through which the Holocaust was enacted.
“The student body at Columbia and our peer institutions has been so thoroughly propagandized they do not see and refuse to see the extent of their fear and hatred towards the Jewish people. This is antisemitism at its core.”
Columbia University history student Yoni Kurtz, 21, called out Columbia University president Minouche Shafik by name for not protecting Jewish students on campus.
“With my own eyes I have witnessed Columbia students resort to based bigotry. I’ve seen them parrot foul antisemitic tropes, I’ve seen them label visibly Muslim students as terrorists, I’ve seen them roar in approval for calls of violence against civilians, and I’ve seen them take to social media nearly every day of the last three weeks to call for each other’s deaths,” Kurtz said.
“The university’s response has not been action, but empty statements. Do not abandon your students Columbia, take action now,” he pleaded.
Shmidman particularly took issue with Monday’s missive from the faculty room as a sign that the administration “has enabled antisemitic rhetoric to spread and fester on the Columbia campus.”
Columbia spokeswoman Samantha Slater said Shafik has sent three messages of solidarity and tolerance to the student body and said that school leaders swiftly condemned a swastika that was drawn in the International Affairs Building as a shocking “symbol of antisemitism, hatred, and racial supremacy.”
“As President Shafik and the administration have consistently made clear, antisemitism or any other form of hate are antithetical to Columbia’s values and can lead to acts of harassment or violence. When this type of speech is unlawful or violates University rules, it will not be tolerated,” Slater told The Post.
“We are using every available tool to keep our community safe and that includes protecting our Jewish students from antisemitic discrimination or harassment.”
The university did cancel an on-campus student event last week that warned “Zionists” were not welcome.
During the demonstration, one student-aged man yelled “free Palestine” as he walked past the presser into the university but there was no counter-protest.
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More than 100 Columbia professors sign letter DEFENDING students who supported Hamas
Columbia is in NYC but is a very "ethnic" university, with only about 30% white students
More than 100 Columbia University professors signed a letter in defense of students seeking to 'recontextualize' the Hamas attacks on October 7 and called on administrators to protect them from 'disturbing reverberations' on campus.
The letter, published Monday, claims that students are looking at the ambush within the larger framework of Palestinian oppression at the hands of the Israeli government.
The professors aired their concerns about students being publicly shamed and doxed due to their opinions, as well as facing retaliation from employers.
Columbia has come under fire in recent weeks, with billionaire investor Leon Cooperman threatening to cut off donations to his alma mater over student support for Palestine.
'These egregious forms of harassment and efforts to chill otherwise protected speech on campus are unacceptable,' Monday's letter reads.
It defends those who have expressed 'empathy for the lives of dignity of Palestinians' as well as those who 'signed a student-written statement that situated the military action begun on Oct. 7 within the larger context of the occupation of Palestine by Israel.'
The letter argues that the student statement 'aims to recontextualize the events of Oct. 7, 2023' by pointing out that state violence did not begin with the Hamas attacks, 'but rather it represented a military response by a people who had endured crushing and unrelenting state violence from an occupying power over many years.'
Students believe that peace will be unattainable 'unless the illegal occupation of Palestinian territory ends and accountability for that illegal occupation is achieved,' the professors wrote.
They added that this was 'not a radical or essentially controversial opinion,' as it was supported by the United Nations and human rights organizations.
'One of the core responsibilities of a world-class university is to interrogate the underlying facts of both settled propositions and those that are ardently disputed,' the letter ends.
'These core academic values and purposes are profoundly undermined when our students are vilified for voicing perspectives that, while legitimately debated in other institutional settings, expose them to severe forms of harassment and intimidation at Columbia.'
The message concludes with a request that the school reverse a decision to create curricular and research programs in Israel - echoing a demand made by over 100 Columbia faculty last year.
The professors also insisted that the university cease issuing statements that 'favor the suffering and death of Israelis or Jews over the suffering and death of Palestinians, and/or that fail to recognize how challenging this time has been for all students, not just some.'
Among the signatories was Katherine Franke, the James L. Dohr Professor of Law. Franke specializes in gender and sexuality studies and began her career as a civil rights litigator.
She visited Israel as part of a human rights delegation in 2018, but was detained and later deported. The Israeli authorities accused her of having ties to a Palestinian-led movement promoting boycotts, divestments and economic sanctions against the country.
