Report: Prestigious universities breeding ground for anti-Semitic protests
NGO calls on administrators to address systematic discrimination against Jewish and Zionist students & faculty
More than 100 incidents relating to anti-Semitism and bigotry have occurred at Columbia University and Barnard College since the 2016-2017 academic year, according to a new report released Thursday by Alums for Campus Fairness.
In a 33-page report by the ACF organization, they describe a “systemic anti-Semitism and an ingrained delegitimization of Israel” that exists at Columbia and Barnard.
“This report reveals the disturbing truth about anti-Semitism at one of the highest regarded universities in the United States,” said ACF executive director Avi Gordon, noting that these campuses are “arguably the most prominent settings for university-based anti-Semitism in the United States.”
Each act cited in the report falls under one of three of categories: anti-Semitic expressions through language, imagery or behavior, targeting Jewish students and staff with harmful intention based on their Judaism or support for Israel, or Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions activity.
The report also records how Columbia and Barnard faculty members have targeted Jewish and Zionist students on social media, in classrooms, and while speaking at extracurricular programs.
In once such incident that occurred in May 2019 on the Columbia campus, Students for Justice in Palestine held a "die-in" which referred to escalations on the Gaza border as “a linear path of violence that we can trace back decades, a path which concretely spells out the racist objective of Zionism: to create an ethno-supremacist state with no place for the indigenous Palestinians.”
After Columbia's student board failed to pass a pro-BDS bill earlier this year, the Columbia/Barnard Jewish Voice for Peace issued a statement about how "institutions are recognizing that Israel is an apartheid state" claiming that "unconditional support for Israel is no longer viable, in discourse and otherwise.”
ACF is calling on administrators to address the systematic discrimination against Jewish and Zionist students and faculty.