'150+ Columbia/Barnard Faculty have signed a letter supporting our students' right to contextualize the war in Israel/Gaza within the 75 yr occupation of Palestine - insisting that it isn't anti-Semitic to do so,' she wrote on Twitter with a link to the letter.
Franke quickly faced backlash in the comments, including from one user who wrote: 'That letter is about the farthest thing from objective scholarship I’ve ever seen.'
Other faculty members whose names appeared on the letter included Rashid Khalidi, the university's Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies.
Khalidi is the editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies and a former advisor to the Palestinian delegation during the Madrid Conference of 1991.
The Palestinian-American historian recently penned an op-ed for the New York Times titled 'The U.S. Should Think Twice About Israel’s Plans for Gaza.'
The essay reads, in part: 'It is past time for the United States to cease meekly acquiescing to Israel’s use of violence and more violence as its reflexive response to Palestinians who have lived for 56 years under a stifling military occupation.'
Another educator whose name made an appearance was James Schamus, former CEO of Focus Features, who is now the Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia's School of the Arts.
Schamus is Jewish and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace, an anti-Zionist Jewish activist organization. JVP, coincidentally, backs the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign that Franke was accused of supporting.
The film producer recently retweeted a video of the enormous JVP sit-in at Grand Central Station and captioned it: 'Never more proud of my comrades.'
Monday's letter came in response to backlash over a student statement that was written earlier this month.
It slammed 'the Israeli extremist government' and other governments 'which fund and staunchly support Israeli aggression, apartheid and settler colonization.'
And while more than 100 professors have rallied behind the students, other groups have argued that their words are not advocating for human rights, but terrorism.
Just last week, the Anti-Defamation League sent an open letter to more than 200 colleges and universities, urging them to investigate campus chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine for allegedly supporting Hamas.
Columbia’s SJP chapter told CNN that it refused to engage with the ADL, arguing that it 'demonizes nonviolent tactics by Palestinian activists.'
Davis Polk, one of the country's most prestigious law firms, recently rescinded job offers for three students, including two from Columbia who signed the statement decrying Israel.
'The views expressed in certain of the statements signed by law school student organizations in recent days are in direct contravention of our firm’s value system,' the firm said in a statement.
It is now reconsidering the decision for two students who fought their dismissals, but has not released their identities.
Other groups that have fired back at the students' alleged support of Hamas include Accuracy in Media, a conservative media group.
On October 25, the nonprofit sent trucks with digital billboards to Columbia's Morningside campus, displaying students' names and faces and deeming them 'Columbia’s Leading Antisemites.'
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California professors blast university system for ‘unsafe’ comments about Hamas
Ethnic studies professors demanded the University of California stop referring to Hamas’ attack on Israeli civilians as "terrorism," arguing in a letter to administrators that such language endangers students.
"We call on the UC administrative leadership to retract its charges of terrorism, to uplift the Palestinian freedom struggle, and to stand against Israel’s war crimes against and ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinian people," a statement from the University of California Ethnic Studies Faculty Council reads in part.
UC leaders condemned the "horrific attack" in a statement on Oct. 9, calling it an "act of terrorism" and highlighting the "loss of many innocent lives and the abduction of innocent hostages, including children and the elderly."
But the UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Council said administrators' use of the terms "terrorism" and "unprovoked" have stoked anti-Muslim sentiments and "made Palestinian students and community members unsafe." The group cited the recent stabbing death of a 6-year-old Palestinian-American boy in Illinois.
UC administrative communications "distort and misrepresent the unfolding genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and thereby contribute to the racist and dehumanizing erasure of Palestinian daily reality," wrote the council, which claims to represent more than 300 faculty members in the university system.
The UC system consists of 10 campuses serving nearly 300,000 students across California. University officials did not respond to a request for comment.
The Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder posted a similar statement on its website last week, rejecting the "language of ‘terrorism’ used by the US and Israel to justify the Israeli state killing machine."
The department described those protesting for Palestinian liberation as "anti-genocide" activists.
Chancellor Phillip DiStefano quickly distanced the university from the ethnic studies department's statement, writing Thursday that the statement is "not an official CU Boulder position" and directing readers back to the university's original statement condemning Hamas' attacks.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/california-professors-blast-university-system-unsafe-comments-hamas
******************************************************My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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